A Surge of Power (Jen Reid) 2020, by prominent British sculptor Marc Quinn, which has been installed in Bristol on the site of the fallen statue of the slave trader Edward Colston
THE empty plinth in Bristol where the statue of slave trader Edward Colston used to stand was filled today with a sculpture of a Black Lives Matter protester after a secret dawn operation.
The figure of Bristolian Jen Reid, who was photographed standing on the plinth in June after Colston’s statue was pulled down by anti-racism protesters, was created by artist Marc Quinn and erected without the council’s permission.
Ms Reid said that the new statue was about “making a stand for my mother, for my daughter, for black people like me.”
Still the only black man to win the US Open tennis title, a statue of the legendary champion, Arthur Ashe, is now the only one remaining on Monument Avenue in his Richmond, Virginia hometown, where confederate leaders of the Civil War were also once displayed, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
LYNNE WALSH previews the Bristol Radical History Conference this weekend
