On July 1, a statue of Christopher Columbus is removed from Columbus City Hall in Ohio, where it had been for more than sixty years. July 4, a statue in Baltimore of the celebrated Italian explorer, which had stood for 36 years, is torn down by rioters and thrown into the city’s Inner Harbor. 

July 6, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, a statue of Columbus is quietly removed from the memorial in Seaside Park, with other statues of the same moved in Norwalk, New Haven, Middletown, and New London. Statues of Columbus have become a part of recent protests about racism brought on by the death of George Floyd in Minnesota. But the debate over Columbus as a racist, a slave trader, and a plunderer, has actually been around for a while.