The most imposing of the monuments the council has voted to strike from the cityscape has had a commanding position over St. Charles Avenue since 1884: A 16-foot-tall bronze statue of Lee stands atop a 60-foot-high Doric marble column, which itself rises over granite slabs on an earthen mound.
Advertisement
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. They also claim the New Orleans City Council ignored the City’s own protocol for receipt of donations.
The New Orleans City Council voted 6-1 Thursday to remove four monuments commemorating the Confederacy.
Council President Jason Williams said, “After a long and thoughtful debate on this issue, I am pleased that we have reached a conclusion”.
The monuments include tributes to Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and the Battle of Liberty Place.
“We, the people of New Orleans, have the power and we have the right to correct these historical wrongs”, Landrieu said. “Although Lee, Beauregard and Davis later resigned their commissions in the Armed Forces of the United States, (United States code) contains no exception of qualifications to the protection if affords to structures, statues or monuments to members of the armed forces of the United States”.
The cost of removing the Confederate monuments is estimated at cost $144,000, all of which will be paid by an “anonymous donor”.
For Councilman James Gray, a Black man, the monuments are celebrations of “murderers and rapists”.
The Rev. Shawn Anglim, a Methodist pastor, is among clergy who have spoken out in favor of taking down the monuments. But her motion received no support from the seven-person council. Anglim told those gathered Thursday to “do the right thing”. Activist Malcolm Suber calls the monuments “products of the Jim Crow era, an era when blacks were hunted and persecuted”.
Others say the council should go further and remove statues and change street names they say are associated with “white supremacy”.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu made his remarks Thursday ahead of public comments and a City Council vote on the matter.
Advertisement
“The city’s efforts to move the four monuments appears to have originated with the musician Wynton Marsalis, whose opinion has inexplicably been afforded more weight than that of the residents of New Orleans”, the suit reads.
