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Confederate Symbols Torn Down in US South

VOA News

   A Confederate soldiers' monument that stood in Birmingham, Alabama, for
   more than 100 years is no more.

   Construction workers Tuesday dismantled the last piece of the
   five-story structure after Mayor Randall Woodfin ordered it gone.

   The mayor acted Sunday after a group of demonstrators protesting the
   death of George Floyd in Minneapolis threatened to tear down the
   monument themselves. They had already vandalized it and destroyed a
   statue of Confederate Navy Captain Charles Linn, one of Birmingham's
   founders.

   "Allow me to finish the job for you. I wanted you to hear it directly
   from me. But I need you to stand down," Woodfin told the crowd before
   declaring a state of emergency and curfew in Birmingham.

   Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has sued the city, accusing it
   of violating a state law ordering protecting Confederate memorials that
   are at least 40 years old.

   The Washington Post reported that a statue honoring Confederate troops
   in Alexandria, Virginia -- a Washington suburb -- was taken also taken
   down Tuesday.

   Demonstrators in Nashville took matters in their own hands and tore
   down the statue of Edward Carmack, a former state lawmaker and
   newspaper publisher who espoused racist views, who was gunned down in
   the streets of Nashville in 1908, according to the Tennessean
   newspaper.

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