Was Seattle's Jimi Hendrix statue vandalized during protests in 2020? No, that's not true: The photo of the spray-painted Jimi Hendrix statue used to imply recent vandalism is from 2013. There is no evidence that the Jimi Hendrix statue in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood has been vandalized in 2020.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) where it was published by a Facebook user on June 24, 2020. It read:
ALL STATUE LIVES MATTER. What the hell did Jimi Hendrix do?
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Thu Jun 25 23:03:50 2020 UTC)
The sentence "ALL STATUE LIVES MATTER" is a play on the phrase and organization "Black Lives Matter."
The statue of Hendrix was not recently defaced like the Facebook post and accompanying photo insinuates. The statue of Hendrix was spray-painted in September of 2013 as part of a vandalism spree. This is what the 2013 vandalism looked like:
Hendrix was born in Seattle in 1942. Although Hendrix died at 27, he is still regarded as one of the most celebrated guitarists of all time.
Some of the post about the Jimi Hendrix statue also included a similar claim about a Stevie Ray Vaughan memorial in Austin, Texas. Read Lead Stories' article titled Fact Check: Stevie Ray Vaughan Statue Was Vandalized In 2020, But Viral Image Is 2018 Attack
