Edward Colston Statue tea towel

On 7th June 2020 a statue of the Bristol slave trader Edward Colston was pulled down amid the worldwide Black Lives Matter protests and rolled into Bristol Harbour. This was a key moment in the BLM movement, although the statue had already been eyed with anger for many years. Colston (1636–1721) was born into a family merchant business and eventually became deputy governor of the Royal African Company, which operated the English monopoly on African slaves. His substantial earnings allowed him to purchase what he hoped would be his immortality through philanthropic works such as schools, almshouses, hospitals and churches both in his native Bristol and elsewhere. The statue to him was raised in 1895 and placed on a plinth which declared: "Erected by citizens of Bristol as a memorial of one of the most virtuous and wise sons of their city". No wonder the right-thinking of the city were seething with anger. This anger boiled over after successive attempts to have the statue removed officially failed. The toppling of the statue is coupled on this tea towel with a statement by that great 19th century American abolitionist Frederick Douglass.