Police believe vandals desecrated a Savannah monument of a Confederate general Wednesday night at Forsyth Park.
The statue of Lafayette McLaws was discovered with a white hood placed over the sculpture’s head and black fist, in the fashion of one of the Black Lives Matter logos, spray-painted on it, according to news station WTOC.
McLaws, born in Augusta in 1821, served in the Civil War battling in defense of Marye’s Heights and at Gettysburg. He died and is buried in Savannah.
Georgia lawmakers passed a law in 2019 to protect all state statues and monuments, making it illegal to deface, abuse or remove monuments on state-owned property.
Mayor Van Johnson addressed defacing monuments during his weekly update, according to WTOC.
“We would just remind people that if you’re disgruntled, that’s one thing, if you’re angry, that’s something else, if you’re anxious, that’s fine, but it is against the law to deface public property so I am asking people to show your disgust in more appropriate ways. But again, it’s illegal,” Johnson said.
Since protesting began following the death of George Floyd, a man who died in police custody, several monuments have been defaced throughout the South. Earlier this month, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam announced he planned to remove Richmond’s monument of iconic Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, which had also been the target of vandalism. In Alabama, Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson announced that the statue devoted to Adm. Raphael Semmes, which stood in a middle of a downtown street near the Mobile waterfront for 120 years, would be removed without warning. Semmes’ statue had also been defaced during protests in that city.
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