NewsTracker Answers for week of June 15, 2020

Q: After Black Lives Matter protesters burned and splattered it with red paint, a statue of King Leopold II was removed by officials in Belgium. Protesters are demanding the removal of all statues of the king whose brutal rule over the Congo led to the deaths of 10 million Africans. Where is Belgium?

Circle the area on this map


Q: Leopold ran what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo as his private property from 1877 to 1908 and amassed a huge personal fortune from ivory and rubber. Men, women, and children were forced to produce rubber and their hands were amputated if the failed to meet quotas. Leopold even put some Congolese in a human zoo. Where is DR Congo?

A. Northern Africa

B. Southern Africa

C. Central Africa

D. Eastern Africa


C. DR Congo is the largest country by area in sub-Saharan Africa - the region south of the Saharan Desert. It straddles the Equator, and the Congo Rainforest is the second-largest rain forest behind the Amazon. It gained independence from Belgium in 1960.


Q: Belgian protesters are not the only demonstrators taking aim at Europe’s racist colonial past. Why did protesters in Bristol, England, pull down a statue of a man named Edward Colston and dump it in a river?

A. He colonized southern Africa

B. He was an Atlantic slave trader

C. He was a West Indies slave owner

D. He conquered and colonized India


B. Colston was a 17th century slave trader whose ships are believed to have transported about 80,000 men, women and children from Africa to the Americas. The slave trade helped make Bristol a major English port. Officials in London last week removed the statue of another slave trader.


Q: Anti-racism protesters in Richmond, Virginia, also tore down a statue last week and dumped it into a lake. Whose statue was torn down?

A. Christopher Columbus

B. Nathan Bedford Forrest

C. Thomas Jefferson

D. Robert E. Lee


A. The 1492 journey of Christopher Columbus to the Americas opened the way for European conquest, colonization and enslavement of native Americans. After native Americans were decimated by European diseases, Africans were enslaved and shipped across the Atlantic. Forest, Jefferson and Lee were all southern slave owners.


Q: Anti-racist protesters have demanded the removal of statues of Gen. Robert E. Lee and other Confederates who fought to protect slavery. What Virginia city was the site of protests over the planned removal of a Lee statue led to the death of a woman in August 2017?

A. Charleston

B. Charlottesville

C. Chattanooga

D. Charlevoix


B. White nationalists and neo-Nazis, chanting “Jews will not replace us,” protested attempts by Charlottesville officials to remove a Lee statue. A white supremacist rammed his car into a group of counter-protesters killing, Heather Heyer, 32. President Donald Trump said “their were very fine people on both sides” of the protests and called Lee a “great general.”