Confederate Statues Removed In Arizona; Group Wanted Them Back

ARIZONA — Two confederate monuments in Arizona were removed overnight after the confederate group that had them placed there asked that they be returned and taken to private locations for repair due to the current "political climate." That's how the United Daughters of the Confederacy described the need to move the repair location away from their former public locations at the Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza in downtown Phoenix and alongside a road near the census-designated place of Gold Canyon 40 miles to the east.

ABC-15 captured a few photos of the overnight removal of both the Memorial to Confederate Soldiers at the downtown plaza and the Jefferson Davis Memorial near Gold Canyon. The Davis memorial in particular has been damaged a number of times in recent years, local news reports have shown.

The confederacy preservation group's letter to the Arizona Department of Transportation, which removed the monuments, said the "re-gifting" of the monuments should be done "as swiftly as possible to avoid any further damage, vandalization or complete destruction." The letter was first shared publicly Wednesday by ABC-15 reporter Mike Pelton on Twitter. And a few hours later, the monuments were gone.

Arizona didn't become a state until 1912, but as a territory sided with the confederacy during the Civil War and provided them with three tanks. Four other confederate monuments continue to stand in Arizona, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The group's monument restoration committee will pay for the removal, their letter said.