A crowd cheered as workers in Charlottesville removed a Confederate statue near the site of a violent white nationalist rally three years ago.

The removal of a bronze figure of a Confederate soldier known as “At Ready” is seen in Charlottesville as a milestone in eliminating divisive symbols of the Civil War.

The Washington Post reported that the process of removing the statue began on Saturday morning as workers affixed straps to the 900-pound statute to prepare to remove it from its base.

A crowd of about 100 people cheered behind metal barricades as the figure was lifted from its pedestal and lowered to the ground.

The statue has been outside the Albermarle County courthouse for 111 years.

Members of the crowd all wore masks amid the coronavirus pandemic. Some wore blue Union Civil War caps and danced to music broadcast by a local radio station.

The cheerful scene was in stark contrast to the violence at the Unite The Right rally on August 12, 2017.

One woman was killed and dozens were injured when a self-avowed white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of people protesting over the white nationalist gathering.

“This is a magnificent moment,” said local community organiser Don Gathers. “Much of the racial tension, strife and protest we’re seeing across the country emanates from right here in Charlottesville. But now we’re moving the needle in a positive way.”

Albemarle County supervisors voted earlier this summer to take down the statute, which is located within the city of Charlottesville.

The statue was not the focal point of the 2017 rally, but it is a block away from the statue of Confederate Gen Robert E Lee that white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups said they were defending in the clash.

Charlottesville’s city council has voted to remove both Lee and a nearby monument to fellow Gen Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, but a small group of Confederate supporters filed a lawsuit to save them.

The case is headed to the Supreme Court of Virginia and could take months to be resolved.

Hundreds of students and left-wing activists took to the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday, as a rally to mark the anniversary of last year’s white nationalist gathering turned largely into an anti-police protest.

With chants like, “Cops and Klan go hand in hand,” the protesters’ criticisms of both police and the University of Virginia underscored the resentment that still exists a year after torch-bearing neo-Nazis marched through campus, shouting anti-Semitic messages and beating counterprotesters.

Several students said they were angry that the police response was far larger this year compared with last year, when people carrying tiki torches the white nationalist rally went mostly unchecked.

At one point on Saturday, dozens of officers in riot gear formed a line near where the rally was taking place, prompting many protesters to rush over yelling, “Why are you in riot gear? We don’t see no riot here.”

The standoff ended without any clashes as organizers urged the crowd to move away and begin marching off campus. Police, who appeared to be avoiding a confrontation, rode bicycles ahead of the march to stop traffic.

The newly installed president of the University of Virginia, James Ryan, apologised for the school’s inaction last year while speaking at an event to memorialize the anniversary.

Saturday’s march capped a day of hope, grief, anger and remembrance in Charlottesville, one year after the “Unite the Right” rally brought racially charged street violence to the scenic college town.

The organizer of last year’s rally, local blogger Jason Kessler, has planned a sequel for Sunday in Washington after being denied a permit in Charlottesville.

With hundreds of police maintaining a tight security perimeter around a 15-block downtown area, Charlottesville’s normally bustling business district was relatively quiet on Saturday. The buzz of a police helicopter overhead was a constant throughout the day.

The massive police response was not welcomed by everyone, including some residents and business owners who complained that the restrictions were an overreaction.

The result, however, was a day largely devoid of conflict. Authorities arrested three men for minor offences, including a 64-year-old disabled man who appeared to deliberately challenge the prohibition on certain items in the secured area.

The man, John Miska, who was wearing a handgun in a shoulder holster, visited a drugstore and purchased razor blades, which qualified as contraband under the city’s emergency declaration. The gun, however, was not banned, based on state law.

When he refused an officer’s request to take the razors to his car, he was arrested for disorderly conduct.

“This is the loss of our constitutional rights here in Charlottesville,” he shouted, as officers led him away in plastic hand ties.

A group of anti-fascist protesters, sometimes known as “Antifa,” marched in the afternoon, carrying signs with messages like “Good Night White Pride.” They stopped to pay their respects at the corner where a local woman, Heather Heyer, was killed when an Ohio man drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters following last year’s rally.

While some businesses closed for the weekend, many merchants remained open in a show of solidarity.

“It’s my town, and I’m not afraid,” said Karen Walker, whose floral shop Hedge was open on Saturday even though she did not expect much business. Outside her front door, a bucket of freshly cut flowers was available for passersby to take for free.

Many local residents also made a point of coming downtown to mark the anniversary. Kathe Falzer, 67, changed a flight to California so she could spend Saturday in town.

“I felt the need to be here and support the businesses,” Falzer said as she ate lunch at a diner on Main Street.

Director Spike Lee says he wants U.S. President Donald Trump to see his new movie “BlacKkKlansman,” an impassioned, tense but often funny movie about race relations in the United States across the decades.

“BlacKkKlansman,” based on the true story of an African-American police detective in the 1970s who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan, arrives in movie theaters on Friday.

Lee has said the movie is specifically timed to mark the anniversary this weekend of last year’s violent clashes between white nationalists and anti-racist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which one woman died.

Trump last year drew broad criticism for blaming both sides for the violence and news footage of the protests is included in the film.

“I want the guy in the White House to see it too. I don’t say his name though,” Lee told Reuters Television at a Beverly Hills premiere of the film on Wednesday.

“When I saw the horrific act of domestic, American homegrown terrorism, I knew right away I wanted to do this,” Lee said of the events in Charlottesville.

Topher Grace, who plays 1970s Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, said the cast and crew were struck by the movie’s contemporary relevance while filming.

“It gets more and more timely with every second that passes, sadly. This film shouldn’t be more timely now than when it takes place, but unfortunately it is,” Grace said.

“BlacKkKlansman,” also starring Adam Driver and John David Washington, has won warm reviews, scoring a rare 100 percent approval from top critics on aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. Several critics have called it Lee’s best film in years.

The New York Times called it “a furious, funny, blunt and brilliant confrontation with the truth. It’s an alarm clock ringing in the midst of a historical nightmare.”

Every few weeks, Susan Bro walks down 4th Street in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, until she gets to a brick wall covered in chalked messages like “Love over hate” and “Gone but not forgotten.”

“I come just to absorb the energy of the place,” Bro, 61, said on Tuesday as she stood on the block now named for her daughter, Heather Heyer, who was killed a year ago while marching against a white supremacist rally.

Since August 12, 2017, when James Fields rammed his car into counter-protesters, killing 32-year-old Heyer and injuring several others, Bro has channelled her rage and grief into spreading the same message that drew her daughter downtown that day.

Bro said she made a promise to her daughter at her funeral, when she saw her bruised, broken body for the first time and broke down in tears.

“I held her hand and said, ‘I’m going to make this count.'”

Heyer’s death capped a day of clashes after hundreds of white supremacists, neo-Nazis and others descended upon the city, drawing national attention to the “alt right” movement that had grown bolder since President Donald Trump’s election.

Trump faced intense criticism after the protests when he seemed to equate the white nationalists with the counter-protesters, saying there were “very fine people on both sides.”

Bro said she chose not to return several phone calls from the White House after learning of the president’s remarks.

As the city prepares for the first anniversary of the so-called “Unite the Right” rally, Bro is readying herself for another difficult milestone in a year full of painful moments without Heather.

“The ‘firsts’ are always hardest,” she said, her voice cracking. “I got through the others: Mother’s Day, her birthday, Christmas. This will be the last one.”

Bro said she would bring flowers to Heather Heyer Way on August 12 before speaking at an event to mark the anniversary.

Law enforcement agencies have made extensive plans to combat any potential violence, though the leader of last year’s gathering, local white nationalist Jason Kessler, failed to secure a permit for a sequel this year. Instead, he has obtained a permit to hold a rally in Washington outside the White House.

Before last summer, Bro, a former elementary schoolteacher, led a relatively quiet life, doing secretarial work and living in a modest trailer home about 30 minutes north of Charlottesville.

At Heyer’s memorial service, which drew nearly 2,000 mourners and was broadcast live on large screens, Bro said the national response to the tragedy was “just the beginning of Heather’s legacy.”

“They tried to kill my child to shut her up. Well guess what? You just magnified her,” she said, drawing a standing ovation.

Within weeks of Heyer’s death, Bro created the Heather Heyer Foundation, in part to install a formal and legal structure to handle the hundreds of thousands of dollars in funds that poured in from sympathizers around the country.

Bro runs the foundation from her home and from an office at a Charlottesville law firm, filled with tributes to Heyer that she has received over the last year: a portrait painted by an artist, a humanitarian award given posthumously by the Muhammad Ali Center, notes written by Heyer’s friends at her memorial service.

The foundation has organised a scholarship programme and is planning to launch a social justice youth programme.

Bro found herself making appearances on Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show and at MTV’s Video Music Awards. She acknowledged that the intense media attention has caused resentment among some activists in Charlottesville who feel the focus on Heyer, a white woman, has distracted from the racial issues at the core of the clashes.

It has been a bit of a balancing act, she said, to amplify Heyer’s message without making it seem as though her daughter was the only victim who mattered. She noted that violence against black people often does not generate the same level of interest and warned against the “white-centred” narrative that portrayed Heyer as a leader rather than simply one of many people who decided to march.

“The issues have not changed,” Bro said. “We still have police shootings, over-policing, a lack of affordable housing, the prison pipeline.”

A year after burying her daughter, Bro reflected on the activism that brought Heyer to the protests.

“The point of Heather’s death is that we have a responsibility to rise up to address that hate,” Bro said. “Don’t sit by and wring your hands.”