Confederate statue vandalized in New Orleans
7th May 2018 · 0 Comments
More than a year after the City of New Orleans removed four Confederate-era monuments from public spaces, another monument of a Confederate soldier has been vandalized in Mid-City.
The incident comes a year after the City took down the Battle of Liberty Place monument and statues of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Confederate Generals P.G.T. Beauregard and Robert E. Lee.
FOX 8 News reported last week that New Orleans police officers are investigating a criminal mischief incident that involved the vandalism of a statue near the intersection of Jefferson Davis Parkway and Canal Street.
A statue of Charles Didier Dreux, the first Confederate field officer killed in the Civil War, was spray-painted with vulgar language Tuesday.
People stopped by to take a look at the sprayed-on message.
“If he’s a Confederate soldier or someone who stands for those types of things, it’s a valid statement. I think if we’re going to be anti-that movement we should do it totally and take down all of the statues that are related to the Confederacy,” Charly Wohlert told FOX 8 News.
“The people who go and do this stuff are ridiculous. How can you change history by tearing down statues?” Charles Washmon said.
A passerby decided to cover the profanities on the monument.
“I was going down Canal and I saw this obscenity in red ink on this monument here and I had a tarp in the back of my truck and I said, ‘Let me cover this up until it’s addressed by someone.’ I don’t know if, there’s a school over there… so I just took it upon myself to do that,” Jerry Fletcher told FOX 8 News.
Investigators are working to determine when the vandalism occurred.
After it began taking down the four Confederate-era statues last spring, the Landrieu administration said it would create a panel to determine whether any other monuments needed to be removed from public spaces and to decide what should be done with the previously occupied public spaces.
The Landrieu administration later reneged on the idea of forming a panel to identify other monuments that needed to be removed and said recently that it would leave the fate of the vacant public spaces to the Cantrell administration and a foundation.
Meanwhile, Take ‘Em Down NOLA, one of the main groups calling for the removal of the Confederate monuments, has identified more than 100 monuments, street names and school names that promote white supremacy and slavery that should be changed or taken down by the City of New Orleans.
In 2015, seven people were arrested during a TEDN protest in the French Quarter that sought to remove the statue of former U.S. President Andrew Jackson that is perched prominently above Jackson Square.
Other monuments and markers on the TEDN list include the statue of former slaveowner John McDonogh in Lafayette Square, a statue of New Orleans founder Sieur de Bienville, Robert E. Lee Boulevard and Jefferson Davis Parkway.
The group, led by Malcolm Suber and Michael “Quess” Moore, has repeatedly called upon the Landrieu administration to finish the job it started in 2017 when it removed the four Confederate-era monuments from public spaces.
The Dreux bust was closest to the Jefferson Davis monument.
The statue has been vandalized at least twice before.
Anyone with information on this incident is asked to contact the First District at (504) 658-6010.
In a letter to New Orleans Mayor-elect LaToya Cantrell dated April 25, Louisiana Lt. Governor Billy Nungesser suggests moving the statues of Robert E. Lee. P.G.T. Beauregard and Jefferson Davis to Houmas House Plantation in Ascension Parish, The New Orleans Advocate reported Wednesday.
“I believe that this is an ideal place for the three important monuments to be displayed, and the history and significance of each told,” Nungesser told Cantrell in the letter.
Nungesser is a relative of the plantation’s owner, Kevin Kelly, who told The New Orleans Advocate that his blood ties with the lieutenant governor has nothing to do with his offer to take the monuments.
However, standing in the way of the plan is a committee formed to advise Cantrell on the future of the monuments that includes businessman Frank Stewart, one of the biggest opponents of the City’s plan to remove the monuments from public spaces last spring.
“[A]t this point in time, the committee feels the monuments ought to stay in New Orleans,” Stewart told The New Orleans Advocate Tuesday.
In a recent interview with Gambit Weekly, Cantrell said she would strongly consider the committee’s recommendations, including a proposal to move the three monuments to Greenwood Cemetery in New Orleans, which is home to the remains of a number of Confederate soldiers.
“That is where the (Confederate) soldiers are,” she said. “And … if they wanted to put those (leaders) with their soldiers, I think it just makes sense. Reverence, you know, matters. And I just think that the people who care about them — just like those who cared about taking them down, their voices were heard, and the statues came down — it should be the people who care about them the most deciding where they should go.”
Stewart told The New Orleans Advocate that the committee is also considering moving Jefferson Davis’ statue to Davis’ former home, Beauvoir, in Biloxi, Miss. or moving Davis to the Confederal Memorial Hall Museum, which is located just a block from Lee Circle in New Orleans, where the Robert E. Lee monument once stood.
Nungesser’s letter does not make reference to the fourth monument removed from a public space in New Orleans, the Battle of Liberty Place monument, which commemorates a violent Reconstruction-era battle between whites, many of them former Confederate soldiers, and an integrated police force in New Orleans. The group of white supremacists sought to overthrow Louisiana’s governor in the bloody conflict.
The committee was expected to present its recommendations to Cantrell at a meeting Wednesday night but no timeline was offered for when the Cantrell administration might make a final decision on the fate of the three Confederate monuments.
This article originally published in the May 7, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
