Protesters in North Carolina toppled a nearly century-old Confederate statue in response to white supremacist violence to the north.
Demonstrators in the former slave state looped a rope around the bronze soldier Monday evening and pulled it down to the ground. Many spat on the statue, kicked it and proudly posed with the downed monument.
“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-TV.
Durham’s statue was perched on a granite tower with the inscription dedicated to “the boys who wore the gray” outside the former Durham County Courthouse in 1924, records show.
The same statue, produced by the defunct McNeel Marble Works, was installed at multiple government buildings in Georgia, Arkansas, Virginia and North Carolina, according to the Smithsonian Institution.
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, according to the News & Observer.
Gov. Roy Cooper empathized with the stunt’s intent and acknowledged the “racism and deadly violence” that prompted the defiant act Monday night.