Monuments dedicated to the leaders and soldiers of the Confederacy in six states have been the targets of vandals in the wake of the last week's shooting at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, The Associated Press reported.

The slogan "Black lives matter" was seen written in black paint on many such landmarks, which continue to "stand tall in parks and outside government buildings" across the South, the AP said.

In St. Louis' Forest Park, workers on Wednesday morning were power washing red and black paint from the local Confederate Memorial, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch detailed. Beyond the slogan, glass Christmas tree ornaments filled with paint had apparently been thrown at the 32-foot granite-and-bronze monument east of the Missouri History Museum, the newspaper said.

Darrell Maples, the commander of Sons of Confederate Veterans' Missouri chapter, told the AP that he was "disgusted" by the vandalism. His group is a non-racist historical organization made up of male descendants of Confederate soldiers and sailors, both black and white, Maples noted.

Landmarks in Charleston; Baltimore; Austin, Texas; Asheville, North Carolina; and Richmond, Virginia were also affected by vandalism, the newswire noted; so far, no arrests have been made.

Michael Allen, a lecturer in American culture studies at Washington University in St. Louis, meanwhile, said that the vandalism was comparable to the toppling of statues in Russia at the end of the Soviet Union.

"If the monuments are strong statements of past values, defacing them is the easiest and loudest way to rebuke those statements," Allen argued.

The Charleston shooting had led to a nationwide debate about the use of Confederate emblems and other symbols across the South. The Republican speaker of Mississippi's House of Representatives, for instance, on Monday called for the Confederate battle flag to be removed from the Magnolia State's banner, according to The Associated Press.

Others, including Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, noted that they could understand contrary viewpoints in the debate on such symbolism, the Washington Post noted.

"I understand the passions that this debate evokes on both sides," the Texas senator said. "(Some) see a history of racial oppression and a history of slavery, which is the original sin of our nation, and we fought a bloody civil war to expunge that sin."