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Commission votes in favor of removing Confederate-related monuments

Watch public comments on New Orleans' Confederate statue removal The removal of Confederate statues in New Orleans was part of a public debate at the Historic District Landmarks Commission hearing Thursday afternoon (Aug. 13). Local residents gave their thoughts on what should be done with the Confederate statues.
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By Robert McClendon, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

on August 13, 2015 at 9:40 PM

A New Orleans City Commission voted overwhelmingly Thursday (Aug 13) in favor of permitting the removal of four Confederate-related monuments in the city.

After a tense and occasionally raucous two hours of public comments, some of which bucked racial consensus on both sides, the Historic District Landmarks Commission voted 11-1 on a motion saying that the four monuments "may be removed."

The City Council has the ultimate authority to declare the monuments public nuisances and have them removed, but it asked the HDLC, along with the Human Relations Commission, to provide recommendations on Mayor Mitch Landrieu's recommendation to remove statues of Robert E. Lee, PGT Beauregard and Jefferson Davis as well as a monument to the Battle of Liberty Place, which commemorates a coup backed by Confederate sympathizers against the integrated Reconstruction government.

Governor Bobby Jindal, meanwhile, wants to see the monuments stay and is investigating whether the state has the authority to block their removal, should the City Council move to do so.

The fuzzy language of the HDLC's motion may have something to do with restrictive advice given the commission by the city's legal department.

Many of the speakers who wanted the monuments to stay said the statues should be accompanied by new plaques that put the monuments into context. Others said the city should build more monuments dedicated to African American history and achievement. The attorney, though, said that such recommendations would have to be considered separately from an up or down vote on removal.

The public comment period produced little in the way of new points of view in the debate, which has been simmering since Landrieu asked in July that the monuments be taken down.

Those in favor of removal pointed to the period when the monuments were erected, the decades between Reconstruction and World War I, a time when the city's black population lived under an apartheid system and had no voice. Those against it said the history should be preserved, even if it's ugly.

Unlike a previous meeting, though, this discussion did not cut cleanly across racial lines. About half of those who spoke in favor of removal, perhaps more, were white. On the other side, two black speakers said to leave the statues where they are. "I know who I am," said one woman. "I know what my family, as an African American woman, has been through. I don't want those statues taken down anymore than I want the statues taken down in Egypt."

Many of the commissioners said the monuments in question were plainly eligible for removal, not because of whom the statues represent but because of the people who pushed to have them erected.

In a short report before the public comment period, staff for the HDLC said that the statues were erected during the heyday of the "cult of the Lost Cause," a revisionist recasting of the Civil War aimed at deifying southern generals and minimizing slavery's central role in secession. "These statues have never bothered me, but that's because I've been ignorant as well," said Commissioner John Deveney.

Commissioner Paul Harang said that some are concerned that removing the monuments might muddy the historical waters. The opposite is actually true, he said. The statues were put up to perpetuate the falsehood that the South fought for a just cause.

Beauregard was a military and engineering genius who, after the war, advocated for a level of racial inclusiveness in government that was radical at the time. The people who put up a statue of him, though, didn't do it for those things; they did it because he fought for the Confederacy, Harang said.

Commissioner Ed deMontluzin cast the lone vote in favor of the monuments. New Orleans is the last "European city" in America, he said, and the statues are part of that legacy. He said he never saw them as having anything to do with white supremacy, a term he hadn't heard for decades.

During Mardi Gras, he said, there are more black people around Lee Circle than any other race. "I don't think it is a nuisance to them or brings up bad memories for the black race."

Tim Shea Carroll, founder of Save our Circle, the most prominent effort to block removal, said he was disappointed by the commission's vote, which he said only added confusion to the debate because of it's ambiguous wording.

"I was really happy to see everyone come out. You could see the support that was there," he said, referring to the wide numerical advantage his side enjoyed in the City Council auditorium. "It just bothers me that (the commission) seemingly ignored it."

 

That should do it. I think I'll take a walk through the Desire St projects.

 

Finally, the destruction of our heritage should do the trick.

 

And it will go bankrupt just like Detroit.

 

Wait, this can't be the same guy that posted that ridiculous video in the Bernie Sanders thread. Flip flop much?

 

He's off the pot. Remembered that he's white and white lives matter

 

What does this have to do with that video that is basically out of a Howard Zinn book. Apples and oranges. The video was legit. And don't act like you watched it.

That being said I shouldn't have posted it here smack dab inside of the right wing looney bin.

 

I watched ever bit of it. Who was that clown anyway?

 

I watched the first 5 minutes. What a waste of time.