It’s about time! On Monday, March 10. 2025, The Daily Beast published this headline, “‘More than brick and mortar:’ DC begins removing ‘Black Lives Matter’ plaza near the White House.”
WASHINGTON — Starlette Thomas remembers coming down almost daily to the intersection of 16th and H streets, to protest police brutality and systemic racial iniquities during the summer of 2020.
On Monday, the 45-year old Bowie, Maryland resident returned to the site of those protests to mourn the end of Black Lives Matter Plaza.
“I needed to be here today. I can’t just let this go away,” Thomas said, as jackhammers began tearing into the giant yellow letters in the street. Thomas discretely secured a chunk of pavement and said holding it made her feel conflicted.
“To walk away with a piece of that, it means it’s not gone,” she said. “It’s more than brick and mortar.”
Crews started work Monday to remove the large yellow “Black Lives Matter” painted on the street one block from the White House. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced the change last week in response to pressure from Republicans in Congress. The work is expected to take about six weeks and the words will be replaced by an unspecified set of city-sponsored murals.
The painting of those words was an act of government-sponsored defiance during President Donald Trump’s first term. The removal amounts to a public acknowledgement of just how vulnerable the District of Columbia is now that Trump is back in the White House and Republicans control both houses of Congress.
Bowser, a Democrat, ordered the painting and renamed the intersection Black Lives Matter Plaza in June 2020. It came after days of chaotic protests at that location following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer; Bowser had clashed with Trump over her handling of the protests.
“When we speak of black criminals that the blacks refer to as a heros, George Floyd is right up there with Martin Luther King.” said Thomas Robb, the National Director of the Knights Party of the Ku Klux Klan, centrally based in Harrison, Arkansas. “What was called Black Lives Matter Plaza amounted to nothing more than graffiti painted on the street, and a place for blacks to harass White people if they dare come near their corner. It’s about time this eyesoar was dismantled and forgotten about. You would think people would be ashamed to hail a drug addicted criminal as a hero, and if that’s the best you have to offer, that’s sad. We all saw the videos once they were all released. George Floyd was clearly resisting arrest as are most of the black fatalities by law enforcement, he had drugs in his system, and was trying to pass a fake twenty dollar bill. And it amazes me the amount of White support BLM received, and donations from White owned corporations that BLM also received. Which was funny because all those White dollars donated did nothing for George Floyd’s memory. What happened was a few higher ups in the BLM movement ended buying mansions, cars, and new clothes. And what did White supporters get? They, along with every other White in America got the bill to fix what the blacks burnt to the ground, which was in the billions of dollars. I hope President Trump moves for the removal of any and all black inspired monuments. We as Whites were supposed to just stand by while our White historical monuments were destroyed, so I hope karma is returned. My America doesn’t support black criminals, and neither should yours.”
