(CNN)A large crowd broke into cheers Thursday after the New Orleans City Council voted to remove four monuments to the Confederacy from prominent places in the city.
The 6-1 vote means officials will take down statues of Gens. Robert E. Lee, P.G.T. Beauregard and Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy. An obelisk dedicated to the Battle of Liberty Place will also go.
It's one of the strongest gestures yet by an American city to remove symbols of Confederate history, following a trend in many Southern states to take down the Confederate battle flag.
Historic societies in the 300-year-old city supported the removal of the monuments, and the proposal was introduced by a majority of City Council members.
New Orleans' mayor wants Confederate monuments removed 02:21
Mayor Mitch Landrieu described the move as a "courageous decision to turn a page on our divisive past and chart the course for a more inclusive future."
Council member Nadine Ramsey said New Orleans needed to stop living "underneath the shadows" of monuments to people who supported slavery.
"We need not honor these individuals and moments from the past that do not meet our standards of decency, equality and nondiscrimination," she said.
Council member Stacy Head cast the only vote against taking down the monuments, saying the action would create more division and not solve the city's real problems.
"It will not improve the socioeconomic balance of the city," she said. "If it would make the city more color blind, if it would create more balance, I would sacrifice almost any physical object to get us to that point."
Landrieu said the church slayings in Charleston, South Carolina, moved him to take action.
He'd been thinking about having the symbols of the Confederacy removed for about a year, when a white gunman in South Carolina massacred black worshippersat Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal on June 17.Dylann Roof, the shooter, venerated the Confederate battle flag. And soon after the shooting, calls to remove it from that state's Capitol grounds intensified.
6 photos: Evolution of the Confederate flag
A week later, Landrieu announced the planned ordinance.
He addressed the City Council on Thursday, saying that New Orleans has many monuments, but he wanted these four removed because they are the most important.
"This is the right thing to do at the right time," Landrieu said.
"As we approach the Tricentennial, New Orleanians have the power and the right to correct historical wrongs and move the City forward. The ties that bind us together as a city are stronger than what keeps us apart," he said, according to a City Hall news release.
The ordinance approved by the council declares the Confederate monuments "nuisances" and called for them to be removed. The statues are unconstitutional, said the proposed ordinance marked Calendar No. 31,082.
In July, the city called for 60 days of public meetings to review the proposed ordinance.
Landrieu requested the vote to banish specters of racism. But opponents of the plan steered away from any racial argument.
Keeping the figures of the Confederacy was not about preserving racial injustice, they said, but about honoring figures who fought to protect the city.
New Orleans, which was the largest city in the Confederacy, fell to Union forces in 1862 and was under federal occupation beyond the Civil War's end in 1865.
7 comments:
Wiping out historical monuments? Did they all yell "Allahu Akbar"?
I know. They are also going to take away OJ Simpson's Heisman Trophy.
The word is they are going to set up a mosque on the site.
And, of course, this will do wonders for the murder rate.
I wish they'd stop Stalin and get on with it
History did not happen here !
Fuck, why not just invite the Taliban or ISIS to blow them up. They are good at that. Oh wait.
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