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[Dram]

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-orleans-council-votes-remove-confederate-monuments-n482181
New Orleans' leaders on Thursday made a sweeping move to break with the city's Confederate past when the City Council voted to remove prominent Confederate monuments along some of its busiest streets.

The council's 6-1 vote allows the city to remove four monuments, including a towering statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that has stood at the center of a traffic circle for 131 years.

It was an emotional meeting — often interrupted by heckling — infused with references to slavery, lynchings and racism, as well as the pleas of those who opposed removing the monuments to not "rewrite history."

City Council President Jason Williams called the vote a symbolic severing of an "umbilical cord" tying the city to the offensive legacy of the Confederacy and the era of Jim Crow laws.

Stacy Head, a council member at large, was the lone vote against the removal. She is one of two white council members.

Fixing historic injustice is "a lot harder work than removing monuments," she said, even as many in the packed council chambers jeered her.

She said the issue was dividing the city, not uniting it. "I think all we will be left with is pain and division."

The decision came after months of impassioned debate. On Thursday, four preservation groups filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to stop the city from taking down the monuments by challenging the city's removal process.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu first proposed taking down these monuments after police said a white supremacist killed nine parishioners inside the African-American Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June.

Landrieu said the monuments reinforce the Confederate ideology of slavery, limit city progress and divide the city. He used President Abraham Lincoln's famous quote: "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

Landrieu signed the new ordinance into law shortly after the vote. 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. The city said it would hire contractors soon to remove the monuments.

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. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard was born in St. Bernard Parish, and commanded Confederate forces in the war's first battle.

The most controversial is an 1891 obelisk honoring the Crescent City White League. An inscription added in 1932 said the Yankees withdrew federal troops and "recognized white supremacy in the South" after the group challenged Louisiana's biracial government after the Civil War. In 1993, these words were covered by a granite slab with a new inscription, saying the obelisk honors "Americans on both sides" who died and that the conflict "should teach us lessons for the future."

 

[Tinfoilhatsron]

They are putting it in a museum so I feel better about this. Too bad Lee felt tied to his family, would have made a Union General.

Why the obelisk though? Seems more like a Civil War monument then a Confederate one.

 

[besada]

They are putting it in a museum so I feel better about this. Too bad Lee felt tied to his family, would have made a Union General.

Why the obelisk though? Seems more like a Civil War monument then a Confederate one.

It's a monument to an uprising of mostly ex-confederate soldiers, called the Crescent City White League, against the legal government of the time.

In 1891, the city erected a monument to commemorate and praise the insurrection from the Democratic Party point of view, which at the time was in firm political control of the city and state and was in the process of disenfranchising most blacks. The white marble obelisk was placed at a prominent location on Canal Street. In 1932, the city added an inscription that expressed a white supremacist view.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Liberty_Place

 

[Tinfoilhatsron]

It's a monument to an uprising of mostly ex-confederate soldiers, called the Crescent City White League, against the legal government of the time.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Liberty_Place

Right but wasn't affixed with a new plaque or something and granite slab over the old words in 1993? I mean it basically changed the meaning then IMO. I feel like the people who went over the old part wanted to keep a Civil War monument but not one as disgusting as that.

But I can see how people would dislike something like this. Even if we change the meaning, the history remains, which is ironic in a way. I feel fine with it being towed away, I just feel like the government changed the meaning back in '93 anyway. Still it does whitewash people's suffering under the KKK so I'm still torn.

Edit: Torn on the meaning of the monument, to be clear.

 

[DontBeThatGuy]

The fact that Jefferson Davis ever had any kind of monument in his honor is a disgrace.

 

[Generate]

The fact that Jefferson Davis ever had any kind of monument in his honor is a disgrace.

Not simply a monument

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Davis_Parish,_Louisiana

 

[Angelus Errare]

Would be nice if we got rid of all the confederate shit the country over.

 

[besada]

Right but wasn't affixed with a new plaque or something and granite slab over the old words in 1993? I mean it basically changed the meaning then IMO. I feel like the people who went over the old part wanted to keep a Civil War monument but not one as disgusting as that.

But I can see how people would dislike something like this. Even if we change the meaning, the history remains, which is ironic in a way. I feel fine with it being towed away, I just feel like the government changed the meaning back in '93 anyway. Still it does whitewash people's suffering under the KKK so I'm still torn.

Edit: Torn on the meaning of the monument, to be clear.

First, it's not a Civil War monument, it's a monument to an illegal uprising against the elected government that happened during reconstruction. So regardless of what plaque you put on it, it's still a monument to a racially driven uprising against the legitimate government. The addition of the plaque simply includes the people the criminals murdered finally, while still being a monument to the uprising and the traitors that led it.

This is not a well-loved monument, by the way. It's been vandalized multiple times, the city was so embarrassed by it they set up a sign nearby pointing out that it didn't express current sentiment, then they moved it to a new, less visible location, and then finally covered up the 1932 inscription.

 

[Mindlog]

The fact that Jefferson Davis ever had any kind of monument in his honor is a disgrace.

I went to a public school named after him.
In defense of that school I got really good at my multiplication tables there.
Otherwise I will not abide traitors. This is America damnit. Not Confederica.

 

[FyreWulff]

Good. Nobody is trying to pretend the Confederacy didn't happen, but it's extreme bullshit that you can be a racist shithouse that lost a war and STILL get fucking monuments celebrating your traitor state and leaders erected over the people they loathed the existence of.

A long time coming, but it's due time to take a wire brush to the Confederacy's postwar sheen for a certain group of people.

 

[Massive Duck. C.M.]

The most controversial is an 1891 obelisk honoring the Crescent City White League. An inscription added in 1932 said the Yankees withdrew federal troops and "recognized white supremacy in the South" after the group challenged Louisiana's biracial government after the Civil War. In 1993, these words were covered by a granite slab with a new inscription, saying the obelisk honors "Americans on both sides" who died and that the conflict "should teach us lessons for the future."

This sounds like some posters in a nutshell

 

[exmachina64]

Good job, New Orleans.

 

[AoM]

Would be nice if we got rid of all the confederate shit the country over.

Not gonna happen here (VA). But I guess we're an exception.

 

[Tinfoilhatsron]

First, it's not a Civil War monument, it's a monument to an illegal uprising against the elected government that happened during reconstruction. So regardless of what plaque you put on it, it's still a monument to a racially driven uprising against the legitimate government. The addition of the plaque simply includes the people the criminals murdered finally, while still being a monument to the uprising and the traitors that led it.

This is not a well-loved monument, by the way. It's been vandalized multiple times, the city was so embarrassed by it they set up a sign nearby pointing out that it didn't express current sentiment, then they moved it to a new, less visible location, and then finally covered up the 1932 inscription.

To be clear I wasn't arguing against the movement to ban these monuments. Also I want to clarify my post.

First, I was going by the block quote in the OP when referring to it as a "Civil War" monument:

In 1993, these words were covered by a granite slab with a new inscription, saying the obelisk honors "Americans on both sides" who died and that the conflict "should teach us lessons for the future."

Which confused me. The sentiments by itself on the plaque do argue that it was relabeled more as a Civil War symbol. But it doesn't hide it's true intentions which does stand for white supremacy. (Leading to my final point)

Second, and this may sound incredibly naive, but I believed that the city and the people were taking this symbol and using it against the very people who it hoped to demean. I guess it's just my own ideology but I personally feel that I want to take these harmful and demeaning terms and use them to stand in defiance. Something like "cripple" I'll use myself. I do understand that's not what the majority think nor do I speak for anyone other then myself and other like minded people and I'm also not saying "cripple" is equivalent to any other word. I thought that the city also agreed with that sentiment and thus relabeled the monument.

I was wrong in my original thought process because of this new information in your post.

Finally, I feel like I only brushed on this only lightly in my other post but I do understand the whitewashing that went on with this monument. It does demean the people who suffered under racism in the city and it stood as a symbol of power for the KKK who terrorized the city. These are the valid reasons why I feel like the relabeling itself wasn't an entirely positive solution even with this previous ideology.

And it seems the city agrees going by your post.

Because those most affected weren't involved in the monument relabeling process in any part, I also entirely agree with the decision to take the monument out entirely because it stood to show the racism of the past.

I was 'torn' between the city's relabeling and what the monument still meant to those most negatively affected by it in my original post.

Sorry if I wasn't clear enough before.

 

[besada]

Which confused me. The sentiments by itself on the plaque do argue that it was relabeled more as a Civil War symbol.

They really don't. The new plaque doesn't mention the Civil War at all, which makes sense, since it's a monument for an event that happened after the Civil War was over. It has the date of a specific event, which takes place after the Civil War, and the amended plaque refers to that event, not the Civil War.

As it is now, the plaque commemorates both sides of the battle of Liberty Palace, and the problem with that is that one side of the conflict were people duly authorized by the people to govern, and the other were a paramilitary group attempting to seize a city by force because they lost an election, who had to be driven out of the city by Federal troops.

The very same legislature, which years later decided to put up a monument to this event, stripped blacks in Louisiana of their rights by instituting Jim Crow laws. When David Duke tried to get white supremacists to rally in New Orleans in 2004, this was the statue he chose as a backdrop.

 

[atr0cious]

Not simply a monument

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Davis_Parish,_Louisiana

My hometown!

Good on them for doing this. Now can we demolish the Alamo already?

 

[Tinfoilhatsron]

They really don't. The new plaque doesn't mention the Civil War at all, which makes sense, since it's a monument for an event that happened after the Civil War was over. It has the date of a specific event, which takes place after the Civil War, and the amended plaque refers to that event, not the Civil War.

As it is now, the plaque commemorates both sides of the battle of Liberty Palace, and the problem with that is that one side of the conflict were people duly authorized by the people to govern, and the other were a paramilitary group attempting to seize a city by force because they lost an election, who had to be driven out of the city by Federal troops.

The very same legislature, which years later decided to put up a monument to this event, stripped blacks in Louisiana of their rights by instituting Jim Crow laws. When David Duke tried to get white supremacists to rally in New Orleans in 2004, this was the statue he chose as a backdrop.

Ah. I get it now. Sorry I was just going by the quote in the OP and didn't google the plaque. Egg on my face. That's pretty much it then.