June 2020 was not a good month for slave owners and imperialists, or at least not for their stone and bronze likenesses. Amid the surging protests following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, crowds around the world demanded the removal of racist icons, with some taking it upon themselves to pull down the offending statues.

The protests gave renewed momentum to long-standing efforts to rid Southern cities of Confederate memorials. Along Richmond, Virginia’s Monument Avenue, where activists have long demanded the removal of tributes to Confederate heroes such as J. E. B. Stuart and Robert E. Lee, protesters scrawled various slogans, such as “ACAB,” “Stop White Supremacy,” and “Fuck 12” (“fuck the police”) on pedestals. While legal attempts to remove the offending statues languished in court, protesters immediately transformed the Lee monument into a colorful site where artists and crowds gathered for rallies and memorials to black civilians killed by police.

In New Orleans, protesters armed with rope, a chisel, and a skateboard toppled a bust of the slave owner John McDonogh and tossed it into the Mississippi River. The rebellion against racist statuary spread across the Atlantic as well. In the English port city of Bristol, the bronze cast of Edward Colston, a seventeenth-century slave trader, was dismantled and rolled into the harbor.