Thomas Jefferson—Portland, OR, USA

Thomas Jefferson was unseated at Jefferson High School in Portland, Oregon.

After a protest against police of about 1,000 people that rallied at Jefferson High School in Portland, the seated statue of Thomas Jefferson was upended and the base vandalized.¹ The school was the rallying point of the march, which proceeded to a nearby park. The statue was upended sometime before the protesters returned, according to reports.² It was the third statue in the state to be removed over the weekend, joining Pioneer and Pioneer Mother at the University of Oregon.³

Best known as a Founding Father who was a driving force in the formation of American democracy, Thomas Jefferson owned hundreds of slaves in his lifetime.⁴ Jefferson frequently raped one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, with whom he began sexually abusing when she was only a teenager.⁵

References

Protesters pull down Thomas Jefferson statue in front of Portland high school ↩︎
Thomas Jefferson statue toppled in Portland, Oregon ↩︎
University of Oregon responds to destruction of campus statues ↩︎
The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson ↩︎
Thomas Jefferson spent years raping his slave Sally Hemings. A new novel treats their relationship as a love story. ↩︎

Photo Credit: Big Yikes