A statue of Robert E. Lee was removed in Charlottesville, 4 years after white nationalist rally

• A statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee was removed in Charlottesville, Virginia.
• The removal followed a lengthy legal battle and a violent rally that left one dead and dozens injured.
• The statue will be stored in a secure location until the city decides what to do with it.

The long-awaited removal of a Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, was met by crowds and cheers on Saturday morning, the Associated Press reported.

The monument to the Confederate general had been the subject of a lengthy legal fight and comes four years after the violent Unite the Right rally that left activist and counter-protester Heather Heyer dead and dozens injured in August of 2017.

The effort to remove the statue began more than a year before the deadly rally when Zyahna Bryant - then a ninth-grader - started a petition calling on the city to get rid of it.

The city's announcement that the statue would be taken down sparked the white nationalists to descend on the city for the Unite the Right rally.

The rally was followed with contention, litigation, and eventual changes to a state law that protected war memorials, the AP reported.

"It feels good," Bryant, now a University of Virginia student, told the New York Times ahead of the statue's long-awaited removal. "It's been a long time coming."

One group of community organizers posted a photo, celebrating the removal of the statue.

Insider previously reported that the Charlottesville City Council announced in a July 9 news release that statues depicting Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The council said it had also allocated $1,000,000 towards the "removal, storage, and/or covering" of the city's Sacajawea, Meriwether Lewis, and William Clark statue.

The statues will be stored in a secure location until the city decides what should be done with them, according to the AP. Bryant told the outlet the statue coming down is dissolving a platform for "racism" and "hate."

"This is well overdue," Bryant said. "No platform for white supremacy."