A Confederate monument erected 28 years ago outside a local Georgia courthouse was removed last week.
The Gwinnett County commissioners voted to have the statue placed in storage last month and it was removed on Thursday, per the Gwinnett Daily Post. The decision came amid an ongoing legal challenge and recent incidents of vandalism.
The monument stood outside the courthouse in Lawrenceville, Ga., about 30 miles northeast of Atlanta.
A press release from the board of commissioners in January said the monument was vandalized during protests in June 2020, prompting a lawsuit filed by Gwinnett County's solicitor-general to have the monument declared a public nuisance and removed.
Vandals struck again on Thanksgiving, influencing the board to put the monument in "an appropriate storage facility for protection and preservation until the court provides further direction or the lawsuit is resolved."
The monument depicts a Confederate soldier along with the dates of the years the American Civil War took place and the words "LEST WE FORGET."
Statues around the country have been removed, damaged or defaced by protesters wanting abolish symbols of slavery following the police killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans.
Gwinnett County Commissioner Kirkland Carden told the Daily Post in a statement that it felt "good" to see the Confederate statue come down.
"You know we started this petition on Juneteenth (June 19) of 2020," said Carden, who reportedly pushed for the monument's removal during his campaign.
"Fast forward, here we are now so I think this is a good start to build a better tomorrow, which was my campaign slogan."
Democrat State Rep. Shelly Hutchinson told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution the statue's removal was "sweet on so many levels."
"I feel more like a Gwinnettian today than I did yesterday,” Hutchinson said, noting the monument had been erected in the same town square where Charles Hale, a Black man, had been lynched more than a century ago.
The Gwinnett Daily Post also reported a statue of Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston was relocated Saturday from downtown Dalton, Ga., to the historic Huff House by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who own the statue.