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In the weeks since a bust of York was torn from its pedestal and ripped apart, Portlanders have made the journey up Mount Tabor to post messages of sorrow and tribute.
The sculpture portraying York, a Black member of the Corps of Discovery, was anonymously installed atop Mount Tabor in February. On July 28, early morning passersby found the bust, made of urethane, torn to the ground with its nose hacked off.
The vandalism was a bleak end to a remarkable piece of guerrilla art—a urethane sculpture surreptitiously erected on the pedestal where another statue, honoring onetime Oregonian editor Harvey Scott, had previously stood. The act of finding a new figure to honor, months after the toppling of the old guard, astonished Portlanders who made pilgrimages to the top of the cinder cone. And it inflamed resentment and racism, too, judging by the repeated attempts to deface the monument to an enslaved man compelled to join the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Elected officials, led by Commissioner Carmen Rubio, issued a joint statement saying the July 28 damage to the sculpture was in keeping with white supremacist graffiti scrawled atop a Northeast Portland mural to Black victims of racist violence: “After repeated racist assaults, it is tragically fitting that this magnificent piece was toppled Wednesday morning just three days after a mural depicting George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery was defaced.” The statement vowed to replace the sculpture with a similar piece, but offered no specific details.
Local photographer Peter Miller sent WW photos of the memorials that have been placed at the sculpture’s base.
