Charlottesville removes Confederate statue near site of deadly 2017 rally

The statue of a Confederate soldier and monuments of cannons and cannonballs were removed from Charlottesville, Va. Saturday and will be relocated to a battlefield in the Shenandoah Valley.

The statue, erected in 1909 and bankrolled by the county, the city of Charlottesville and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, was located in front of a courthouse in Albemarle County. Its removal was shown on a livestream on the county’s Facebook page.

The Albemarle County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously last month to take down the statue, which sat near the site of a deadly 2017 clash between white supremacists and counter-protesters.

A statue of Robert E. Lee, which sparked the 2017 demonstration, still stands amid a court battle over its removal.

The effort to take down Confederate monuments was reenergized this year amid a national reckoning over systemic racism and police brutality after the police killings and shootings of a number of Black Americans, including George Floyd in Minneapolis, Breonna Taylor in Kentucky and most recently Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis. 

Four other statues of Confederate leaders were removed from Charlottesville over the summer.