A statue had been erected in memory of Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, considered by most to be one of the greatest Spanish authors. Yes, it also was vandalized, by someone who must not have cared about Cervantes’ history, for he actually was held as a slave himself by the Barbary pirates. So the wise, intelligent, and sincere person who vandalized the statue actually vandalized the statue of a slave. A statue of Matthias Baldwin, Philadelphia industrialist, life-long opponent of slavery and a champion of human rights for all, also was vandalized by the same type of genius who destroyed the others we have mentioned, no doubt by someone who leaped to the assumption that a wealthy industrialist had to be the bad guy; that is, if he knew anything about him at all, which he obviously did not.
In a previous column we mentioned that a statue to the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, a Black unit that distinguished itself at the second battle of Fort Wagner in the Civil War, was damaged by vandals, as was the World War II memorial in Washington DC. Overseas, statues of Winston Churchill, who perhaps more than anyone else should be given credit for defeating Nazism and Fascism, have been vandalized, as have statues to Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson, the greatest fighting Admiral in the history of the Royal Navy. Nelson crushed the Napoleonic fleet at Trafalgar, which had the side effect of damaging the slave trade. A statue to James Cook, probably the most accomplished navigator/scientist of all, also was damaged.