UK,

Corporation votes to remove statues of 17th- and 18th-century figures at City of London. Both statue personalities were made money from slavery.

William Beckford was a former mayor of London and made his fortune from extensive farming in Jamaica and employed slave labor, while John Cass was a Member of Parliament and held a senior position in Royal Africa Company and facilitated transfer of slaves.

Statues of two will now be installed elsewhere in London. The London Corporation has launched a public consultation on slavery-related statues in the wake of “Black Lives Meter” protests in Britain and Europe following brutal killing of unarmed black George Floyd by US police in September last year.

The anti-racist protests, which culminated in the demolition of a statue of Edward Colston, a slave merchant in Bristol, sparked a nationwide demand for the removal of colonial monuments in Britain.

This post was originally published on VOSA.