A statue of US abolitionist Frederick Douglass has been ripped down on the anniversary of one of his most famous speeches.
Police said the statue was taken from its Maplewood Park base in Rochester, New York, on Sunday.
The site was situated on the historic Underground Railroad where Douglass helped runaway slave Harriet Tubman shuttle hundreds of others to freedom in the 19th century.
The statue was found at the edge of the Genesee River gorge about 50ft from its pedestal, police said.
There was damage to the base and a finger.
On the same day - July 5 - in 1852, Douglass delivered a speech in Rochester called: "What to the slave is the Fourth of July?" - the date of Independence Day in the US.
In the speech he called the celebration of liberty from the British a sham in a nation that enslaves and oppresses its black citizens.
Douglass said that to a slave, Independence Day is "a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim".
Carvin Eison, a leader of the project that brought the Douglass statue to the park, told the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle that another statue will take its place because the damage to the figure is too significant.
He said: "Is this some type of retaliation because of the national fever over confederate monuments right now?
"Very disappointing - it's beyond disappointing."
