A statue of Thomas Jefferson outside an Oregon high school named for him was toppled over by a group of protesters during a demonstration this weekend.
On Sunday, a crowd of protesters gathered outside of Jefferson High School in Portland ahead of a march organized over the death of George Floyd.
As the crowd of more than 1,000 residents left for a nearby park, a smaller group of protesters reportedly arrived and pulled down the Thomas Jefferson statue.
Footage of the incident shared by PDX_Resistance shows at least nine people wearing face masks standing outside the high school near the statue.
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A statue of Thomas Jefferson placed outside of Jefferson High School in Portland, Oregon, was pulled down by a group of protesters on Sunday (pictured)
A rope is tied around the statue’s neck and one member of the group appears to use a hammer to loosen the structure.
After a few moments of tugging, the statue slams onto the concrete ground as the group cheers and applauds.
The statue fell onto its side and a dent was visible in the concrete where it landed, Oregon Live reports.
Earlier in the day, the base of the statue had been covered in graffiti reading ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘George Floyd 8:46,’ in reference to the amount of time an officer knelt on Floyd’s neck.
A group of at least nine people were seen on video removing the Thomas Jefferson statue on Sunday outside the high school
George Floyd, 46, was an African-American man who died after a white officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes on Memorial Day in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
A number of protests opposing his death and systemic racism have broken out across the United States.
The exact time the statue was removed is unclear, but it was discovered when the large group of protesters returned to the high school that evening around 10pm.
The group had held the march in a historically black neighborhood that had been gentrified.
Portland Public Schools data has reportedly shown 32 per cent of students at Jefferson High School are black, the largest percentage of any high school in Oregon.
‘There’s an interesting piece of history up here… Mr. Thomas is all beside himself,’ one organizer quipped amid cheers.
The unidentified group used a rope and what appeared to be a hammer to loosen the statue’s base
Protesters cheered and applauded when the Thomas Jefferson statue finally fell onto the concrete ground
‘We’re taking this city back. One school at a time. One racist statue at a time.’
Several monuments linked to the Confederacy and slavery have been downed in recent weeks as thousands protest racism and police brutality.
Thomas Jefferson, one of the Founding Fathers, has come under intense scrutiny over his seemingly contradictory historyas the principle author of the Declaration of Independence while being a large slave owner.
Jefferson was credited with writing ‘all men are created equal’ into the US Constitution, but during his life he owned more than 600 slaves.
Although he referred to slavery as ‘moral depravity,’ by 1782 Jefferson had become the largest slaveholder in Albemarle County, Virginia .
Two other statues were downed at the University of Oregon on Saturday over their ties to white supremacy.
The Thomas Jefferson statue was one of three monuments pulled down this weekend in Oregon, with two other statues toppled over by protesters at the University of Oregon
Demonstrators hold their hands up in Portland during a protest over the death of George Floyd
Demonstrators hold their hands up in Portland during a protest over the death of George Floyd
The Pioneer statue was first erected in 1919 during a ceremony where the president of the Oregon Historical Society have a speech praising the ‘Anglo-Saxon race.’
The second statue, The Pioneer Mother, was placed at the university in 1932 and had similar racist backings.
Researcher Brenda Frink told The Register that the statue celebrated ‘the expansion of American territory and the expansion of white occupation of that land.’
Other statues of historical figures, like Christopher Columbus and Robert E. Lee, have also been torn down.
In Kentucky, a statue of Confederate president Jefferson Davis was removed from the Kentucky State Capitol Building.
A statue of Jefferson Davis, a former president of the Confederate states, was removed from the Kentucky State Capitol building on Friday
The statue was removed over Davis’ racist behavior, which included attempts to expand slavery and owning 113 slaves during his lifetime.
‘African slavery, as it exists in the United States, is a moral, a social and a political blessing,’ Davis once said.
A 11-1 vote by the Historic Properties Advisory Commission prompted the statue’s removal on Friday.
‘After calling for its removal and urging the Historic Properties Advisory Commission to act, today I pressed the button to bring it down,’ Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear wrote on Twitter.
‘Now, every child who walks into their Capitol feels welcome. Today we took a step forward for the betterment of every single Kentuckian.’