Thread by @washingtonpost

Although he never set foot in the continental U.S., Christopher Columbus is the third most memorialized person in the country, behind Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, according to an audit from Monument Lab.

Explore our map of monuments here: wapo.st/3oYUctA

Monuments have emerged as a flash point in the debate over the country’s roots in white supremacy, though they are only a drop in a much larger bucket.

More than 60 cities and counties, including our nation’s capital, pay homage to Columbus. wapo.st/3oYUctA

As homages to Columbus spread more rapidly in the 20th century, movements to counter them gained momentum.

His reputation shifted as more voices spoke to what his image represented to them: colonialism, slavery and genocide. wapo.st/3oYUctA

Calls to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day first appeared in a public forum in 1977 at a United Nations-sponsored conference.

Since 1990, at least 13 states and a handful of cities have adopted the new holiday. wapo.st/3oYUctA

At least 40 monuments to Columbus have been removed since 2018, according to a Washington Post and MIT analysis of crowdsourced data and local news reports.

But those removals represent only a fraction of the more than 130 that still remain. wapo.st/3oYUctA