A recent USA Today article reported that over 700 Confederate monuments still stand over public parks and before courthouses and capitol buildings in 2017. By Monday night, August 14, one less stood erected, as a cadre of demonstrators in Durham, N.C. took matters into their own hands to bring it down.

During a protest out in front of the Old Durham County Courthouse, one activist climbed 15 feet high up on the statue of a Confederate soldier, that has been propped up on the property since 1924, and tied a rope around its neck. After descending to the ground, she joined her crowd of fellow demonstrators to pull on the rope, until it toppled. The action took place at around 7:00 p.m. “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA!” the group continued to chant, before celebrating their feat.

The statue's removal comes only two days after Charlottesville, VA was thrust into international headlines over the ugly outcome of a rally organized to defend the status of a statue commemorating General Robert E. Lee in Emancipation Park (which had itself bore the name of Lee before the city changed it). While Monday's act drew a favorable response by many, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper - a Democrat - decried the manner in which the protesters went about removing the monument, tweeting that there is a "better way to remove these monuments.”