When statues were first erected honouring Confederate generals or notable slave-owning citizens, African Americans didn’t have a say. Now, their descendants and their supporters want them gone and some are not willing to wait.

They are time capsules. But many are not standing the test of time or changed attitudes especially after the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer last month.
When statues were first erected honouring Confederate generals or notable slave-owning citizens, the white population in the southern states would, by and large, have nodded with approval.
After all, their heroes’ may not have prevailed in that awful Civil War, but they were revered all the same.
For the “freed” black population, the building of monuments to men who sought to keep them in chains would have been anathema. But they didn’t have a say.
Now, their descendants and their supporters do want them gone and some are not willing to wait.
It’s not just the Confederate luminaries being toppled.
Protesters toppled the Christopher Columbus statue into a pond amid calls for more to be brought down.(AP:@marleynichelle )
Several statues of Christopher Columbus have been attacked, decapitated, and even dumped in a lake.
Why? At school, many of you would have been taught how Columbus “discovered” the Americas. What you probably weren’t taught was he is also accused of selling First Nation women and girls into sex slavery.
But it is the Confederate symbols that are attracting the most attention.
In the recent protests, some used ropes to pull down a statue of Confederate General Williams Carter Wickham that had stood in Richmond’s Monroe Park since 1891.
The statue of Confederate General Williams Carter Wickham lies on the ground after protesters pulled it down.(Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP: Alexa Welch Edlund)
Those behind it have been criticised for defacing public property, but they argue that some US states have made it nearly impossible to remove statues legally.
For example, the Alabama city of Birmingham removed a Confederate monument erected in 1905 this week.
Alabama’s Attorney-General Steve Marshall filed a lawsuit against the city, alleging they violated the state’s law by not seeking his approval.
Confederate statues have long been controversial
The debate over whether to keep or remove Confederate statues has simmered long before the current protests.
But this time, the vandalism of these sites including with messages to “stop white supremacy” has brought the issue into sharp focus.
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam announced plans for the removal of the Robert E Lee statue.(AP: Steve Helber)
Some people argue that statues represent our history, and removing them erases our past and the lessons we should learn.
But across the US, some cities have gradually been taking down statues, including recently in Maryland and North Carolina.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC), 114 Confederate symbols had been removed since the Charleston church shootings in 2015.
But 1,747 still remained.
“They are a constant reminder of the dehumanisation of African Americans and the pushback against our civil and human rights,” the SPLC’s Lecia Brooks told the New York Times.
President Donald Trump has refused to rebadge US military bases which are named after Civil War-era Confederate leaders.
But many Confederate monuments in America were built long after the Civil War ended in 1865.
A study by the SPLC found a great number were built during the early 1900s and again in the 1950s and 60s.
What was happening during these two periods?
In the early 1900s, some US states passed Jim Crow laws, which disenfranchised black people and enforced segregation.
In the middle of the 20th century, the civil rights movement was formed, in part, to remove those legal instruments of suppression.
“It’s not just that the statues represent white supremacy, but the purpose of building the statues was the perpetuation of white supremacy,” James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, told TIME Magazine.
“This is why they put them up in the first place; to affirm the centrality of white supremacy.”
But while some want them to stay because they cling to those ideas of white dominance, others feel removing them takes away a piece of real history however ugly.
In the face of this debate, another solution has been offered.
Instead of having them in pride of place towering over public parks and squares, they could be reassembled in museums where the context of their histories can be properly explained.
But some of the protesters do not want to compromise on this issue. We can expect more of the Confederate “icons” to bite the dust in the near future.
The looming threat of counter-protests
At the back of everyone’s minds are the images of Neo-Nazis marching in the streets in Charlottesville in 2017.
Back then, during a “Unite the Right” rally, a group of white nationalists holding lit torches marched through the campus of the University of Virginia.
Efforts to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee from Charlottesville sparked a protest by white supremacists.(Reuters: Stephanie Keith)
It turned deadly when a man allegedly accelerated his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a 32-year-old woman and leaving 19 others injured.
While those publicly identifying as Neo-Nazis and white supremacists will no doubt rail against any moves to topple their Confederate heroes, it’s not clear what they might do in reaction.
Others may simply not want the monuments they have grown up with taken away despite their controversial history.
But for many, driven to the streets to demand a new America free of racism, a direct line is seen between the horrors of slavery and the inequalities of today.
And symbolising that continuity of repression are the men on horses, standing tall over hundreds of American public spaces.
These objects can be torn down and no doubt more will be in the coming days.
Rebuilding a fairer nation built on genuine equality remains a herculean task that could take decades.
Statues of Christopher Columbus, a contentious figure in US history, have been toppled across America following widespread protests over the killing of an unarmed black man.(Star Tribune via AP: Leila Navidi)