New Orleans is poised to make a sweeping break with its Confederate past as it contemplates removing promin…
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Advocate staff photo by MATTHEW HINTON-Mayor Mitch Landrieu is congratulated after his speech supporting the removal of the Confederate monuments in City Council chambers in New Orleans, La. Mayor Mitch Landrieu said a private donor offered to cover the costs of removing the monuments from their current locations, and suggested at one point a new park could be created specifically for Civil War monuments.
PGT Beauregard in Mid-City and the Battle of Liberty Place in the Central Business District are a part of the monuments.
The Confederate monuments should be declared “nuisances”, no longer to be seen in open public space.
“We need not honor these individuals and moments from the past that do not meet our standards of decency, equality and nondiscrimination”, she said.
Head, who cast the lone dissenting vote, said, “We’re gonna walk away today, and some people are gonna think they were winners and some are gonna think they’re losers”. On Thursday, Dec. 17, 2015, the City Council is set to vote on an ordinance to remove four monuments. Councilwoman Stacy Head instead proposed an amendment to keep the Lee and Beauregard statues but add explanatory plaques. The statues are the Robert E. Lee statue at Lee Circle; the Jefferson Davis statue on Jefferson Davis Parkway; the P.G.T. Beauregard statue on Esplanade Avenue at the entrance to City Park; and, the Battle of Liberty Place Monument at Iberville Street.
The lawsuit says three of the monuments are key destinations of the New Orleans streetcar line, which is planned, funded, constructed and maintained by the defendants – and are protected under National Registrar of Historic Places regulations.
Former mayors, including Landrieu’s father, Moon Landrieu, have attempted to have this monument removed or altered.
Landrieu said he picked these four monuments because “these are the ones that matter most to the city now”. Several members of the audience and speakers were also removed from the meeting.
Others say the council should go further and remove statues and change street names they said are associated with “white supremacy”. White New Orleanians understood all four monuments as constituting a coherent historical narrative that justified their new racial order.
“I speak English, council member”, he answered.
“It will not improve the socioeconomic balance of the city”, she said. “But there are other people who look at the monuments and see their ancestors hanging from trees”.
“Removal doesn’t have to mean destroy”, said Councilman Jared Brossett. The local official also said that the Civil War monuments divide the city, limit progress, and reinforce the “ideology of slavery”. Memphis even wants to remove the graves of Forrest and his wife, who lay buried under the statue. “It is time to cut that cord”.
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“If anybody wins here, it will be the South, because it is finally rising”, Williams, who is African-American, said.
