The American city of Charlottesville on Saturday dropped the statue of a Confederate soldier, just blocks from the site of a deadly far-right protest in 2017, which was intended to defend another statue to the glory of the South slave owner.
The statue removed on Saturday depicted a Confederate soldier holding a rifle, and was erected in 1909 outside Albemarle County Court, more than 40 years after the Civil War ended.
This is the first application of a procedure for the removal of Confederate statues, enacted by Virginia Governor Ralph Northam this year.
A crowd gathered to watch the event, dancing to music from a local radio station and cheering on the workers hoisting the statue using a crane.
The scene took place only a few streets away from another statue, that of the slave Confederate General Robert E. Lee, in front of which hundreds of members of the ultra-right had demonstrated in August 2017, under the banner of the movement ” Unite the right ”, to protest against the municipality’s plan to debunk it.
At the end of this rally, clashes broke out between white supremacists and counter-demonstrators.
A neo-Nazi sympathizer then drove into a crowd of anti-racist protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring 19.
President Donald Trump denounced violence “on both sides”, drawing an avalanche of criticism.
The governor has ordered that the statue of Robert E. Lee also be removed, a process currently blocked by a lawsuit.
Since the month of May and the death of George Floyd, a black American killed during his arrest by a white policeman, many monuments to the glory of the Confederate army during the Civil War have been removed, either by the authorities or by demonstrators protesting against racism in the United States.
During the Civil War (1861-1865), the Confederate South gained its independence from the United States and fought to retain slavery, which was abolished in the rest of the country.
Confederate flags and monuments are now often seen as racist symbols, even though supporters say they see them as a mere legacy of the country’s history.