A statue of an American Confederate general Robert E Lee, that sparked violence in Charlottesville, Virginia almost four years ago has been taken down by the city authorities.

Another statue of General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, another Confederate General, has also been removed by the city.

The removal of the statue of General Lee was greeted with cheers from the onlooking crowd. After its removal, the statue was put onto a truck and driven away for storage.

“Taking down this statue is one small step closer to the goal of helping Charlottesville, Virginia, and America, grapple with the sin of being willing to destroy Black people for economic gain,” Charlottesville Mayor Nikuyah Walker said before the monuments’ removal.

Plans to remove the statue were already in the works for years and had led to a white nationalist rally in the city in August 2017. The rally turned violent after Heather Heyer, an anti-racism protestor, was run over at a counter-protest. Her killer was later sentenced to life in prison.

The “Unite the Right” march held in Charlottesville was one of the largest such gatherings in decades and saw hundreds of white nationalists, the American far-right, and Ku Klux Klan members in attendance. Dozens were injured in the violence that erupted between the marchers and counter-protesters.

The Southern US states have numerous memorials to the pro-slavery Confederacy, the group of states that fought and lost the US Civil War, have always been at the center of one controversy or another.

For some people, such memorials are markers of US history and southern culture. But for their critics, they serve as an offensive reminder of America’s history of slavery and racial oppression.