Workers in New Orleans on Monday began dismantling New Orleans’ Battle of Liberty Place, the first of four prominent Confederate monuments the city plan to take down.

The monument is a 35-foot granite obelisk that pays tribute to the so-called “white-supremacist” uprising in 1874 that attempted to remove a biracial Reconstruction government in New Orleans following the Civil War.

Police snipers were positioned on nearby rooftops to protect the masked workers with bulletproof vests tasked to dismantle the monument chunk by chunk.

The pieces of the 19th century obelisk were taken away on a truck before daybreak after workers completed work that started in the early hours of the morning.

The city’s apparently secretive operation was strongly condemned by a New Orleans group called the Monumental Task Committee.

“People across Louisiana should be concerned over what will disappear next,” the group’s president said in a statement.

100% Fed Up reports:

The mayor of New Orleans wanted treasured cultural monuments removed and he got what he wished for at the expense of the citizens of the city:

“We will no longer allow the Confederacy to literally be put on a pedestal in the heart of our city.” – New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu

The City of New Orleans removed the first of four Confederate monuments this morning in an effort to appease those who believe the monuments represent racism or pretty much anything else they object to. By erasing our past, do we change anything?