Emotions ran high today in New Orleans as the City Council prepared to debate the removal of prominent Confederate monuments along some of city’s busiest thoroughfares.
The Associated Press reports City Hall became the scene of competing opinions over the monuments. The City Council set aside time to let the public voice feelings over a proposal to remove four monuments linked to Confederate history.
Before the meeting, a handful of people held Confederate flags in support of the statues while a larger group gathered next to them and held signs demanding removal. The monuments in question include imposing statues of Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard, Confederate generals, and a dedication to Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president.
The council has scheduled a vote on the removal plan for next week.
The Confederate-flag bearers included a couple of African-Americans, including Arlene Barnum, a 61-year-old woman who said she traveled to New Orleans from Oklahoma to oppose the removal of the monuments. She said she had ancestors who were both slaves and Confederate fighters with Louisiana ties.
“This is civil rights for the Confederacy,” she said.
In the background, as she spoke, protesters shouted, “Take down Robert E. Lee!”
“It represents the history,” she said in defense of the statues. “It’s no different than me doing a family tree history and going to a family reunion and I have to take out pages because someone’s going to get mad because they don’t want to find out their daddy is not their real daddy.”
Among those demanding the statues be brought down was George Mahdi, a 69-year-old African-American community activist from New Orleans. Both his grandparents, he said, came from plantations in their day.
“It’s self-evident: Those statues are offensive to me and my race,” he said. “They represent white supremacy.”
Mayor Mitch Landrieu first called for taking down the monuments following the June mass shooting at the African-American Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, by a white supremacist that left nine parishioners dead. Although a majority of the City Council in New Orleans has indicated it favors removing the statues, at least two members recently came out against the method by which the monuments were to be removed and asked for more public discussion.
