The mayor says it will cost about $170,000 to remove the monuments.
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There is now no word on when the monuments will be taken down or what will replace them.
Lee Monument in Lee Circle in New Orleans, shown on September 2, is one of four prominent Confederate monuments the City Council has voted to remove.
The vote clears the way for the city to remove statues of Gen. Robert E. Lee, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard and a monument to the White League.
In New Orleans, the mayor asked the council to take a closer look at monuments that have always been part of the city’s landscape. Now that the vote has finally been taken, the city of New Orleans may face lawsuits from groups determined to keep the Civil War monuments right where they are.
City council member Nadine Ramsey, before voting for the removal, stressed that the effort was not to rewrite history. “I’ve never heard of a city trying to sweep (away) all Confederate monuments”. After months of meetings and discussion, members of the City Council voted the statues do meet that requirement.
New Orleans Councilwoman Stacy Head was the sole vote against the Confederate statues removal. But a permanent place for the monuments has not been established. But her motion received no support from the seven-person council.
Former mayors, including Landrieu’s father, Moon Landrieu, have attempted to have this monument removed or altered.
Head made her motion after public comments at Thursday’s meeting.
Councilman James Gray, who is black, called the statues homages to “murderers and rapists”.
According to the Associated Press, the Rev. Shawn Anglim, a Methodist pastor, is among clergy who have spoken out in favor of taking down the monuments. “Do it for our children, and our children’s children”.
“Opponents of the removal plan wanted the council to consider alternatives, including erecting other monuments to tell a wider narrative about the Civil War”. An obelisk dedicated to the Battle of Liberty Place will also go.
Citizens on both sides of the issue debated for hours before the vote, and several people had to be removed from the meeting.
An attack by a white supremacist on a historic black church in Charleston, North Carolina that left nine people dead in June renewed debate over the symbols after images emerged of the shooter holding the Confederate flag.
The monuments don’t represent history but a “false version” created to “reinforce a very specific ideology”, he said.
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Keeping the figures of the Confederacy was not about preserving racial injustice, they said, but about honoring figures who fought to protect the city.
