New Orleans City Council votes to remove monuments dedicated to Confederate

SC and Alabama both chose to remove the Confederate battle flag from their statehouse grounds after it was discovered that the shooter, Dylan Roof, had posed with the flag before the shooting.

“The Lee Monument, the Beauregard equestrian monument, the Jefferson Davis monument and the Liberty Monument were explicitly erected to preserve, foster and promote the historic and cultural origins of the citizens of New Orleans and the residents of Louisiana”, the suit reads.

She lamented what she called a rush to take the monuments down without adequate consideration of their historic value and meaning to many in New Orleans.

– A bronze figure of the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, that now stands at Canal Street and Jefferson Davis Parkway. An obelisk marking the Battle of Liberty Place in the city will also come down.

Landrieu signed the new ordinance into law shortly after the vote.

He says the monument to Robert E. Lee is a monument to a criminal.

Councilman James Gray, who is black, denounced the statues for memorizing “murderers and rapists”. “He (Landrieu) knows what he needs to do legally”, Foret said.

The city has estimated it will cost $144,000 to remove the monuments, and says an anonymous donor will pay that cost.

After almost six months of debate, supporters and opponents of an ordinance to remove four monuments dedicated to Confederate history in New Orleans are showing up to speak out on the topic before a City Council vote.

New Orleans is removing Confederate monuments from public spaces in the Crescent City.

A statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee towers over Lee Circle in New Orleans.

The vote came after hours of emotional pleas from both pro- and anti-monument groups and an impassioned address by Mayor Mitch Landrieu that the monuments represent the “wrong side of history” and should be relocated to a Civil War museum after removal from public places. This battle was waged by The White League, an outfit similar to the Ku Klux Klan except in name and robe, and who fought the city police in September 1874 in defiance of the Reconstruction’s reconfiguration of city government-or, more plainly, against the integration of African Americans into the voting electorate and public office.

The most imposing 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. (I sympathize generally with the argument against memorializing Andrew Jackson-the Donald Trump of his day, according to noted historian N. Leroy Gingrich-but, seriously, folks, he did save New Orleans.) But the history of the monuments was as horrid as you might think it was.

With eyes wide open we should truly remember history, and not revere a false version of it. We should remember that the Confederacy almost destroyed our country, and would have seen to enslaving most of our city.