About The Site

whentheycamedown is a project documenting the removal of statues representing white supremacy, oppression, genocide, colonialism, and racism throughout the world. This is a collaborative effort started by Emily Gorcenski, although the intention of the project is to open source contribution in the style of open knowledge.

This project takes the stance that the removal of statues represents an important and inextricable part of the history of the people, groups, and moments that those statues represent. Removing of statues, renaming of parks, and similar actions is not an act of erasing history, but an act of adding to history by capturing the spirit, beliefs, motivations, and actions of the people who lived during the times those statues stood. It is the goal of this project to document the people who aimed to remove the monuments more than the people represented by the monuments. The project seeks to document the history of the activists, their efforts to remove statues through proper and improper channels, and the history of the people oppressed by those who the statues represent.

This site’s existence is not a call for the removal of such monuments. The site does not represent an incitement to vandalism or destruction, nor does it condemn such actions. The purpose of the site is to uplift the histories of those intertwined with the history of the people memorialized in the statues, monuments, parks, and so on. The site seeks to add to history, not take away from it.

Photographs are used without permission under fair use principles. The site is not hosted in the United States and its curator is not residing in the United States; accordingly, copyright threats filed under US law will be ignored unless filed through proper channels, the first of which is reaching out to the curator through appropriate means.

This site does not accept cash contributions. To contribute, please add, edit, or translate content, particularly if you can connect to the people involved in statue removal efforts. This site does not use any form of tracking or analytics.