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Thomas Paine, philosopher of the American and French Revolutions, author of “Common Sense,” has been a controversial figure when it comes to monuments. In 1942 a Paine statue was proposed for Fairmount Park in Philadelphia but the idea was shot down because his book...

A Quaker at a time when Quakers were banned from Massachusetts, Dyer eventually hanged for her insistence on religious liberty in the English colony. The statue by Sylvia Shaw Judson went up in 1959 at a descendant's bequest. It's diagonally across from the Boston...

A memorial to the English Quaker, abolitionist and activist Joseph Sturge (1793–1859) was unveiled before a crowd of 12,000 people on 4 June 1862 at Five Ways, Birmingham, England, near his former home. Sturge is posed as if he were teaching, with his right hand...

Henry Richard is chiefly known as an advocate of peace and international arbitration, having been secretary of the Peace Society for forty years (1848–84). He is less widely known for his other interests, especially his anti-slavery work. The statue was dedicated in...

On 26 June 1955, more than 3 000 representatives of resistance organizations made their way through police cordons to gather on a dusty square in Kliptown, 40 kilometers south of Johannesburg. This “Congress of the People” met to draw up the Freedom Charter, an...

Elihu Burritt was known as the "Learned Blacksmith." He lectured throughout New England about the joy of learning, then turned his attention to humanitarian causes for which he is famous: the abolition of slavery, the dignity of the American working man, and the cause...

The Pit (Belarusian: Яма) is a monument devoted to the victims of the Holocaust. It is on the site where, on March 2, 1942, the Nazi forces shot about 5,000 prisoners of the nearby Minsk Ghetto. The small polished black granite obelisk was created in 1947 and in 2000...

The monument was dedicated on July 17, 1994, in remembrance of the killing of millions of Jews by the Nazis during World War II. It is set upon a base of six black granite Stars of David which represent the six million Jews who perished during the Holocaust. A central...

Memorial to the Six Million in Johannesburg’s Westpark Cemetery pays tribute to the Jewish men, women and children who lost their lives during the Second World War. The monument depicts six bronze fists, each five feet high, bursting out of the ground as a protest...

The Bells Monument (or, in Bulgarian, “Камбаните”) is in a park at the base of the Vitosha mountain. An inscription at the monument’s base reads, “Children of the future accept the eternal, fiery call of immortality - Unity, Creativity, Beauty.” When the UN declared...

L’arbre de l’espérance sculpture stands at the main entrance to the 26th centennial park in Marseille and was unveiled in 2000 as part of the 2,600 anniversary of the foundation of the city. 350,000 people of all faiths and none, native to Marseille or immigrants...

The sculpture sits on Trg Oslobođenje – Libertion Square – in the center of Sarajevo. It consists of a naked male figure reaching toward the sky, pulling the meridians of the earth together. Around him, doves help by lifting further meridians into place. The...

The Shaheed Minar (Bengali: শহীদ মিনার Shohid Minar lit. "Martyr Monument") commemorates those killed during the Bengali Language Movement demonstrations of 1952 in then East Pakistan. On 21 and 22 February 1952, students from Dhaka University and Dhaka Medical...

The Martyred Intellectuals Memorial (Bengali: বুদ্ধিজীবি স্মৃতি সৌধ) was built in memory of the martyred intellectuals of the Bangladesh Liberation War. The cornerstone was laid in 1991. On the night of 14 December 1971, over 200 of East Pakistan's intellectuals...

After WW I and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, Cameroon, a German protectorate, was divided into two regions and put under French and British rule. In January 1960, French Cameroon became independent, British Cameroon, 10 months later. In 1972 the two...