Image by Kansas City Star

A statue of a famous Kansas abolitionist was vandalized with racial slurs and a swastika.

The swastika had been drawn on the forehead of the statue of John Brown in Kansas City. The word “Satan” was written on its beard. A racial slur was also written on the memorial, according to The Hill.

As of Monday, the perpetrators had not been caught.

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Brown’s revolutionary activism was controversial in his time. In 1847, black abolitionist Frederick Douglass remarked that although Brown was a “white gentleman,” he was nevertheless “in sympathy a black man, and as deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery.”

In response to the vandalism, Kansas state senator David Haley issued a statement saying, “Long before the word ‘integration’ was in the American lexicon, this citadel right here, represented people of all races and cultures living together in harmony and a certain peace.”

Contact Haley Cohen at [email protected]

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