Page 10 The Skanner May 3, 2017
News
New Orleans Begins Removing Racist Confederate Monuments
A
gainst a backdrop of death
threats and under the cover of
night, officials in New Orleans
have begun to dismantle Con-
federate monuments honoring racists
of the Civil War and Jim Crow eras of
United States history.
Workers removing the first of four
monuments wore bulletproof vests,
helmets and hid their faces. By 5:45
a.m. on April 24, the monument was
gone. Three more monuments are set
to disappear, but the city is not an-
nouncing publicly which statues will
be next and what date the removals will
take place.
“The removal of these statues sends
a clear and unequivocal message to the
people of New Orleans and the nation:
New Orleans celebrates our diversity,
inclusion and tolerance,” said New Or-
leans Mayor Mitch Landrieu in a state-
ment on April 24.
“
‘We can remember
these divisive chap-
ters in our history
in a museum or
other facility where
they can be put in
context’
At a press conference the morning
after the first monument, the Battle of
Liberty Place Memorial, was removed,
the Mayor stated that the other monu-
ments would be removed, “sooner rath-
er than later.”
“Relocating these Confederate mon-
uments is not about taking something
away from someone else. This is not
about politics, blame or retaliation.
This is not a naïve quest to solve all our
FARM SECURITY ADMINISTRATION/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
By Lauren Victoria Burke
NNPA Newswire Contributor
Inscription on “Battle of Liberty Place” monument, 1936, as photographed by Dorothea Lange.
problems at once,” the Mayor said. “This
is about showing the whole world that
we as a city and as a people are able to
acknowledge, understand, reconcile—
and most importantly—choose a better
future. We can remember these divi-
sive chapters in our history in a muse-
um or other facility where they can be
put in context—and that’s where these
statues belong.”
The Liberty Place Monument cele-
brated an 1874 insurrection of a group
of all-White, mostly Confederate vet-
erans calling themselves the Crescent
City White League. The group fought
against the racially integrated New Or-
leans Metropolitan Police. The monu-
ment honored members of the Crescent
City White League who died during the
battle.
In 1932, a plaque was added to put
an even finer point on the racist mo-
tivations behind the monument. The
plaque in part read that the battle was
fought to “overthrow of carpetbag gov-
ernment, ousting the usurpers” and
that “the national election of November
1876 recognized white supremacy in
the South and gave us our state.”
According to The New York Times,
ful part of our history,” wrote one com-
menter on Twitter.
Much social media discussion dealt
with the issue of whether negative
parts of American history should be
commemorated.
“When are we gonna put up some
Hitler statues, ya know, to remind us of
those dark times in History?” another
Twitter user stated.
Others debated the role of poor
White southerners who participated
in the Civil War.
“It was the North who refused to
recognize blacks as people, resulting
in the appalling 3/5 compromise. The
South obv wanted,” wrote Erin Greer of
Atlanta on Twitter.
A Twitter user, who identified him-
self as Clayton Barnes, responded:
“And the South just wanted to own
them, treat them terribly, and work
them like mules.”
Lauren Victoria Burke is a political an-
alyst who speaks on politics and African
American leadership. She is also a fre-
quent contributor to the NNPA Newswire
and BlackPressUSA.com.
“In 1993, the City Council voted to
remove the obelisk, but instead the
plaque was covered with a new one that
read: ‘In honor of those Americans on
both sides who died in the Battle of Lib-
erty Place’ and called it ‘a conflict of the
past that should teach us lessons for the
future.’”
The reactions on social
media to the monument’s
removal were quite ani-
mated.
“It is more nuanced
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