Confederate Monument Taken Down in Georgia Town

In Georgia, a monument honoring fallen Confederate soldiers was taken down late Tuesday night.

Earlier this month, the Henry County Commission voted to remove the statue, according to ABC News. The monument, which had been a fixture in McDonough Square for over 100 years, was removed from its pedestal by construction workers using a crane. The removal comes as nationwide protests against systemic racism have placed a spotlight on the ubiquity of Confederate monuments across the country.

The removal was not without controversy, as CBS46 reports, a group of armed protesters was present at the site of the monument as it was being removed. Law enforcement was on the scene and at least one person was arrested after running towards the monument. “We feel that it’s highly inappropriate for our rights to be trampled on just because we’re the majority. So we’re no longer going to be the silent majority, we’re just going to be the majority. And we’re going to begin to be more vocal,” a resident told WAGA-TV.

I mean, seeing as “the majority” have been pretty loud about what’s on their minds lately, I’m very curious to see what “being more vocal” entails. The protesters were seen carrying Trump and Confederate flags and basically fit the bill for who you’d assume would protest the removal of a Confederate monument.

Despite a law signed by Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp last year that prevents Confederate monuments from being discarded or altered, multiple cities have elected to remove them anyway. In Conyers, a Confederate monument that stood outside a courthouse was removed last month. In early July, a group of protesters marched on Stone Mountain, Ga., to demand the removal of the nation’s largest Confederate monument.