US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has urged Congress to immediately take steps to remove from the US Capitol 11 statues representing Confederate leaders and soldiers from the Civil War.
"Their statues pay homage to hate, not heritage. They must be removed," Pelosi, the country's top elected Democrat, said in a letter to leaders of a congressional committee in charge of managing the statues on display at the Capitol.
It was the latest in a long list of high-profile killings of black men and women by US police.
Since Floyd's death, officials in the South - where African-Americans were enslaved until the end of the 1861-1865 Civil War - are now ordering the removal of monuments honouring the Confederacy.
The Confederate statues in the US Capitol, which has a large number of monuments to figures in American history, include General Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, who was president of the Confederacy.
The joint committee to which Pelosi made her appeal on Wednesday for taking down the statues has members of both political parties, and it was unclear how the panel would respond. Under a long-standing tradition, each US state sends two statues to the Capitol.
TRUMP REJECTS NAME CHANGES
President Donald Trump earlier in the day rejected the idea of renaming 10 US military bases named for Confederate leaders, dismissing appeals made after Floyd's death, which ignited nationwide and international protests.
In the past few days, officials have said that the Pentagon, including Defence Secretary Mark Esper and Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, was open to having a bipartisan conversation about renaming the Army bases named for Confederate leaders.
But in series of tweets, Trump argued the bases have become part of a "Great American Heritage."
"The United States of America trained and deployed our HEROES on these Hallowed Grounds, and won two World Wars. Therefore, my Administration will not even consider the renaming of these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations...," Trump wrote in a tweet.
The issue of the enslavement of African Americans tore the United States apart when Southern states broke away to form the Confederate States of America to protect slavery. Northern states defeated the South in the Civil War to restore the Union.
But slavery's legacy continues to haunt race relations in America. In recent history, controversies over symbols of the Confederacy, such as statues of its leaders and its battle flag, have erupted.
Those arguing for their removal say they symbolise racism and oppression, while those opposing such action call them signifiers of Southern heritage and pride.
NASCAR, whose races frequently feature fans waving the Confederate battle flag, said on Wednesday it would ban the "stars and bars" flag from its events.
US military bases named for Confederate military leaders are all located in former Confederate states. Many of those states helped elect Trump in 2016, and he is counting on them again for the November 3 election.
In an article published Tuesday in The Atlantic, retired General and former CIA chief David Petraeus called for renaming the bases, pointing out that the men they are named for "committed treason, however much they may have agonised over it" by fighting for the Confederacy.
At a news briefing Wednesday, White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany noted that the HBO Max streaming service had withdrawn the Civil War movie Gone with the Wind and asked "Where do you draw the line?"
"Should George Washington and Thomas Jefferson be erased from history?" she said of the first and third American presidents, both of whom owned slaves.
She said renaming the bases was "an absolute non-starter for the president."
The US Navy said on Tuesday it was working to ban the Confederate battle flag from all public spaces on its installations, ships and aircraft.
