(Image source from: wset.com)

A monument of the legendary African-American Arthur Ashe was vandalized in Richmond, Virginia on Wednesday with spray paint that read “WLM”, which translates to White Lives Matter.

The whole incident of vandalizing of properties especially monuments began since the protest of Black Lives Matter started nationwide and had spread to the whole world. These protests began after the death of George Floyd by Police Brutality. Citizens of very color around the world started paying homage to the death of George Floyd and protesting on roads I huge numbers even during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Arthur Ashe was the first African American to win the US open tennis championship and also the first to be win the Wimbledon singles. The Arthur Ashe statue is seen holding a tennis racket and a book, being the lone black man on the avenue of the lost causes.

The Arthur Ashe statue which is situated in Richmond, Virginia, where the legend was born was vandalized with red spray paint. The letters WLM were sprayed all over the statue. According to a few witnesses it was a young man in a blue T-shirt and an American flag Bandanna who spray painted WLM on the monumental statue. The man’s face was half covered with the Bandanna so the witnesses could not see him, but they said that the victim spoke to them. He told the witnesses that, “You guys tagged my statue so I am tagging yours” and rode back to his car and drove off.

The vandalizing of the property did not stop here. Someone also sprayed BLM which means Black Lives Matter over the WLM graffiti. The statue was cleaned of the spray pain before the end of the day as some volunteers stepped I to help with the cleaning. The woman who lived around the park came down for cleaning. The man who vandalized the property also came back with cleaning supplies to clean the BLM from the statue saying he is not a racist and why is okay to paint the statue with BLM and why is it not okay to paint WLM.

When the man was asked about his name he said, Everybody.

“Everybody that is here that has property value, everybody here that has paid to live here and is tired of seeing this,” he said at drove off again.

The Arthur Ashe monument was erected in 1996 at the monument avenue of Richmond, Virginia. There was a huge controversy when the whole idea of installing the Arthur Ashe statue started. People started going haywire as the other 5 statue in the monument park were honoring the men of confederacy and a black man statue among this just looked like a bad decision. But the statue was anyway installed to provide balance to the statues in the historic avenue.

The protestors in Virginia have already torn down 3 confederate statues.

By Deepika Agarwal