After more than 17 hours of sawing, slicing and tethering, the 12-foot-tall statue of John C. Calhoun that's towered over Marion Square for more than a century came down on Wednesday. While that may seem long — many hours longer than city officials had anticipated it — efforts to remove it are really as old as the monument itself, which Black Charlestonians have seen as a physically imposing symbol of oppression. Calhoun, in addition to being one of the most influential politicians of his day, was also one of the most ardent defenders of slavery. He described it as a "public good."This week, we invited a couple guests from outside the newsroom to join the podcast: historians Adam Domby and Bernard Powers.Domby is a historian of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the American South. He’s also the author of the book, “The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory,” which was published earlier this year. Powers is a professor emeritus of history at the College of Charleston and is the director of the Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston. Right now, he's serving as the interim CEO of the International African American Museum, which is under construction now on the Charleston peninsula.Both Domby and Powers were able to frame this moment in Charleston's history and speak to some of the questions being raised today about what communities should do with their monuments and what statues may take the place of those that, like Calhoun, are coming down now. We also heard from reporter Mikaela Porter, who covers the city of Charleston and was one of several of journalists staked out at Marion Square overnight, talking with community members who gathered there to see Calhoun come down. During the episode, we dig into how City Council got to its unanimous vote, what the statue symbolized when it was constructed in the late 19th century, and why Powers thinks the city was creating new history, not erasing it. Listen now to find out.

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