“Why would you be upset with a place meant to educate?,” Interim Executive Director of the Tubman Museum, Harold Young said on Tuesday.

Young is referring to an act of vandalism committed between Sunday night and early Monday morning. The front walkway to the Tubman Museum was defaced with the spray-painted phrase, “This offends me.”

Young believes that the vandalism was in retaliation to the requests from community members to remove the Confederate statue on Cotton Avenue.

Young says that on Monday morning when he and other Tubman museum staff discovered the graffiti they called the police to file a report. Since then the walkway has been pressure washed by the Macon-Bibb Parks and Beautification Department, according to the Macon-Bibb County Instagram.

The Tubman Museum already employs cameras on its premises but Young and staff are going to build up their security.

“This just shows that we’re [Tubman Museum] not exempt from racism,” Young said about the incident. “We’re going to stand strong.”

According to city officials on the same night the Tubman was vandalized, the street sign at the intersection of Plum Street Lane and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard was also defaced: removing Dr. King’s name from the sign. The sign has been replaced since then.

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