Council votes in favor of removing Confederate monuments
21st December 2015 · 0 Comments
By Michael Patrick Welch
Contributing Writer
In a six-to-one vote on Dec. 17, New Orleans City Council decided to relocate four Confederate, reconstruction-era monuments. The four “nuisance” monuments—commemorating Robert E. Lee (Lee Circle), Jefferson Davis (Jeff Davis Parkway), P.G.T. Beauregard (outside City Park), and The Battle of Liberty Place (Iberville Street) — will soon be moved from their current positions of reverence into a city-owned warehouse and, eventually, to as-yet-undetermined public places of study.
The atmosphere in City Council chambers both before and after the public comments and the vote, was decidedly intense, with a third of the audience comprised of Black men and women old enough to have lived through legal lynching, segregation, and the tumultuous Civil Rights era. One man handed out t-shirts featuring a Black male urinating on a Confederate flag. A woman distributed “Kiss White Supremacy Goodbye” cookies.
Council President Jason Williams started the proceedings by reminding the capacity crowd in attendance, “We are here today to listen to each other, persuade each other and to communicate — but this is not a rally.” It seemed many did not hear this warning, as Williams was forced to slam down his gavel dozens of time to quiet the passionate capacity crowd, which grew more boisterous as the hours and public comments passed.
This past June, Mayor Mitch Landrieu requested City Council begin the process of relocating the statues to, as he put it, “right old injuries that didn’t heal right in the first place.” Landrieu was on hand to start the meeting with an appeal to the council to move the statues. “Their place of prominence and reverence misrepresents us as a city… The Confederacy was on the wrong side of history and humanity,” the mayor said, reminding the crowd that the Confederate army “fought against the United States of America,” and that the four statues were initially erected to “cast a shadow of oppression… These men should be remembered but not revered.”
Landrieu went on to mention how poverty and crime tie in to those oppressive symbols. He also publicly hoped the statues would not be around during New Orleans’ upcoming tricentennial celebration.
For over an hour, citizens both for and against the monuments’ removal were provided a chance to make final remarks. Rick McGregor from the pro-monument Monumental Task Force, began with the much-reiterated point, “You can’t just erase history,” un-ironically adding, “You can’t just hide it in a museum.”
Others from the anti-monument side went on to point out how the statues were initially put up to falsify and distort history to make the war’s losers seem like winners.
The Rev. Melanie Ensminger got up and discussed how local clergy had supported the initial building of the monuments. She then proceeded to produce a four-page list of modern local clergy now standing for their removal. Later in the proceedings, Pastor Sean Anglim of First Grace Church brought Ensminger and a large group of other clergy to the podium to collectively decry the “Jim Crow monuments.”
As the chambers grew more crowded, Council President Jason Williams felt the need to stop the clock several times to remind the crowd that outbursts would get them removed from the chambers. When several members of the press (including this reporter) left the chambers to refill parking meters, we were told it was too crowded to go back inside, and were made to wait upwards of a half hour to return to our seats. In the meantime, almost a dozen people were escorted out for shouting. President Williams took another moment to apologize to anyone who had been insulted or threatened, but the crowd continued to grow more vocal.
In the midst of the proceedings, councilperson Stacy Head (the council’s eventual one ‘no’ vote) interrupted to plead again for compromise. Head explained to everyone how emotionally trying this process had been, and pointedly asked the Mayor to take a moment to answer the question, “Where are we going with this?”
The Mayor, clearly agitated, accepted Head’s challenge and returned to the podium. Landrieu said he was happy to answer the question and also to “eradicate the myths surrounding this process, and your participation in them.”
Landrieu addressed the accusations that the monuments’ removal has been a “top down” approach, and that he had dictated their removal. “There has been a lot of public debate on this issue,” Landrieu pointed out. “Lots of articles, and public meetings leading up to this one. We have dealt with this in a more transparent way than any other city that has gone through this process.”
Those against the monuments’ removal have continuously posited that “no one cared about the monuments” until Landrieu suggested their removal back in June. The Mayor’s detractors accused him of being divisive and causing tension where there previously was none—to which Landrieu responded, “I didn’t create this tension; slavery did. The Civil War did. This process of removing these monuments began in the 1960s,” he told Head. “You got this wrong.”
As Landrieu continued, Head continuously interrupted him, asking that he simply answer her question regarding how many other monuments and street names will go through this same process.
“I don’t know where this is going to end,” Landrieu finally admitted. “But I know where it’s going to begin.” Landrieu then requested that, going forward, the council form a new commission for the creation of a Civil War park, and formulate new rules for how to handle new cases going forth. “Though neither you nor I will be around to deal with this,” Landrieu reminded Head.
“Thank you Jesus!” she responded.
Following public comments, each council-member took a moment to speak. Nadine Ramsey made it clear she would vote for the monuments’ relocation, before councilperson James Gray made a passionate speech decrying the monuments. Like many others on the council, Gray began by saying, “That anyone would think Landrieu told us to care about this is insulting… Black leaders have been talking to me about this issue since I joined city government in 1977… I am the descendent of slaves — not free people of color, slaves — so I don’t need Mitch Landrieu to remind me to care about this.”
As far as the importance of symbols, Gray said, “We started this very meeting with a pledge of allegiance to a symbol. Symbols matter.” He went on to explain that the statues distort history: “They are part of a myth made up to cover up a lie.”
Councilmember Latoya Cantrell had, as of late, flip-flopped on the issue she had initially supported. “I have felt disrespected by this process,” she said, again claiming the Mayor took a “top down” approach. “Despite Gray’s assertion that he’d been hearing about this issue from his constituents for roughly 50 years, Cantrell reiterated, “No one cared about this until Mitch Landrieu told us to.”
With the crowd growing hostile, and Black citizens hurling racial epithets at her, Cantrell admitted, “This is going to happen. It is going to happen…but we need a more inclusive process.” When Cantrell stated, “I want to talk about how we got here,” an older Black audience member shouted back, “On a slave ship!”
At that point, the crowd began chanting, “VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!”
But they had still yet to hear from longtime council member Stacy Head. “Some people will leave here today feeling they’ve won, and others will leave feeling they’ve lost,” she began. “But they are both wrong; today we are all losers.” As the crowd booed and jeered, Head added, “[Moving these monuments] just creates pain and a sense of loss, when we should be creating healing. Compromise wasn’t given a chance with this issue.”
As Head continued, well-known civil rights activist and former Freedom Rider Jerome Smith was one of several more escorted from the council chambers.
And then it was President Jason Williams’ turn to speak. Williams began by explaining that, instead of his City Council pin, today he wore his American flag pin, “because this issue isn’t about New Orleans, it’s about America,” he said. “In America, we honor American soldiers. But the Confederate army armed themselves against the United States of America.” Williams argued that the monuments aren’t even about the Civil War, “They are about [rebelling against] the Reconstruction. They are about Jim Crow. At the time the statues were erected, lynchings were sanctioned by the same people who sanctioned these statues.”
“I know what it means to look up at those statues and feel less than,” said Williams, before the council voted six to one to remove them from their places of honor.
This article originally published in the December 21, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
