Birmingham covers up Confederate monument

Birmingham city workers use plywood panels to cover the Confederate Monument in Linn Park, in Birmingham, Ala., Tuesday night, Aug. 15, 2017, on orders from Mayor William Bell. (Joe Songer /AL.com via AP)
Birmingham city workers use plywood panels to cover the Confederate Monument in Linn Park, in Birmingham, Ala., Tuesday night, Aug. 15, 2017, on orders from Mayor William Bell. (Joe Songer /AL.com via AP)

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- Alabama's largest city has used a wooden structure to cover up a Confederate monument in a downtown park.

Legislators passed a law earlier this year prohibiting the removal of structures including rebel memorials. So Birmingham Mayor William Bell ordered the city's 52-foot-tall Confederate obelisk covered with wooden panels.

The box-like structure covers a panel that says the memorial to Confederate soldiers and sailors was dedicated in 1905 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

City workers began installing the structure Tuesday night, just days after deadly violence over a Confederate monument in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The Birmingham mayor's office says it's looking at ways to challenge the state law restricting the city's authority to remove the memorial.

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