New Orleans sued over planned removal of statue honoring Confederate general

A Confederate plate in New Orleans.
(Image credit: Thomas Watkins/AFP/Getty Images)

A New Orleans resident is suing the city in order to prevent officials from "touching, removing, or doing anything" with a statue of Confederate general Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard.

The monument is one of four honoring Confederate military leaders and battles that the city has said it will take down; one statue commemorating the Battle of Liberty Place has already been removed, by contractors wearing tactical vests and masks working in the middle of the night. Richard Marksbury, a founder of a group that opposes the removal of Confederate statues, told reporters Monday the Beauregard statue at the entrance to City Park is on private, not city land, and thus cannot be brought down. A judge has rejected an immediate block of the removal, and a hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.