Original (July 14, 2020): Where the statue of a British slave trader once stood is a sculpture of a Black Lives Matter protester.

According to NBC News, demonstrators in the United Kingdom toppled the statue of Edward Colston last month in the city of Bristol and threw it into a harbor. About a month later, a life-size sculpture of a protester named Jen Reid has taken the place of Colston's statue.

Reid became a popular figure on social media after taking a picture on the same platform where Colston’s sculpture was previously erected. The Bristol resident posed for the photo with her fist raised high.

"When I stood there on the plinth, and raised my arm in a Black Power salute, it was totally spontaneous, I didn't even think about it," Reid said in a statement Wednesday. "It was like an electrical charge of power was running through me."

Reid said seeing Colston's statue thrown into the water "felt like a truly historical moment" and that she was thinking of the “enslaved people who died at the hands of Colston."

The new statue was made possible with the talent of a popular London sculptor named Marc Quinn who saw the photo and asked Reid if she wanted the image to be rendered as a sculpture. The artist titled his work "A Surge of Power (Jen Reid) 2020."

"The plinth of Edward Colston in Bristol seems the right place to share this sculpture about the fight against racism, which is undoubtedly the other virus facing society today," Quinn told NBC.

Reid said Quinn contacted her through social media after seeing the photo and arranged the process to erect the sculpture.

"I was in his studio by the Friday after the protest with 201 cameras surrounding me, taking pictures of me from every conceivable angle. That went into a 3D print and a mold was made," Reid told BBC News.

Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees, who is Black, said Quinn’s sculpture "was not requested and permission was not given for it to be installed." Rees said the future of the plinth "must be decided by the people of Bristol."

“I understand people want expression, but the statue has been put up without permission,” the mayor wrote on Twitter. “Anything put on the plinth outside of the process we've put in place will have to be removed.”

I understand people want expression, but the statue has been put up without permission.

Anything put on the plinth outside of the process we've put in place will have to be removed.

The people of Bristol will decide its future. https://t.co/dEsZF9kNRt

— Marvin Rees (@MarvinJRees) July 15, 2020

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the removal of Colston’s statue was a "criminal act."

According to BBC, the protesters used ropes to take down the statue, which had been standing since 1895. The Bristol City Council later retrieved the statue, which will be placed in a museum.

Protesters in the United States have also been taking down monuments during the recent Black Lives Matter protests. In Baltimore, protesters threw a Christopher Columbus statue into a harbor on July 4, CNN reported. According to the Associated Press, protesters in San Francisco have also held similar demonstrations. One of several statutes that were toppled in San Francisco was a bust of Ulysses S. Grant.

San Francisco demonstrators also took down a statue of Francis Scott Key, a slave owner who wrote the “Star-Spangled Banner.” Many more monuments have gone down in other parts of the country, including Washington D.C., and Raleigh, North Carolina.

Gov. Roy Cooper said he ordered the removal of two Confederate monuments in North Carolina after protesters clashed with police while removing statutes. The governor blamed the Republican party for creating roadblocks to the removal of the monuments.

“If the legislature had repealed their 2015 law that puts up legal roadblocks to removal, we could have avoided the dangerous incidents of last night,” Cooper wrote on Twitter. “Monuments to white supremacy don’t belong in places of allegiance, and it’s past time that these painful memorials be moved in a legal, safe way.”

Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Forest said the governor was either incompetent or encouraging lawlessness.

“It is clear that Gov. Cooper is either incapable of upholding law and order, or worse, encouraging this behavior,” Forest said.

Jen-Reid

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