Vandals successful Miami defaced a mural of shot legends Jackie Robinson and Minnie Miñoso with racist graffiti earlier this week
MIAMI -- Police are investigating aft vandals defaced a mural of shot legends Jackie Robinson and Minnie Miñoso that is portion of a postulation of artwork honoring shot players successful Miami's Overtown neighborhood.
The vandalism was discovered Sunday by a 7-year-old lad who asked his parent what the words and the Nazi symbols meant, assemblage leaders said during a quality conference.
City workers person since partially covered the murals of Robinson and Miñoso, an Afro-Cuban player, with woody boards. The murals are on a obstruction astatine Dorsey Park, wherever Negro League teams erstwhile played baseball.
“I cognize you whitethorn not beryllium capable to amusement it connected television, but we request the assemblage to uncover the wounded and the hatred that is existing. The crushed wherefore this keeps being perpetuated is due to the fact that we support covering it up,” said Terrance Cribbs-Lorrant, an enforcement manager with the metropolis of Miami Black Police Precinct.
On Wednesday, Democratic U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick said successful a connection that she is outraged by the “vile enactment of hatred.”
“We indispensable dainty this for what it is: a hatred transgression meant to instill fearfulness and division. But we volition not beryllium intimidated. We volition respond with unity, resilience, and an unwavering committedness to truth, justice, and the preservation of our history," she said.
Robinson broke the colour obstruction successful Major League Baseball successful 1947 erstwhile helium became the archetypal Black player, signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Miñoso became the league's archetypal Afro-Latino subordinate and the archetypal Black subordinate for the Chicago White Sox.
The murals person been displayed successful the parkland since 2011 and are a collaboration betwixt artists Kyle Holbrook and Kadir Nelson and assorted assemblage groups.
Police person yet to marque immoderate arrests for the vandalism.
“This was much than a defaced mural — it was an effort to soundlessness our story,” said Dr. Saliha Nelson, CEO of Urgent, Inc. “But we volition not beryllium erased. We volition reconstruct this mural and observe this abstraction arsenic a awesome of agency, pride, and excellence.”