The University of Mississippi’s proposal to move a Confederate soldier monument from a central spot on the Oxford campus to a Confederate cemetery was approved Friday by state trustees of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

The cemetery is in a less prominent location on campus.

The move still needs to be approved by the board that governs Mississippi’s eight public universities.

The monument is one of many erected across the South more than a century ago. Critics say its display near the university’s main administrative building sends a signal that the school glorifies the Confederacy and glosses over the South’s history of slavery.

Pro-Confederate groups from outside the university rallied at the monument Feb. 23, causing Ole Miss basketball players to kneel during the national anthem, in protest of the rally.

Student government leaders voted March 5 to ask administrators to move the monument to the cemetery.