New Orleans Considers Removing Prominent Confederate Monuments

After months of heated public debate, the New Orleans City Council on Thursday voted 6-1 in favor of removing four monuments tied to its Confederate past.

With support from Mayor Mitch Landrieu, a majority on the City Council appears ready to take down four monuments, including a towering statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. It was an emotional meeting – typically interrupted by heckling – infused with references to slavery, lynchings & racism, in addition to the pleas of those in that opposed removing the monuments to not “rewrite history”. They also claim the New Orleans City Council ignored the City’s own protocol for receipt of donations. Musician Wynton Marsalis, who is African American, said that Lee in particular has no historic place in the city. “We have our skeletons”, said a board member for a local group that works to maintain the city’s many monuments, who advocated for the addition of interpretive plaques at the monuments.

Landrieu said monuments honoring Confederate heroes go against New Orlean’s reputation for tolerance.

Landrieu said the church slayings in Charleston, South Carolina, moved him to take action.

Clancy Dubos, a New Orleans columnist and chairman of a weekly newspaper, suggested turning Lee Circle into “Generals Circle” by adding a statue of Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, and making Jefferson Davis Parkway into “Presidents Avenue” by adding a statue of Abraham Lincoln.

Lee statue at Lee Circle, the Jefferson Davis statue on Jefferson Davis Parkway, the P.G.T Beauregard equestrian statue on Esplanade at the entrance to City Park and the Battle of Liberty Place Monument at Iberville Street. Activist Malcolm Suber calls the monuments “products of the Jim Crow era, an era when blacks were hunted and persecuted”. The attack happened on June 17, and a week later, Landrieu proposed an ordinance that would declare Confederate monuments nuisances.

According to a City Hall press release, Landrieu said before the meeting: “As we approach the Tricentennial, New Orleanians have the power and the right to correct historical wrongs and move the City forward”.

The most controversial is an 1891 obelisk honoring the Crescent City White League. Guidry and Head are the council’s only white members, and her vote to take down the monuments kept the sides from lining up along racial lines. “But there are other people who look at the monuments and see their ancestors hanging from trees”.