An NBC News report from Monday added that "a handful of people" gathered for a vigil at the Jefferson Davis statue to express their disapproval of the monument's removal.
An organization dedicated to preserving monuments in New Orleans, the Monumental Task Committee, opposed removing the statues.
As New Orleans' Battle of Liberty Place statue lay in pieces Monday, state offices in MS and Alabama remained closed for Confederate Memorial Day, a holiday celebrated by a handful of Southern states to remember those who died fighting for the Confederacy.
Some of the city's residents believe the monuments are an important part of the city's history and want them to stay. City officials have attempted to move the monuments since 2015 amid opposition from pro-monument groups and threats against workers. Police officers watched from a nearby hotel.
Davis will be removed in later days now that legal challenges have been overcome.
Citing safety concerns, the mayor would not disclose exactly when the other monuments would be taken down, except to say that the removals will be done at night to avoid trouble.
Statues and flags that include Confederate symbols have been under fire since the 2015 attack on a Black church in Charleston, S.C. that killed nine churchgoers. In the weeks after the mass killing, SC removed the Confederate flag from state grounds. The University of MS also removed its state flag, which included the Confederate emblem. Many of those in attendance said the statues represented history.
Authorities took down the statue honoring the so-called Battle of Liberty Place, acting without notice and under the cover of darkness for security reasons, and will move it to a museum or other facility, Mayor Mitch Landrieu said.
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Robert Bonner, a 63-year-old Civil War re-enactor, was there to protest the monument's removal.
"The threats have been fairly aggressive, and I think you have seen the results of some of it", he said. "You start losing where you came from and where you've been".
The city had chose to keep the names of bidding contractors a secret after receiving a slew of death threats and harassment. The city said it raised more than $600,000 in private funding to relocate the statues. The decision to remove the monuments is supported by much of New Orleans.
"The monuments are an aberration", he said.
It is the first of four Confederacy statues which will be removed.
A crew arrived around 1:25 a.m.to pull down the Liberty Monument, a tribute to whites who fought against an integrated post-Civil War government in New Orleans. That attempt failed, but white supremacist Democrats later took control of the state. The city erected a white obelisk monument in 1891 to praise the insurrection, and it featured a white supremacist inscription. On March 8, 2017, The United States District Court go the Easter District of Louisiana affirmed the City's right to remove the statues.
More Confederate statues are planned to be removed sometime in the near future.
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