RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - Spectators cheered as work crews finished the job started by protesters Friday night and removed a Confederate statue from the top of a 75-foot monument.
News o utlets report that work crews acting on the order of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper removed the statue Sunday morning and began taking down the obelisk on which it stood.
Sunday’s work follows the removal of two other Confederate statues on the state Capitol grounds in Raleigh on Saturday.
Cooper ordered the statues removed after protesters toppled two other Confederate statues Friday night, stringing one up by the neck and hanging it from a light pole.
A 2015 law bars removal of the statues without approval of a state historical commission, but Cooper said he’s acting under a public-safety exception to the law out of concern for the danger presented when protesters seek to topple the statues themselves.
Cooper has advocated the statues’ removal for years.
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