Deadly rally accelerates removal of Confederate statues
Workers begin removing a Confederate statue in Gainesivlle, Fla., Monday, Aug. 14, 2017. The statue is being
 returned to the local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which erected the bronze statue in 
1904. County officials said they did not know where the statue would be going. (AP Photo/Jason Dearen)
In Gainesville, Fla., workers hired by the Daughters of
 the Confederacy chipped away at a Confederate
 soldier's statue, loaded it quietly on a truck and
 drove away with little fanfare.
In Baltimore, Mayor Catherine Pugh said she's ready to
 tear down all of her city's Confederate statues, and the
 city council voted to have them destroyed. San Antonio
 lawmakers are looking ahead to removing a statue tha
t many people wrongly assumed represented a famed 
Texas leader who died at the Alamo.
Some people refused to wait. Protesters in Durham, 
N.C., toppled a nearly century-old statue of a 
Confederate soldier Monday at a rally against racism. 
Activists took a ladder up to the statue and used a 
rope to pull down the Confederate Soldiers Monument 
that was dedicated in 1924. A diverse crowd of dozens
 cheered as the statue of a soldier holding a rifle fell to
 the ground in front of an old courthouse building that
 now houses local government offices.
The deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va.,
 is fueling another re-evaluation of Confederate statues
 in cities across the nation, accelerating their removal
 in much the same way that a 2015 mass shooting by
 a white supremacist renewed pressure to take down 
the Confederate flag from public property.
"We should not glorify a part of our history in front of
 our buildings that really is a testament to America's
 original sin," Gainesville Mayor Lauren Poe said
 Monday after the statue known as "Old Joe" was 
returned to the United Daughters of the Confederacy,
 which erected it in 1904.