Did George Floyd Protesters Deface the Statue of an Abolitionist?

In the waves of protests that swept across U.S. and European cities beginning in May 2020 after the policy-custody death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, numerous localities removed, or announced plans to remove, various statues and monuments memorializing persons connected with segregation or racism, such as those who were involved with the slave trade or were prominent figures in the Confederacy during the U.S. Civil War.

In some cases, however, protesters did not wait for official action to take place and instead defaced, vandalized, and/or pulled down statues themselves. One such instance of this activity that was widely publicized on social media had to do with the mistaken defacement of a statue of someone said to have been a prominent abolitionist.

The pictured statue is one of Matthias Baldwin which stands outside Philadelphia City Hall. During the “early days of unrest in Philadelphia” following the death of George Floyd, protesters doused the statue with red paint and spray-painted the words “colonizer” and “murderer” on its pedestal.