This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.

ST. LOUIS, MO (KTVI) – About two dozen people showed up at the Confederate Monument in Forest Park Tuesday night to debate its removal. The monument was spray painted last night with graffiti that reads, “Stop defending injustice. This is treason.”

According to our partners at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the groups were mostly peaceful in their separate protests.

The monument was put in the spotlight recently after Mayor Lyda Krewson joined in the call to have it removed from the public park. Krewson said she will have the money raised to take down the Confederate Monument in Forest Park and move it to storage within the next 30 days.

Back in 2015, former St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay decided the monument, celebrating the Confederacy, should be moved to a museum, but that private donors will have to pay for it. It has stood in the park for a century, but some feel in the 21st century, monuments to the southern cause during the Civil War are out of place in public places and belong in museums.

It’s an argument some began making as an attachment to a national debate about the appropriateness of displaying the Confederate Flag rekindled after the racially motivated church mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina.

Krewson said she understands some people want the monument to stay because it is a part of history, but she feels it is hurtful to a lot of people in St. Louis and it is time to take it down.