Protesters in Richmond, Virginia, ripped down a monument of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
Video and images of the aftermath show Davis’s bust laying in the famed cobble road of Monument Avenue, one of Richmond’s major thoroughfares, late Wednesday night. Protesters snapped celebratory pictures in front of the long-criticized former Confederate whose monument stood for almost 100 years in the city.
The decisive action comes amid weeks of nationwide protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Protesters in the Virginia capital have held a continued presence around several Confederate monuments, including those depicting Gen. Robert E. Lee, Jeb Stuart, and Stonewall Jackson.
Large scale gatherings in Richmond since the death of Floyd, who perished while in the custody of the Minneapolis Police Department, have forced action from top state Democrats, such as Gov. Ralph Northam, who announced last week his plans to remove some of the monuments.
“It’s time to put an end to the lost cause; Richmond is no longer the capital of the Confederacy,” Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney said of the monuments on June 3.
The monuments, which were erected only decades after the South lost the Civil War, are seen by some as a lasting relic of slavery, and debate over their placement on public grounds has strained city officials for years.
A court injunction filed on Tuesday will delay the removal of the Lee statue for 10 days.
