New Orleans Calls Confederate Monuments ‘Nuisances’; Votes to Remove Them

A large crowd broke into cheers Thursday after the New Orleans City Council voted to remove four monuments to the Confederacy from prominent places in the city. The City Council also voted to remove statues of P.G.T. Beauregard, a Confederate general, and Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy.

“The time surely comes when [justice] must and will be heard”, Mayor Mitch Landrieu said at the council meeting.

“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. Councilwoman Stacy Head was the lone dissenting vote.

Their statues were erected in the 1910s. He says that for New Orleans to move forward, “we must reckon with our past”. Those who oppose what they deem a knee-jerk reaction to the shooting have been quick to point out that after the San Bernardino shooting, the nation was urged not to blame all Muslims for the mass shooting by radicalized ISIS terrorists – therefore, all those who cherish the history and “Southern Pride” associated with the Confederate symbols should not be forced to see them disappear.

Members allege, among other things, that New Orleans has failed to comply with federal laws protecting sites on the National Register of Historic Places.

The mayor says it will cost about $170,000 to remove the monuments. “Instead of focusing on removing these monuments, we believe the City should create new monuments to honor African-Americans whose contributions to our history and culture were as or more significant”.

The council-approved ordinance also calls for Lee Circle, where the Lee statue stands, to be called its original name, Tivoli Circle.

The flag, which went went up at the height of the USA civil rights movement, was removed less than a month after the racially motivated shooting that took place at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Work on moving the monuments could begin in the next few days, according to the mayor’s office.

Head proposed the statues of Lee and Beauregard be allowed to remain on the condition that explanatory plaques be added to balance the perception of the monuments’ significance.

Lee faces north, looking in the direction of his former enemy, and has stood there since 1884, the history department at the University of New Orleans says. “With eyes wide open, we should truly remember history and not revere a false version of it”.

In the past few decades, the city government has fought a rear-guard action over this monument in an attempt to avoid controversy.

The ordinance called the monuments a nuisance because they foster ideologies that undermine the equal protection clause provided by the Constitution and because they support the idea of racial supremacy.