A statue of Thomas Jefferson on the campus of the University of Missouri (MU) has become the latest target of student activists, who find the monument’s connection to the nation’s slave-owning past bothersome.
The statue in question is located in one of MU’s botanic gardens known as “Jefferson Garden,” alongside the original tombstone that once marked Thomas Jefferson’s grave in his Virginia hometown. During the May 31 protest over George Floyd’s death, protesting students covered the head of the bronze statue with a plastic bag.