New Orleans to remove Confederate statues

Council member Stacy Head cast the only vote against taking down the monuments, saying the action would create more division and not solve the city’s real problems.

The council’s 6-1 vote allows the city to remove four monuments, including a towering statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that has stood at the center of a traffic circle for 131 years.

The city has been debating since this summer a call by Mayor Mitch Landrieu to remove the monuments amid a national push to take out of public display the Confederate battle flag and other symbols used by the pro-slavery South during the U.S. Civil War.

Passionate voices have weighed in on both sides of a City Council measure that goes to a vote Thursday.

– A 16-foot-tall bronze statue of General Robert E. Lee looking over St. Charles Avenue since 1884 that stands on top a 60-foot-high Doric marble column.

The plaintiffs’ move was likely planned well ahead of time and something the Landrieu administration expected, with a city spokesman noting in an afternoon news release that the administration recognized at least one monument, the Battle of Liberty Place obelisk, is protected under a prior federal ruling.

“I am happy and impressed that we have a white mayor who understands a little bit what it means to be an African American and he’s on our side on this”, Gray said.

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”.

Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard was a Louisiana native, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis lived in New Orleans after the war and died there.

NOLA.com reports that the today’s vote took place after hours of heated public comments and debates among the various council members.

Who: Landrieu said the estimated cost to remove the monuments is $170,000, which has been obtained through private donation.

Confederate symbols and monuments have always been controversial in the United States, where they are beloved by some residents of the once slave-owning southern states which seceded during the 1861-1865 Civil War, but reviled by those who see them as racist. “Symbols matter and should reflect who we are as a people”.

The council members’ sentiments echo the emotions in the public, and those supporting the removal are applauded loudly while the two who have spoken against the removal are heckled.

“And I am the mayor of New Orleans”. Activist Malcolm Suber calls the monuments “products of the Jim Crow era, an era when blacks were hunted and persecuted”.