BLM protests this weekend in Westminster and Walhalla

Black Lives Matter protests are planned today and tomorrow in Westminster and Walhalla.  Last night a one-man protest by a young white Walhalla man in sympathy of BLM finished after around two to two and  half hours when he decided to voluntarily climb down from the civil war monument on W. Main Street.  A large crowd gathered around him, and many in that crowd voiced their displeasure with what he did.  He fastened himself to the monument with a rope-like material and announced that, while he does not want to see the monument torn down indiscriminately, he would like the state legislature to order its removal. He said this:  “It’s a protest to show people in Walhalla, especially people of color, that there are people like me who support them and that we are against racist monuments of the past….”  But one local historian who spoke to 101.7/WGOG NEWS said he doesn’t believe the state will remove the monument.  According to history accounts, the monument was a gift in 1910 from a group called “Ladies of Oconee County.”  Those women were believed to have been descendants of Confederate service men.  The original location of the monument was believed to have been another Main Street location in the city’s core commercial area, but was moved to its current Main Street grass median location in the 1950s.  It sits next to a re-built cannon.