Armed Civilians in Kentucky Guard Confederate Statue Against Black Lives Matters Protesters

Residents in a Kentucky city have taken up arms in defense of a Confederate monument against Black Lives Matters protesters Friday

Hundreds of residents in Brandenburg came out to defend the 70-foot tall Confederate monument erected as a memorial for Confederate veterans who died during the Civil War.

"There's some legitimate groups that have very good advocating rights to protest and they do it peacefully. It's just like when Dr. Martin Luther King protested, he did peaceful protests," Cletus Evans, a Brandenburg resident, told WHAS 11 News. "It's the groups that went beyond that and tear up buildings, that's when, you can't gain anything from that."

Jessie Cohen, a reporter for WHAS 11, tweeted out images of residents who came out to defend the Confederate monument: "As the sun is setting here in Brandenburg, the line of people is officially up around the confederate statue"

Cohen also tweeted out videos of protesters that made their way to the site of the statue as the day progressed, but the site remained peaceful: "Protestors are beginning to trickle in right near the confederate statue here in Bradenburg, Kentucky. Protestors yelling 'black lives matter' while people in the community are yelling back 'all lives matter.'"

"While it's still relatively peaceful, some of the people are throwing around some harsh words. There is just a small group of protestors but a large group of people in the community," Cohen wrote in another tweet.

Newsweek reached out to Brandenburg Mayor Ronnie Joyner and members of the city council for comments on the Thursday's developments, but they did not respond back in time for publication.

The Confederate monument in Brandenburg was originally erected near the University of Louisville campus in 1895, before it was removed in 2016 by Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer.

The Louisville mayor removed a different Confederate monument from his city Monday. The statue is a depiction of John Breckinridge Castleman, a Confederate officer who later became a colonel in the United States army, and will likely be moved to his gravesite. Calls for removing these monuments and statues that are insensitive to the black community prompted Fischer to make his decision.

"Too many people are suffering today because the promises of justice and equality enshrined in our Constitution are unfulfilled by a society that devalues African American lives and denies African Americans justice, opportunity and equity...That's got to change. People want and deserve action. We need a transformation," Fischer said.