The artwork was unveiled on the Juneteenth holiday in a spot on Flatbush Avenue. Five days later on June 24, it was vandalised with black paint and marked with the logo of a white supremacist group.

But members of the group that installed the statue painstakingly cleaned it, and local residents and one of Floyd's brothers gathered around it this week to bid farewell ahead of its long-planned move to Union Square as part of an exhibition in September.

"I heard the news about the vandalism. I was so proud that I got word that Flatbush held it down. They really supported us, looked out for the statue, looked out for the spirit of my brother," Terrence Floyd said at the gathering.

He added to news reporters: "You try to stop us, but you can't stop us. And we still gonna continue, with love."

Andrew Cohen of Confront Art, the group behind the statue, said people spent hours cleaning off the paint with toothbrushes and hands.

"The only method that worked was really, really putting the elbow grease into it," he said.

The statue is going back to a studio on Monday for further cleaning.

No arrests have been made in the vandalism.

Floyd, a Black man detained on suspicion of passing a counterfeit 20 dollar bill at a Minneapolis store, was murdered by then-Police Officer Derek Chauvin in May 2020 when the white officer pressed his knee against Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes.

Bystander video of Floyd's arrest prompted protests around the world.

with DPA

Australian Associated Press