Trump cries ‘disgrace’ as protesters topple Confederate statues and monuments across US during Juneteenth celebrations to mark end of slavery

Protesters have increasingly targeted statues of slave owners and Confederate leaders during demonstrations over racial justice

Protesters pulled down Confederate statues and monuments across the United States on Friday during Juneteenth celebrations, a day that commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans.

In Washington D.C., protesters toppled the only statue of a Confederate general in the capital and set it alight. The 3.4-meter-high statue of Albert Pike was set on fire after it was brought down while a crowd chanted: “No justice, no peace!”.

Pike was a brigadier general in the Confederate army and went on to become an influential leader of the Freemasons. Some researchers believe he was instrumental in the formation of the Ku Klux Klan.

Monuments to slave owners were also toppled in North Carolina and San Francisco, adding to a wave of similar actions across the country during demonstrations calling for racial justice that were sparked by the police killing of George Floyd.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, protesters pulled down statues of two Confederate soldiers — parts of a Confederate monument — and hanged one of them from a lamppost.

In San Francisco, statues of Francis Scott Key, who wrote the lyrics to the US national anthem, the Star-Spangled Banner, and Ulysses S. Grant, the general who led the Union army against the Confederacy and went on to become president, were also toppled because both had owned slaves in their lifetime.

Donald Trump tweeted about the toppling in D.C. on Friday night, calling it a “disgrace.

"The DC police are not doing their job as they watched a statue be ripped down and burn. These people should be immediately arrested. A disgrace to our Country!"

The targeting of statues commemorating people with links to the Confederacy and slavery has become a key theme in protests in recent weeks. In many cities, people have campaigned for years for the statues to be taken down by local authorities, only to have been rejected.

"Ever since 1992, members of the DC Council have been calling on the federal gov't to remove the statue of Confederate Albert Pike (a federal memorial on federal land). We unanimously renewed our call to Congress to remove it in 2017," the D.C. Council tweeted Friday.

A proposed resolution calling for the removal of the statue referred to Pike as a "chief founder of the post-Civil War Ku Klux Klan."

Protests have continued across the country over the death of Floyd, who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer who placed his knee on Floyd’s neck during an attempted arrest. The officer, Derek Chauvin, held his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than 8 minutes while Floyd repeatedly said that he couldn’t breathe.