This archive report was first published on 9 June 2020.
On June 9, 2020, Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton weighed in on the controversy surrounding a slave trader's statue in Bristol, UK.
Hamilton, the only black driver in F1, expressed his support for the protesters who toppled the bronze statue of Edward Colston, a wealthy merchant who made his fortune in the slave trade.
Colston's statue was pulled down during anti-racism protests sparked by the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, in Minneapolis last month.
Hamilton, a six-time world champion, has been a vocal opponent of racial injustice. He previously expressed his outrage over the Floyd incident, saying he was 'overcome with rage' and criticising the silence of 'white-dominated' Formula One.
In a statement on Instagram, Hamilton wrote: 'If those people hadn’t taken down that statue, honouring a racist slave trader, it would never have been removed. There’s talks of it going into a museum. That man’s statue should stay in the river just like the 20 thousand African souls who died on the journey here and thrown into the sea, with no burial or memorial.'
Hamilton's comments come as government officials have called the statue's removal a criminal act, but the action has also received support from Bristol's mayor amidst growing public pressure to re-examine representations of Britain's colonial past.
