Confederate monument removed from City Hall in Lafayette, La.
26th July 2021 · 0 Comments
By Kai Davis
Contributing Writer
After 99 years, the city of Lafayette, Louisiana has removed the confederate monument of Gen. Alfred Mouton, a six-year call by community activists. The Jim Crow era statue was taken down on July 17, 2021.
“Community members have been longing in getting the statue removed and thought time and time again that it would not happen. But they kept advocating, they kept pushing and they were successful,” said Lecia Brooks, The Southern Poverty Law Center chief of staff.
“We know that this movement is driven by communities, so the Gen. Mouton statue coming down is further evidence that communities will insist on and have a greater say on what happens in their communities,” Brooks added.
The stone statue of the confederate general, who is a descendant to the city’s founding family, was lifted by a crane and relocated along with several other confederate statues that have been taken down within the year.
Amid national calls for racial justice over the past few months, more than 130 confederate monuments across several states have been taken down. New Orleans was the first to remove four Confederate statues in 2017.
Mouton, fully known as Jean-Jacques-Alfred-Alexander Mouton, was a slave owner who helped train a local “Vigilante Committee” under the pretext of fighting crime but essentially administered their own brand of ‘justice,’ which included public whippings, lynchings and exiling Black residents who were deemed ‘undesirables.’
While in 1980, former Mayor Kenny Brown wanted to remove the statue, although it was donated to Lafayette from the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1922, and has stood there since. But the United Daughters of the Confederacy filed a motion in court seeking to uphold a 1980 final injunction securing Mouton’s public place.
Alternatively, the removal cleared on July 16 once the United Daughters of the Confederacy agreed to a settlement in which the city would pay for the removal and transportation to a new site.
Many confederate monuments remain a reminder of the pain and hardships Black communities faced in the South during Jim Crow. These monuments serve as a constant reminder of racial injustice and the mistreatment that enslaved African Americans faced.
“When you have movements like this, they bring the truth to light, specifically the truth behind who’s honored and venerated in society. It’s now forever revealed who he [Gen. Mouton] was, what he did and how inhumane he treated Black folks,” Brooks said.
With a push for removal of a Confederate general, it brought about the creation of Move the Mindset and various groups to bring attention to the statue’s history.
“I feel like it was the defacing of that statue that moved the city council and mayor to move this fast, due to fear of something worse happening like a smaller August 12 in Charlottesville or the multiple statue protest in New Orleans,” said Jay Clarke, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and attendee to the removal, in a statement. “It’s good and shows the community will move past a small part of Jim Crow but it took a lot of work from Move the Mindset to make that happen, and that’s a shame,” Clarke added.
For many, the removal of the confederate monument was long-overdue as community members awaited the day their hard work came true.
“I think the statue should have been taken down years ago, so we can move forward as one nation of people regardless of color,” said Howard Rollins Jr., a Louisiana native and activist advocate.
This article originally published in the July 26, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
