Following several weeks of debate and delay, the city of Dallas, TX, has removed a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from an eponymously named city park on Thursday. Guarded by heavily armed police officers, a crew assisted as a crane removed the statue from its pedestal and onto a flatbed truck. Both Lee’s statue and the anonymous Confederate solider flanking his were taken down.
Watching the statues’ final moments is truly a stunning sight:
And here’s a shot of both statues leaving the park hitched to the back of a truck:
Removal of the memorial, which was dedicated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936, was approved by Dallas’ City Council at the beginning of September, but a series of delays impeded its relocation. As reported by the Associated Press, a naval air station owned by the city will house the statue until officials determine its future.
Dallas joins several cities across the U.S. that have decided to remove their Confederate monuments — and, in some cases, activists have literally taken matters into their own hands, removing the statues themselves.
Sayonara, on to the next.