Confederate monuments are history in N.O

Original Story-The fate of monuments in New Orleans honoring Confederate heroes Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis could be decided Thursday by city leaders after intense debate swirled around the symbols that some say represent Southern heritage and others say stand for white supremacy.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who initiated the ordinance to take them down, said they will be stored until a museum or park is conceived for their new home.

Council member at-large Stacy Head was the only member to vote against the proposal, asking instead for a resolution that would leave the statues of Lee and Beauregard in place, but add explanatory placards to the monuments.

The four monuments were all erected in the late-19 and early-20 century during the Jim Crow era.

However, there are some people who want the monuments to stay in place. Another is a towering statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that has stood at the center of a traffic circle for 131 years.

Four organizations filed a 51-page complaint Thursday to stop efforts by the City to remove four historic monuments. It was moved to its current location as part of a consent order the city entered in 1992, something the lawsuit argues prohibits its removal by city ordinance.

The Andrew Jackson monument in New Orleans.

During the hearings on the monuments in New Orleans, the Historic District Landmarks Commission, the Human Relations Commission and the Vieux Carré Commission voted in favor to recommend the removal of the monuments.

“It was not a community-driven process based on the concerns of citizens”, Cantrell said, according to NOLA.com.

That same year, a monument commemorating the fighting at Liberty Place was dedicated to the men who helped to restore white supremacy to the state. That park, he said, would be a place where “history can be remembered and not revered”. The city previously has said an anonymous donor has offered to pay for the work. By maintaining reverential monuments to the cause of this Confederacy in such out of context, honored, prominent public places, we betray our full history; ignore the progress of our city and limit our future.

New Orleans is poised to make a sweeping break with its past as it considers removing prominent Confederate monuments from some of its busiest streets.

The city council held a hearing last week to discuss the issue, and advocates on both sides made their voices heard outside the council chambers waving signs and flags.

New Orleans, which was the Confederacy’s largest city, surrendered in 1862 and was under Federal occupation beyond the Civil War’s end in 1865.

Following the Emmanuel AME Church shooting, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley called on the state legislature to remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds.

In some sense, the Civil War ended in New Orleans in 1891.