The city's Falls Road monument was erected in 1917 as a private monument to the Confederacy. It was given to the city in the 1970s and rededicated to all fallen soldiers from Nash County. The monument once had separate statues of Confederate soldiers, but those were taken down years ago because of repeated vandalism.

In Alexandria, Virginia, it was the United Daughters of the Confederacy that took action early Tuesday, removing the statue of a soldier gazing south from Old Town since 1889. And outside Tampa, Florida, a Sons of Confederate Veterans chapter lowered a huge Confederate battle flag that has long been flown in view of two interstate highways.

Less than two days after protesters at the flagship campus of the University of North Carolina toppled a statue of a Confederate soldier, a committee plans to announce its recommendation for three other 20th-century monuments on the state Capitol grounds.

But Circuit Judge Frank Addy's ruling Friday avoided a decision on whether South Carolina's Heritage Act is constitutional. The law prevents changes on public monuments honoring the Confederacy and other historical events and figures without a two-thirds vote of the Legislature.

A study released Monday by the Southern Poverty Law Center shows 110 Confederate monuments have been removed nationwide since 2015. That's when a racist shooting at a black church in South Carolina energized a movement against such memorials.