The NSYNC member is the latest celebrity to demand the removal of the statues commemorating Confederate leaders in the wake of Black Lives Matter movement in the United States.

AceShowbiz - Justin Timberlake has demanded southern state officials in the U.S. remove statues commemorating Confederate leaders to show the world America is ashamed of its racist, slave-owning past.

The "Cry Me a River" singer has watched TV news footage of Black Lives Matter protesters tearing down monuments to historical slave owners and bigots, and now the Tennessee native is weighing in on the debate over the future of the statues dotted throughout the south.

"If we plan to move forward, these confederate monuments must come down...," he writes on Instagram. "When we protest racism in America, people think we are protesting America itself. Why is that the reaction? Because America was built by men who believed in and benefitted from racism. Plain and simple."

Timberlake's comments come days after officials at the American Civil Liberties Union noted that a statue celebrating the memory of Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader Nathaniel Bedford Forrest still stands in the Tennessee State House.

"There are roughly 1,848 confederate statues of in the U.S. (sic)," Timberlake explains. "More than half are in The South, and it's not acceptable. No one should be protecting the legacies of confederate leaders and slave owners."

Justin's post follows a similar one written by Taylor Swift last month (Jun20), in which she called for the removal of statues honouring Edward Carmack and Forrest in her adopted Nashville, Tennessee.

Telling followers she had asked officials at the Capital Commission and the Tennessee Historical Commission to "consider the implications of how hurtful it would be to continue fighting for these monuments," the singer admitted it made her "sick" to see monuments to "figures who did evil things."

"We need to retroactively change the status of people who perpetuated hideous patterns of racism from 'heroes' to 'villains,' " she wrote. "And villains don't deserve statues. When you fight to honor racists, you show black Tennesseans and all of their allies where you stand, and you continue this cycle of hurt. You can't change history, but you can change this."

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