Police are investigating after the statue of civil rights activist and legendary tennis player Arthur Ashe in Richmond, Virginia was found Wednesday vandalized with "White Lives Matter" graffiti. The Washington Post Three years after his death, his monument was erected in 1996 to counterbalance statues on the avenue filled with Virginian Confederate veterans. Photos showed the base of the monument in Video on social media showed a man who was at the memorial appearing to defend the White Lives Matter signs. Then the guy came back...and left 2/4 He was captured on camera leaving and then returning to remove the Black Lives Matter signs that were already there while others were seen removing the racist slogan.After being confronted by a group, the man, who was wearing a bandana with an American flag covering his face and blue shirt, said, "Don't all lives matter?

Ashe's nephew said Friday that the statue isn’t going anywhere.“It's not going to be taken down,” David Harris Jr. said.Harris said he contacted Mayor Levar Stoney's office last month about taking down the statue until the civil unrest in Richmond calmed down.Harris said the request was a “contingency plan” only during the height of the protests over the May 25 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, when there were almost nightly clashes between police and protesters, and the Ashe family worried that the statue would be damaged or someone would try to topple it.“We were just considering it at the height of the protesting so that if any credible threats came through Mayor Stoney had the leeway to do it without having any pushback from us if he felt the need to take it down," Harris said.Stoney’s spokesman, Jim Nolan, said Friday that the mayor is “going to listen to the family” and not remove the statue.On July 1, Stoney ordered the immediate removal of all city-owned Confederate statues in Richmond, a onetime capital of the Confederacy. Ashe's statue was erected in 1996, but only after rancorous debate. "Several people cursed at us when they saw us cleaning off the WLM graffiti," she said, adding that it appears there's a "lot of Confederate sympathizers" hanging around Memorial Avenue.Ashe, who hails from Richmond, was the first black man to win U.S Open, Australian and Wimbledon titles.

A statue of African American tennis legend Arthur Ashe on Richmond, Virginia's Monument Avenue has been vandalized with the words “White Lives Matter.”. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com.On Richmond's Monument Avenue, the collection of towering statues honoring Confederate veterans was interrupted by one noticeably different: a monument to Black tennis legend and civil rights activist Arthur Ashe.The Ashe statue seemed safe from defacement during recent protests over racism and police brutality, when protesters covered Confederate statues with graffiti and pulled down a statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States during the Civil War.But after someone painted “White Lives Matter” on Ashe's statue, city officials considered a request from Ashe’s family to temporarily remove the statue to protect it. She noted that the man they came across "wasn't alone in his sentiments." *warning a story....so today started off basic enough, and meeting Fatima for coffee and a walk along Monument Ave... normal walk until we hit Arthur Ashe and a guy was tagging white lives matter on the statue.. 1/4 "I was shocked, dismayed, and angry," Pashaei told CBS News. A statue honoring tennis great Arthur Ashe was vandalized amid protests in the late icon's hometown of Richmond, Virginia. All rights reserved.

Get all the sports news you need, direct to your inbox.Despite the statue being vandalized during recent protests, and his family asking for it to come down, the statue of tennis legend Arthur Ashe will remain up on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia.Several statues in Richmond were removed in recent weeks following George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis police custody in May — which sparked widespread protests and movements across the country. He went on to become the first Black player selected to the U.S. Davis Cup team and was the only Black man to ever win the singles title at the U.S. Open, Wimbledon and the Australian Open.