New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu is calling for the relocation of four statues memorializing the Confederacy, a move that Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) wants to block.
The statues and memorials honor Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, P.G.T. Beauregard, and the Battle of Liberty Place, a rebellion that took place in the late 1800s with Confederate veterans fighting against Reconstruction officials. The 35-foot obelisk was once, The New York Times says, a "rallying point for the Ku Klux Klan and for one of its Grand Wizards, David Duke." Last Thursday, the Historic District Landmarks Commission and the Human Relations Commission of New Orleans voted to remove the statues, and the City Council could decide as early as next month if Landrieu has the authority to go forward with the removal. "Supremacy may be a part of our past, but it should not be part of our future," the mayor said in a statement. Landrieu's press secretary said the mayor began looking into moving the statues in January, several months before nine people were shot and killed in a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina. The shooting sparked a nationwide debate about the place of the Confederate flag and memorials to the Confederacy in modern America.
Jindal's communications director, Mike Reed, told NBC News that the governor and Republican presidential candidate "opposes the tearing down of these historical statues and he has instructed his staff to determine the legal authority he has as Governor to stop it." In June, Jindal was asked by the Louisiana state NAACP to remove the Confederate flag from state vanity license plates. He told The Times-Picayune it's "possible that the Legislature will look at this issue next time they are in session," but added he's "tired of The New York Times and others in D.C. miles and miles away thinking they can make these decisions for the states, or assuming that everyone in the south is racist."
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