A vandal was caught on camera defacing a statue of Arthur Ashe, the first black man to win Wimbledon, the Australian Open and the US Open, by spraypainting the phrase ‘White Lives Matter’ on it in Virginia.
The vandalism comes as protests denouncing the police killing of George Floyd have unfolded across the country for three weeks and amid calls to topple all Confederate and white supremacist monuments.
A Twitter user named Betsy Milburn shared video footage of the moment she caught a man defacing the monument at its base on Wednesday morning.
In the clip the man is seen wearing a blue shirt, baseball cap, and an American flag-themed scarf around his mouth. Noticing the camera, he walks away from the monument as Milburn says, ‘White Lives Matter, really?’
Milburn shared a follow up video of a few women from the neighborhood coming out with wire brushes and cleaning supplies to wipe off the spray paint.
The base of the monument in Richmond, Virginia, was tagged with white spray paint and the words ‘white lives matter’ as well as the initials ‘WLM.’ Those initials were then later painted over with ‘BLM’, left. Statue pictured before the vandalism, right
But as the locals scrub away, the vandal returns, this time with a towel and cleaner and tries to wipe off Black Lives Matter graffiti on the statue.
‘Hey, why did you spray paint White Lives Matter on this side of the statue,’ one man in the group gathered at the monument asks.
‘Do not all lives matter? Why is okay to spray paint on this statue Black Lives Matter and not White Lives Matter? What’s the difference? I’m not racist. I just don’t agree with desecrating our property,’ the man is heard saying.
When pressed on why he wrote the phrase he says: ‘Cause we all matter. Everybody matters.’
Milburn then films his car, which bears a license plate from South Carolina.
One man in the group asks the man his name and he replies: ‘My name is everyone. Everyone who has property value. Everyone here whose paid to f***ing live here and is tired of seeing this bulls**t.’
The Ashe monument was pictured with ‘WLM’ initials on several parts of the statue, which were spray painted over with ‘BLM’ and eventually washed off in Wednesday’s clean up.
‘I’m not sure why he felt the need to desecrate the one black statue on Monument Avenue,’ Fatima Pashaei, who was with Milburn during the incident, said to the New York Times.
‘He said “You guys tagged my statue so I am tagging your statue,”‘ Milburn said, likely referring to the vandalized Confederate monuments on Memorial Avenue.
Ashe was the first black player selected to the United States Davis Cup team and the first black man ever to win the singles title at Wimbledon, the US Open and the Australian Open
Ashe’s nephew David Harris Jr. was disappointed when he learned about the vandalism on the statue.
‘I was disheartened about it. People are outraged that people choose to vandalize a statue that represents peace, prosperity, inclusion, education, and the life and true fabric of the country: children,’ he said to the Times.
‘It lets us know that there are folks out there that don’t believe in being inclusive. They believe in discriminatory acts and racism still,’ he added.
Richmond Police said they were alerted to the vandalism about 10.15am on Wednesday and said red paint on the statue was already being cleaned off by community members.
Ashe is believed to have contracted HIV from a blood transfusion in the early 1980s
Police said they have information on possible suspects and are asking the community to call their Crime Stoppers line if they have information on who is responsible for the vandalism.
The Arthur Ashe monument was dedicated in 1996 to commemorate the Richmond native and counterbalance the string of statues on Monument Avenue dedicated to Confederate leaders.
On that avenue he’s joined by five statues commemorating Virginian Confederate veterans of the Civil War, including Robert E. Lee, Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson, Jefferson Davis, J.E.B. Stuart and Matthew Fontaine Maury.
The Davis statue was toppled by demonstrators last week and Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam has ordered that the iconic statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee be removed.
Ashe was the first black player selected to the United States Davis Cup team and the first black man ever to win the singles title at Wimbledon, the US Open and the Australian Open.
In November 1973, with the South African government seeking to end their Olympic Ban, Ashe was granted a visa to enter the country for the first time to play in the South African Open.
Ashe was an active civil rights supporter who visited South Africa to observe political change in the country as it approached racial integration, as part of a delegation of 31 prominent African-Americans.
He was arrested on January 11, 1985, for protesting outside the South African Embassy in Washington during an anti-apartheid rally.
He was arrested again on September 9, 1992, outside the White House for protesting on the recent crackdown on Haitian refugees.
Ashe is believed to have contracted HIV from a blood transfusion in the early 1980s.
He founded the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS and the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health before his death from AIDS-related pneumonia on February 6, 1993, aged 49.
He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton on June 20, 1993.
The vandalism of the Ashe statue comes as multiple Confederate statues have been toppled, vandalized and slated for removal in the city during protests prompted by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.