After making landfall on America’s Gulf Coast, Hurricane Laura toppled the long-standing ‘South’s Defenders’ monument which stood outside courthouse in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Protesters had called for the removal of the statue, which was erected in 1915 in memory of Confederate soldiers in the US Civil War, but the local parish voted 10-4 in favour of it remaining in place.

Many Confederate monuments across the US have been removed by way of vote or force in recent months as the Black Lives Matter movement caused a reckoning with the country’s racist past.

Governors and local mayors in former Confederate states such as Virginia and Alabama have approved the removal of various statues, while in Mississippi a vote was passed to remove the Confederate emblem from the state flag.

Ten people have died so far across the state of Louisiana, which bore the brunt of the storm that went on to reach eastern parts of neighbouring Texas, where four people were killed. More than 850,000 people were left without power, with outages affecting people as far north as Arkansas.