LONDON (AP) — An artist has erected a statue of a Black Lives Matter protester atop the plinth in the English city of Bristol once occupied by the toppled statue of a slave trader.
Marc Quinn created the likeness of Jen Reid, a protester photographed standing on the plinth after demonstrators pulled down the statue of Edward Colston and dumped it in Bristol's harbor on June 7.
The statue, titled "A Surge of Power (Jen Reid)" was erected before dawn on Wednesday without approval from city officials.
Colston was a 17th-century trader who made a fortune transporting enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas.
His money funded schools and charities in Bristol, 120 miles (195 kilometers) southwest of London.