Will the George Floyd protests finally bring down America’s racist monuments?

This week, construction workers removed Confederate monuments in two major Southern U.S. cities following local protests. It’s just the latest example of how Americans are rethinking monuments that pay tribute to the nation’s racist history.

Dozens of protesters marched on Linn Park in Birmingham, Alabama, Sunday night to protest the murder of George Floyd. Demonstrators spray-painted and chipped away at the Confederate Soldiers & Sailors Monument inside the park, a strange, 52-foot-tall Egyptian-inspired obelisk built in 1905 to commemorate the death of Confederate soldiers. They also tied ropes around it in attempts to topple the statue.

Alexandria, like all great cities, is constantly changing and evolving. pic.twitter.com/CZTjlOkpfT

— Justin Wilson (@justindotnet) June 2, 2020

Another monument came down following a week of protests in Alexandria, Virginia. While it appears no one defaced the monument yet, the United Daughters of the Confederacy removed the 131-year-old bronze statue of a Confederate soldier known as “Appomattox,” whose back is pointedly turned toward the north. The United Daughters of the Confederacy owns the statue and has since moved it to an undisclosed location.

Meanwhile, in cities across the United States, protesters have defaced many Confederate monuments that are still standing. You can see a list of those monuments here. Between 2015 and 2018, cities and organizations removed 47 Confederate monuments—but another 772 remain intact, installed in public spaces around the U.S., according to a study by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Conservatives argue that these monuments are part of our nation’s history and, as such, they should be protected no matter what they represent.

It’s worth noting that there were only 11 states in the Confederacy during the Civil War. That means we have 70 monuments for every one of the Confederate states, each dedicated to glorifying the completely wrong side of history.