After the 1968 shootings of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto led a voluntary gun turn-in program that accumulated a symbolic 1,968 weapons. Beniamino Bufano, a Bay Area artist, was asked to sculpt something with the melted gun metal. St. “Francis of the Guns,” a nearly 9-ft tall figure of a robed Catholic saint, has his arms spread in peaceful greeting. On his robe, a mosaic depicts heads of four of America’s assassinated leaders: Lincoln, King, RFK & JFK. The statue stands in front of the entrance to the science building of the City College of San Francisco.
Monday’s Monument: St. Francis of the Guns, 1968, San Francisco, California
