-On June 7 in Bristol, England,
the statue of slave trader Edward Colston
was pulled down by protesters,
and then they threw it in the river.
-That was spontaneous.
I literally don't know how it happened
until someone showed me a video of it going into the river.
Someone was live-streaming it.
There was actually about 10k-plus people there.
-Bristol was at one point in the 1700s
a leading slave port during the transatlantic slave trade,
which is how Colston made the bulk of his fortune.
He donated much of this money to charities in Bristol
and other parts of England,
which then led to the naming of streets,
a music hall, a girls' school, and a statue after him.
-To symbolize the slave trade, they tied his legs and arms,
even though he's a statue, and threw him in the river --
the same river that used to bring in slaves into Bristol.
So it was kind of symbolic.
-The word "Colston" is so divisive in this city.
Whether or not you're black or white, he was a slave trader
who made his money off the back off of human lives.
-Videos of the statue's fall
and drowning were recognized worldwide
and even mentioned at George Floyd's funeral.
-All over the world, I've seen grandchildren of slave masters
tearing down slave master's statue over in England
and put it in the river.
-I'm not condoning criminal damage, but, again,
I won't pretend that, you know, the statue wasn't offensive.
And to walk around that statue,
to have it in the middle of a city,
with a plaque on it that talks about why
he's a virtuous son of the city
when he made his money from kidnapping, from death,
from that kind of exploitation was very hard.
-Statues of slave traders and colonialists in Europe
and Confederate statues in the United States,
in addition to statues of Christopher Columbus,
have increasingly become targets of protesters
during the aftermath of George Floyd's death.
-It's a park dedicated to white supremacy.
It's a park dedicated to indigenous genocide.
-After these protests, the UK has started removing
some of its statues that have ties to slavery.
But some, like Winston Churchill and George Washington,
are being boarded up to protect them from being vandalized.
In the United States, Virginia's governor announced
plans to remove the monument of Confederate general Robert E.
Lee.
-That statue has been there for a long time.
But it was wrong then, and it is wrong now.
So I am directing the Department of General Services
to remove the statue of Robert E.
Lee as soon as possible.
But make no mistake, removing a symbol is important,
but it's only a step.
We still need change in this country.
We need healing, most of all.
-George Floyd! -Just days later,
the move was blocked by a judge, but Northam's
administration remains committed to removing it.
-Robert Lee, who was a slave owner,
who fought a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people
to defend the institution of slavery.
And even if he was a loser, he is represented
in those statues with a totally different image
that is the image of someone who won the war.
-There's also debate around renaming streets
and schools that were named after Lee.
And in addition to the statue of Lee, Richmond, Virginia's,
Monument Avenue also contains other statues of men
who defended the Confederacy.
-Most of the Confederate monuments were constructed,
then, in the 20th Century, early 20th Century,
at the summit of the period of Jim Crow,
and to show, to display to African-Americans
that they should continue in a position of submission.
They symbolize, then, this very long history of slavery,
colonialism, white supremacy, and racism.
-Public spaces were built up around these statues,
making them inescapable.
-It led to this beautiful street filled with really ugly symbols.
And the fact that the street was in many ways wide and gracious
and lined with trees and a place that people like
to gather made those symbols even more pernicious,
because they embedded those symbols in the daily
lives of people who lived in that city.
That inescapability becomes kind of toxic.
-This is a coming-home moment,
to see that down there every day I went to --
and had to come and see that park statue in this park
and be reminded of the racial hatred.
Black lives matter this morning.
Black lives matter. Thank you, Jesus.
-It's an ongoing oppression.
They were put up to perpetuate the racism
that had made it possible
for that slavery to exist in the first place.
So I don't know what that does to somebody who, you know,
who is a person of color, but I can only imagine
that it must make every single inch of the public
forum feel somehow a little less welcoming than it is
for somebody who is not a person of color.
-I feel like they want that part of history
to be consistently in our minds,
when obviously, we must have had a life before slavery.
We must have had a life before colonization.
And that specific part of history,
being so prominent in this country,
reduces me as a person and reduces my identity.
-We see now with statues honoring Martin Luther King,
Frederick Douglass, and so on,
but it was not the case if you take 30 years ago.
-Araujo believes that those in support of these statues
must come to terms with their own history
and that heritage does not mean condoning past atrocities.
-We have those individuals who are even willing
to carry weapons to go and defend these statues,
individuals who claim some kind of connection with that heritage
associated with the Civil War
or the veterans of the Civil War,
and heritage when it is bad.
We need to come to terms with it.
If we remove them, we are not erasing any history.
The history is written.
-For many, there's the question of what to do
with that empty space once a statue is removed.
-And you can do things with an empty plinth.
You can put new art on an empty plinth.
You can invite artists to come in
and do something for six months or for a year.
We can leave it open. We can have it as green space.
-Many recommend putting these statues in a museum.
But Araujo points out one problem with that.
-The problem with the United States
is that there are too many Confederate monuments.
We're talking about hundreds and hundreds of monuments.
Many museums -- they do not have the place.
Perhaps they would have the place for one monument,
but not for 10 or 15.
-The statue of Edward Colston was fished out of the water
on June 11.
The Bristol City Council said it would be taken
to a secure location before being placed in a museum.
-The idea of never seeing it again on the streets of Bristol
brings me joy, really.
I don't want what happened on Sunday to be the end of it.
I want the conversation to keep going.
I want it to stay that way until black lives do matter.