New Orleans Council Votes To Remove 4 Confederate Monuments

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.

A statue of Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, and an obelisk dedicated to the Crescent City White League, white supremacists who sought to topple the biracial government after the Civil War, are the other two monuments Mayor Mitch Landrieu wants off the city streets.

“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”. Opponents of removing the monuments included Gov. Bobby Jindal.

The council also voted to remove a bronze figure of the Confederate president that now stands at Canal Street and Jefferson Davis Parkway, and a more local hero, Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, who straddles a prancing horse at the entrance to City Park.

The New Orleans City Council voted to approve Landrieu’s proposal in a 6-1 vote Thursday, with Councilmember Stacy Head the lone “no”.

His administration said it would cost $170,000 to take the monuments down and put them in a warehouse until a new location is found for them – perhaps in a park or museum. She did not appear to muster the same smooches for these shrines to white supremacy.

He said city leaders should consider forming a commission to decide what to do about other monuments.

“I asked for a compromise multiple times”, she said.

Councilwoman Nadine Ramsey said: “It breaks my heart that in 2015 we are still having to dealing with the effects of slavery”. Head is the same council member who notoriously blew kisses goodbye when the council voted to demolish the city’s public housing projects in 2007.

New Orleans is far from the only city in the South that has placed defenders of slavery on pedestals as part of their civic landscapes. T. Beauregard, who designed the Confederate battle flag that is finally facing retirement in some cities after years of flying in the face of common sense.

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.

“We, the people of New Orleans, have the power and we have the right to correct these historical wrongs”, Landrieu said Thursday. “The ties that bind us together as a city are stronger than what keeps us apart”.

A fourth monument, probably the most contentious, will also be taken down. “We all may have differing perspectives, but share a common love and concern for the City of New Orleans”.