Monuments to Racists Fall in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park

[Photo: Junipero Serra statue being toppled.]


As founder of the California mission system, Junipero Serra oversaw the enslavement and torture of tens of thousands of Native Americans. His remains are buried at the Carmel mission in Carmel Valley, California. Despite widespread objections, the "Saint of Genocide" was canonized in 2015 at the National Shrine in Washington D.C. by Pope Francis during his US visit.

Francis Scott Key wrote about "the land of the free and the home of the brave," but he was a slave owner who was ridiculed for his hypocrisy by abolitionists of his time. As District Attorney for the District of Columbia, appointed to the role by notorious genocidal racist President Andrew Jackson, Key used his position to suppress abolitionists. Key included a derogatory passage about freed slaves who fought with the British against their former American "masters" in the Star Spangled Banner:

"No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave."