|
| FILE -In this Sept. 2, 2015 photo, the Robert E. Lee Monument is seen in Lee Circle in New Orleans. On Thursday, Dec. 17, 2015, the City Council is set to vote on an ordinance to remove four monuments. A majority of council members and the mayor support the move, which would be one of the strongest gestures yet by American city to sever ties with Confederate history. |
NEW ORLEANS
(AP) -- New Orleans is poised to make a sweeping break with its
Confederate past as city leaders decide whether to remove prominent
monuments from some of its busiest streets.
With
support from Mayor Mitch Landrieu, a majority on the City Council
appears ready to take down four monuments, including a towering statue
of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Their ordinance has sparked
passionate responses for and against these symbols, and both sides will
get one more say at a special council meeting before Thursday's vote.
If approved, this would be one of the most sweeping gestures yet by an American city to sever ties with Confederate history.
"This
has never happened before," said Charles Kelly Barrow,
commander-in-chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. "I've never
heard of a city trying to sweep (away) all Confederate monuments."
Geographers
have identified at least 872 parks, natural features, schools, streets
and other locations named for major Confederate leaders in 44 states,
according to a mapping project. Barrow said more than a thousand statues
and monuments and countless plaques also honor Confederate battles and
heroes.
What's happening in New Orleans
reflects a new effort to rethink all this history: Confederate
iconography is being questioned across the nation, and in some places
falling from public view.
"It is a grand scale
of symbolic rewriting of the landscape," said Derek Alderman, a
geographer at the University of Tennessee who is mapping Confederate
symbolism nationwide. "It certainly represents a wholesale
re-questioning of the legitimacy of remembering the Confederacy so
publicly."
Barrow said he and others will sue if necessary to keep the monuments where they are.
"I'm
going to do everything in my power to take on these people," Barrow
said. "I'm not going to let this happen under my administration."
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. "Supremacy may be a
part of our past, but it should not be part of our future," he declared.
Anti-Confederate
sentiment has grown since then around the country, along with protests
against police mistreatment, as embodied by the Black Lives Matter
movement.
South Carolina and Alabama removed
Confederate battle flags from their Capitol grounds after the shooting.
The University of Mississippi took down the state flag because it
includes the Confederate emblem. The University of Texas demoted its
statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis to a history museum.
In New Orleans, the mayor asked the council to take a closer look at monuments that have long been part of the city's landscape.
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. Four sets of stone staircases, aligned with the
major compass points, ascend the mound.
Above
it all, the Virginian stands in his military uniform, with his arms
folded and his gaze set firmly on the North - the embodiment of the
"Cult of the Lost Cause" southerners invoked to justify continued white
power after the Civil War.
Also up for removal
is 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 at 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."
The city has estimated it will cost $144,000 to remove the monuments, and says an anonymous donor will pay that cost.
The shootings in Charleston have made these lessons take on new relevance, Alderman said.
"There
are a lot of people making a direct connection between a white
supremacy group and the effect on African-Americans," said the
geographer, who's been tracking many examples of "a questioning of the
authority that the Confederacy has been given on the landscape."
Popular
culture, Alderman said, is trying to establish how to rewrite "American
and Southern public memory in a way that makes room for both
perspectives on heritage, and at the same time is fair and just to
African-American perspectives that historically have not been
recognized."
The Memphis city council is
trying something similar, voting in August to remove an equestrian
statue of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who also traded slaves and led
the Ku Klux Klan. Memphis even wants to remove the graves of Forrest and
his wife, who lay buried under the statue.
Tennessee's historic preservation agency is weighing approval - a process Louisiana could turn to as well.
Rather
than removing this history, some advocate adding more monuments or
markers, to promote a broader understanding of the past.
Clancy
Dubos, a New Orleans columnist and chairman of a weekly newspaper,
suggested turning Lee Circle into "Generals Circle" by adding a statue
of Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, and making Jefferson Davis
Parkway into "Presidents Avenue" by adding a statue of Abraham Lincoln.
"Historic
places, including the Confederate memorials in contention, can be
catalysts for a necessary and worthwhile civic discussion," said
Stephanie Meeks, president and CEO of the National Trust for Historic
Preservation, in a statement. "We believe we actually need more
historic sites properly interpreted, to help us contextualize and come
to terms with this difficult past."
