Someone’s Gotta Do It! Rowdy Crowd Takes Down a Confederate Monument in North Carolina [Video]

BY: Denver Sean

Published 7 years ago

A crowd of North Carolina protesters took down a Confederate statue while protesting the wave of racist violence that took place over the weekend.

via NYDN:

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.

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“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.

Durham police said it was aware of the toppling but noted that the courthouse is the jurisdiction of the Durham County Sheriff’s Office. Those deputies reportedly recorded the stunt, the News & Observer reported. 

White supremacists marched through the streets of that city after it recently decided to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

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Neo-Nazi James Fields is now charged with murder after allegedly running his car into a crowd of counter-protesters and killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.

The killing and the death of two state troopers in a helicopter called to the city have sparked protests across the country, including one in Minneapolis Monday where a Nazi was burnt in effigy.

Municipalities across the South are also looking to get rid of Confederate symbols after the eruption of hate.

Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh said Monday that she has asked for an estimate on how much it will cost to remove the monuments, which may be put in Confederate cemeteries.

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Jacksonville’s City Council president also said that she would like to do away with similar monuments in her corner of northern Florida.

A Durham County spokeswoman told WNCN that a recent North Carolina law prevents the removal of “historical monuments and memorials” so local action is difficult.

Brooklyn Rep. Yvette Clarke had asked the Army to change streets named after Lee and Thomas (Stonewall) Jackson at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, but was told earlier this month that the generals were “an inextricable part of our military history.”

Clarke said she will keep trying to change the streets, which she says are “deeply offensive” to Brooklyn residents and servicemembers at Fort Hamilton.

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Before Charlottesville, many municipalities removed symbols of the slave-owning South after the 2015 murders of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C. 

Check out the video below.

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