The protest movement is not stopping anytime soon.
On Monday night, protestors in front of the White House took aim at controversial former President Andrew Jackson’s statue.
The statue sits in Lafayette Park, in front of the White House and shows Jackson atop a horse at the Battle of New Orleans.
However, Jackson’s racist history and pro-slavery feelings make him one of the most reviled figures in American history.
President Trump took to Twitter late Monday to announce that “numerous people were arrested” as protesters attempted to tear down the statue.
“Numerous people arrested in D.C. for the disgraceful vandalism, in Lafayette Park, of the magnificent Statue of Andrew Jackson, in addition to the exterior defacing of St. John’s Church across the street,” Trump tweeted.
“10 years in prison under the Veteran’s Memorial Preservation Act. Beware!”
Reuters reported that “killer scum” was written on the pedestal. Ropes were tied to the statue in an effort to topple it, but the statement said “law enforcement officers ensured that this would not happen.”
Protesters broke down a fence that was surrounding the statue just after dusk, Reuters reported. The statement said surrounding cannons in the statue were destroyed.
Who Was Andrew Jackson?
As his history has been explored, Jackson is the latest historical figure with a racist past targeted by protesters.
Andrew Jackson was the nation’s seventh president, was also a slaveholder from the South.
Before he became president, he offered in an 1804 advertisement $50 for the return of a runaway slave. He also offered $10 extra “for every hundred lashes any person will give him, to the amount of 300.”
Jackson owned around 150 slaves and freed none of them in his will.
As president, Jackson allowed his postmaster general to let Southerners seize anti-slavery publications, in direct violation of the First Amendment.
He called the abolitionist pamphlets urging black equality “unconstitutional and wicked.”
Jackson is widely vilified today among Native Americans. He had a huge role in forcibly removing indigenous people from their land, especially for the Trail of Tears.
The removal of the Cherokee people from Georgia led to thousands of deaths.
The Aftermath
Protesters spray painted “BHAZ” on the columns of St. John’s Church, which was apparently a reference to a “Black Autonomous Zone.”
Police used a chemical irritant to disperse the crowd and officers were hit with objects.
Earlier this month, Trump clashed with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser over deploying federal forces in the city.
The militarization was in response to the civil unrest in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody.
Currently, there is another movement beginning to remove more statues across the country.