Another Confederate statue comes down in Raleigh

Onlookers cheered Sunday as authorities in North Carolina finished the job started by protesters Friday and removed a Confederate statue from the top of a monument in Raleigh.

Workers acting on the order of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper removed the statue Sunday morning and began taking down the obelisk on which it stood.

Cooper ordered the statues removed after protesters toppled two other Confederate statues in Raleigh on Friday night, stringing one up by the neck and hanging it from a lamp post.

A 2015 law bars the removal of statues without approval of a state historical commission, but Cooper said he was acting under a public-safety exception out of concern for the danger presented when protesters seek to topple the statues themselves.

Cooper has advocated the statues' removal for years.