Sadly, there's still a giant carving honoring the Confederacy on a big cliff in Atlanta for all to see. 90 feet tall. And it was definitely part of their heritage because it was completed in... 1972.
If there was ever a good reason for the invention of dynamite...
I heard/read a story somewhere once, where there was a statue somewhere of someone who's better off not glorified. The statue was defaced regularly, and every time it was defaced, there'd be someone cleaning it up.
Over time the statue went on to look worse for wear until one day, the authorities decided it was better to remove and replace the statue.
It turned out the guy cleaning it up was always the same guy, who hated the subject of the statue with a passion, and alway used salt water to clean it, hoping to corrode & wear down the statue. Some people suspect he and the vandal were the same person.
I don't know who this guy was and I'm not American, but I dissaprove of people vandalizing or destroying old statues. They should be removed from public view if they're controversial, but they should be kept (if they have historical significance). Destruction of history, no matter how dark it was, is a crime in my eyes. Nobody would think about destroying concentration camps or the likes, even though they represent the most horrific part of our history. And besides, pretty much everyone born more than two centuries ago were assholes and bigots by today's standard, it's hard to judge when most of them probably did not know better.
Again, not cautioning what this dude did, probably slavery and a great deal of killing I imagine.
Most confederate statues are cheap crap bulk built all over the place sometime after the civil war as a sort of long term propaganda. They aren't historical, they are reputation management.
Literally just listened to one of my state representatives whine about how pulling down slaver statues is destroying art, well i guess we see why conservatives don't get art, because they suck at it.