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US Celebrates Independence Amid Push to Remove Symbols of Pro-Slavery Legacy

VOA News

   The United States celebrates its Independence Day holiday this weekend
   as a campaign to remove symbols of the country's pro-slavery legacy
   gains momentum.

   Efforts to remove monuments that celebrate the Confederacy, a
   government of 11 slave-holding southern states that seceded from the
   United States, triggering the Civil War in 1861, began to gain momentum
   in 2015 after a white supremacist fatally shot nine African Americans
   inside a church in Charleston, South Carolina.

   The campaign further escalated after George Floyd, an African American,
   died in police custody May 25 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

   The Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial, the world's largest
   Confederate monument, is among the many memorials that have been the
   focus of the removal campaign.

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