A crowd of North Carolina protesters have toppled a Confederate statue after white supremacist violence in Virginia.
Demonstrators in the former slave state attached a rope to Durham’s statue of an unidentified Confederate soldier Monday evening and pulled it down to the ground, where it was spat on and kicked.
“People can be mobilized and people are angry and when enough people are angry, we don’t have to look to politicians to sit around in air conditions and do nothing when we can do things ourselves,” protester Takiyah Thompson told WNCN.
Durham’s statue was positioned on top of a perch outside the city’s courthouse and dedicated in 1924, according to the station, which said it was unclear where police were during the toppling.
The scene of its destruction, reminiscent of dictators’ statues coming down after the fall of their regimes, comes after a deadly weekend in Charlottesville, Va.
Kentucky city mayor: Confederate statues to come down after Charlottesville
The mayor of Lexington, Kentucky, is taking action to remove two Confederate-era monuments from his city’s former courthouse after the deadly clashes in Virginia.
Mayor Jim Gray revealed his intention Saturday after the attack in Charlottesville. He said he planned to announce it this week, but the incident prompted him to declare his intentions earlier.
Violent clashes between white nationalists and counter-protesters left three people dead in Charlottesville, including a woman killed when a driver plowed into a group of counterprotesters. Dozens more were injured.I am taking action to relocate the Confederate statues. We have thoroughly examined this issue, and heard from many of our citizens.
— Mayor Jim Gray (@JimGrayLexKY) August 12, 2017
The tragic events in Charlottesville today have accelerated the announcement I intended to make next week.— Mayor Jim Gray (@JimGrayLexKY) August 12, 2017
In a series of tweets, Gray said that he will ask the the city council to support his petition for removal of the monuments to the Kentucky Military Heritage Commission on Tuesday.
The statues of John Hunt Morgan and John C. Breckinridge are on the grounds of Lexington’s former courthouse, which is set to become a visitor’s center.