The monument was also spray painted with the slogan "N.T. 11 11 31," The Montgomery Advertiser reported. Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center said the slogan was a reference to Nat Turner, who led a slave rebellion in Virginia in 1831.

Potok said the vandalism was not a hate crime.

"It's more an attack on the principle of the old Confederacy, but not to all white people in general," he said. "If these vandals had written 'death to whitey' or 'all whites must die' it would have been a hate crime because it attacked an entire class of people."

The Alabama Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans has offered a $1,000 reward for information on the perpetrators and has asked for a hate crime investigation. Pat Goodwin, a member of the Daughters of the Confederacy, argued that the Turner link is anti-white because he "slaughtered innocent white children."