In this college town that considers itself a bastion of progressive politics and inclusion, race relations are really a tale of two cities. Demonstrators who toppled statues of figures with no racist history this week say they went after the sculptures because they wanted to shatter a false narrative that the state and the city support Black people and racial equity. “The crowd at large was absolutely conscious of the political motivations,” protester Micah Le told The Associated Press in a text, referring to the statue of the Civil War abolitionist Hans Christian Heg and another sculpture of a woman with her arm outstretched that honors the state’s “Forward” motto.
