On Saturday morning, the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee was removed from Charlottesville, Virginia, four years after a violent white supremacist protest in the city led to a peaceful counter-protester being killed.
Officials removed the statue at 8 a.m., and several hours later also took down Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s statue.
The recent campaign to take down the statues began in 2016, when then-16-year-old Zyahna Bryant created a petition to rename and remove Lee’s statue.
The city council voted for the statues’ removal in 2017, sparking a violent rally among white supremacists in August that shook the country.
A counter-protester, Heather Heyer, was killed at the rally after a man drove his car into a crowd of people. The man, James Alex Fields Jr., was found guilty of murder in 2019.
Source Article from https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ikrd/robert-e-lee-statue-charlottesville-confederate-general
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