Death Threats Force Group To Remove Confederate Memorial From LA Cemetery

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — With Confederate monuments once again in the spotlight in the aftermath of Charlottesville, Virginia, did you know there was one here?

Scarlett, who is a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, spoke to CBS2's Elsa Ramon concealing her identity and only using her first name. After the organization received death threats over a Confederate memorial marking the graves of more than 30 Confederate soldiers at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, she agreed to remove it.

The memorial was removed Wednesday morning.

"I authorized them to take the plaque off, put it in a safe place. And I asked them to take the monument and put it in storage," Scarlett said.

Scarlett says the decision to take down the monument came after it was vandalized over the weekend, following the deadly attacks at a white supremacists rally in Charlottesville and after Long Beach native Taylor Nicholson started a Change.org petition — to have the marker removed.

"I just couldn't believe how quick it happened because the petition started on Sunday," Nicholson said. "Just how quickly it got resolved and how our voices got heard so fast."

The petition started Tuesday received more than 1,500 signatures by 11 p.m.

Earlier Tuesday, Mayor Eric Garcetti says there no need to glorify what he calls negative history.

"Public Confederate memorials have no place in our nation any more than you'd put up a memorial to other acts of hate or division in our country. People can learn that history, but they don't need to lionize it," he said.

In the meantime, Scarlett hopes more people will come around to seeing the memorial in the same light she does. "It's not a monument, it's just something respecting people who have died," she said.

The veterans who are buried at the cemetery will remain there and their markers will remain there. Scarlett says she doesn't know if the monument will be taken down forever, but for now it will remain in storage.

The United Daughters of the Confederacy in the past held an annual memorial service at the cemetery, complete with reenactments, guns and Confederate flags.