In October 2020, during what was dubbed “Indigenous Peoples Day of Rage,” protesters toppled the Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt statues in Portland’s South Park Blocks.
Five years later, the monuments’ pedestals are still empty. The likenesses of the two long-revered American presidents, prominently featured downtown for decades, remain hidden from public view.
But the city, completing a public-engagement process aimed at determining how Portland’s monuments should be “contextualized for today’s audience and into the future,” has said it’s going to put both statues back in place, with “new interpretive signage.” The Lincoln monument is expected to go back up early in 2026, and the Roosevelt about a year or so later…