As a legal matter, these dismissals reflect the specifics of this case, especially the shockingly weak case brought by the Durham County Sheriff’s Office and the DA’s office. As a political matter, their effect could be wider. Actors on all sides portrayed the Durham case as an important one. Activists viewed the destruction of the statue as a blow against white supremacy and the hundreds of monuments that dot the country, paying tribute to a rebellion that sought to preserve the enslavement of African Americans. Their opponents—including President Trump—argued that the monuments represented a piece of history, and warned that allowing such destruction would sanction anarchy. The failure of the attempt to prosecute the guerrilla action in Durham shows how activists maintaining a united front can stare down a government divided over the proper approach to the controversial matter of Confederate monuments—and it may offer encouragement to activists elsewhere in the country, including in places where government cannot or will not act, to take monument removal into their own hands.

The destruction of the statue in Durham came two days after violent protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, left one dead, and it helped galvanize the effort to tear down Confederate monuments and statues across the country.

“This victory is the result of one thing and one thing alone: the conviction and determination of a mighty movement against white supremacy and the racist system that it upholds,” Defend Durham, an umbrella group for activists, said in a statement Tuesday. “Power to the people! Fighting white supremacy is not a crime!”

When I spoke to Qasima Wideman, one of the erstwhile defendants, Tuesday evening, she was still in disbelief. She said she was proud of what the movement had done.

“After the events of Charlottesville a lot of us were feeling like we were beat,” she said. “People were physically beaten, and murdered, in Charlottesville. Folks felt like the brave people of color and their allies who were on the right side of history were outnumbered. That was a really scary idea to entertain. This victory proves that that’s not true.”

Outside of court, protesters never seriously denied taking down the statue. Doing so would have been absurd, given the widespread coverage. Instead, they argued that they were following a higher law.

“I did the right thing,” Takiyah Thompson said the day after the protest, minutes before she was arrested. “Everyone who was there—the people did the right thing. The people will continue to keep making the right choices until every Confederate statue is gone, until white supremacy is gone. That statue is where it belongs. It needs to be in the garbage.”

The statue occupied a peculiar and increasingly untenable position in Durham. The city has long had a strong black middle class—one block away from the old courthouse sits Parrish Street, once known as “Black Wall Street”—and a tradition of civil-rights activism. Today, the city grapples with the racially disparate impact of law enforcement, and with growing gentrification that is pushing many minorities out of homes and neighborhoods. The statue was not only antique but antiquated and offensive.