Photos: Crews begin demolition of Black Lives Matter Plaza

On Monday morning, crews got to work removing the "Black Lives Matter" mural from the streets in front of the White House — drilling into the 35-foot-tall yellow letters with a jackhammer and scraping the paint from the pavement. The 51st contributing photographer Shedrick Pelt headed down to the intersection of H and 16th Streets to capture the initial demolition on Monday morning.

Earlier this month, nearly five years after commissioning the mural in defiance of President Trump's treatment of 2020 protesters, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced the installation would be removed at her request. The mayor made the decision shortly after Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) introduced a bill threatening to withhold federal funds for D.C. if the mural remained.

The decision was met with mixed reviews; some saw it as Bowser cowering under GOP pressures at a time when Trump, Musk, and their ilk on the Hill are working to unravel D.C.'s autonomy, while others saw it as an unfortunate but necessary response to those efforts. Many local activists and organizers, who saw the mural more as a gesture than a commitment, were hardly surprised by the mayor's reversal. It's set to be replaced with, according to the mayor, a mural celebrating America's 250th birthday.

The massive letters were painted in June of 2020, a month dominated by the largest protest movement in American history. Triggered by the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, the protests against police brutality and racial injustice quickly spread across the country. At their peak in early June, over 26 million people participated nationwide, according to one poll.

Washington D.C. was a major center of protest, with uprisings at times violently suppressed by federal law enforcement at the behest of President Trump. The local significance of the protests heightened throughout the summer and fall, including when 18-year-old Deon Kay was shot by a police officer in Congress Heights and when 20-year-old Karon Hylton-Brown was killed in a police chase. Officer Terence Sutton was charged and convicted with second-degree murder for chasing Hylton-Brown in an unmarked police car and Lieutenant Andrew Zabavsky was found guilty of conspiring to help cover up the incident. In January, Trump granted both officers clemency and earlier this month D.C. police reinstated both of them.

The mural was received with ambivalence from the beginning, serving as a source of pride for many residents while, at the same time, some local activists called it performative. The day after the mural was unveiled, protesters added their own message, painting "Defund the Police" after Black Lives Matter. The addendum to the slogan remained for two months until it was paved over by what city officials said was previously scheduled road work.