Mayor Landrieu Announces Future Plans for the Former Confederate Monument Locations
Ford Foundation partners with City to fund community-led process
NEW
ORLEANS – Today, Mayor
Landrieu announced the future plans for the former confederate monument locations
and a future course of action for the monuments following the removals in April
and May of 2017.
“Over the last few years,
momentum has gained across our nation to have a long overdue discussion on the
appropriateness of confederate monuments in our communities, and New Orleans
was at the forefront of this recent movement. We must never forget that these
monuments celebrate the 'Lost Cause of the Confederacy,' that they are a
perversion of history – placed in prominent locations in our communities to
paint a false narrative of our shared history. While it is hard for people to
see that truth, the history is clear – the four statues we removed in New
Orleans were erected to blind us from what really happened. These statues were
not designed to honor Robert E. Lee, P.G.T Beauregard, Jefferson Davis, or the
Battle of Liberty Place; but to perpetuate the Jim Crow era of terror and
disenfranchisement. These four statues sent a crystal clear message about who
was still in control, notwithstanding the fact that the Confederacy lost the
war,” said Mayor Landrieu. “We all
witnessed tremendous emotion and saw glimpses of hate that many of us believed
were from a bygone era of segregation and division, but in the end, truth
prevailed. The courts ruled in our favor, and we did what many thought
impossible. I am proud we were able to finish what so many before us had worked
so long and so hard to accomplish. We will never forget their courage to challenge the status quo and call for the monuments' removal.
Their sacrifice laid a strong foundation for our actions.”
WHAT’S
ALREADY HAPPENED
To remove the four
confederate monuments from prominent public spaces in New Orleans, the City
followed a two-year process, which included multiple public hearings, approvals
from three separate community-led commissions, and a vote by the New Orleans
City Council. Over that two-year process, the City was sued repeatedly, and City employees and contractors received violent threats, challenges which ultimately
prolonged the process and increased removal costs.
In
December 2015, Mayor Landrieu signed an ordinance calling for the removal and
relocation of the four prominent confederate monuments displayed
publicly in New Orleans, citing that these statues did not
reflect the diversity, values, or full history of the City and should be
removed. During a Special Meeting of the New Orleans City Council, members of
the City Council voted 6-1 in support of Ordinance Calendar No. 31,082, which
declared that the four confederate monuments are
nuisances pursuant to Section 146-611 of the Code of the City of New Orleans
and should be removed from their prominent locations in New Orleans.
The removal of the statues followed a final decision on
March 8, 2017 by the United States District Court of the Eastern District of
Louisiana affirming the City’s legal right to remove the statue. In May 2017,
Civil District Court Kern Reese denied a third request for preliminary
injunction specifically confirming City’s right to move the Beauregard statue.
Removed beginning on April 24, 2017, the Battle of Liberty Place
monument was erected by the Crescent City White League to remember the deadly
insurrection led by white supremacists against the City’s racially integrated
police department and government. The Jefferson Davis statue on Jefferson Davis
Parkway was removed beginning on May 11, 2017. The P.G.T. Beauregard equestrian
statue on Esplanade Avenue at the entrance to City Park was removed beginning
on May 16, 2017. The process to remove the Robert E. Lee statue at Lee Circle
began on May 18, 2017.
On May
19, 2017, the Landrieu Administration removed the Robert E. Lee statue,
concluding a two-year process to remove four confederate monuments that
prominently celebrated the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy.” The removed statues
were erected decades after the Civil War to celebrate the “Cult of the Lost
Cause,” a movement recognized across the South as celebrating and promoting
white supremacy. After the statue removals and the mayor’s speech “Truth,”
there has been a long
overdue discussion on the appropriateness of confederate monuments in our
communities and many cities have taken similar steps.
WHAT
IS GOING IN THE PLACE OF THE FORMER MONUMENTS
Before the end of the
Landrieu administration, the City will perform beautification work at the site
of the former Robert E. Lee statue and will leave the column that housed the
statue intact, and will erect an American flag at the former site of the
Jefferson Davis statue.
The City Park Improvement
Association will remove the pedestal and perform beautification work at the
site of the former P.G.T. Beauregard statue.
The area that formerly housed the Battle of Liberty Place monument
will remain as is.
Following the removal of
monuments, Mayor Landrieu asked partners and funders around the country to
support us in this work. The Ford
Foundation, a consistent partner in the rebuilding of New Orleans, stepped
up again and committed to help fund a community-based effort, in partnership
with the Foundation for Louisiana, that would help recommend what would go in
these public spaces.
Today, Mayor Landrieu
announced that the Foundation for Louisiana, along with Colloqate Design and
other community partners, is partnering with the City to conduct a public
process to recommend what should be placed at the former site of the Robert E.
Lee statue long-term. The process is expected to continue through fall 2018. This
effort is funded by the generosity of the Ford Foundation.
Colloqate, along with other community partners, will
organize, design, facilitate, implement, and document the process to ensure
that New Orleans residents can help recommend how these public spaces are
redeveloped.
Foundation for Louisiana CEO
& President Flozell Daniels, Jr. said, “Foundation for Louisiana is excited
about this opportunity to join those that came before us, who tirelessly, over
decades, led the charge in calling for the removal of confederate statues in
our city. Equally important is the commitment to a full and fair reckoning
with these symbols that supports a radical reimagining of this and other
important public spaces. The ongoing engagement is the first step in an
intentional collective process to affirm the significant contributions of every
New Orleanian and provides a historic chance to remember and to transform for
the better.”
Colloqate’s process, called Paper Monuments, consists of a
series of opportunities, events, and interventions designed to elevate the
voices of the people of New Orleans, as a critical process to creating symbols
of our city that represent our collective vision, and to honor the erased
histories of the people, events, movements, and places that have made up the
past 300 years as we look to the future. Modeled on the work of Philadelphia’s
Monuments Lab, Paper Monuments combines public pedagogy and participatory
design to expand our collective understanding of New Orleans, and asks our
citizens to answer the question: What is an appropriate monument to our city
today?
Foundation for Louisiana will provide an update on the
status of the process by the end of June 2018. Following June 2018, the
Foundation and Colloqate will continue to provide updates on a monthly basis. For
more details, visit www.papermonuments.org or follow @papermonumentsnola on social
media.
WHERE
WILL THE MONUMENTS GO
The City will not issue a
Request for Proposals (RFP) to solicit proposals on the future locations of the four removed
monuments before the Landrieu administration ends.
The
Landrieu administration will defer to the next Mayor and City Council on
recommending future locations of the four removed monuments. Currently, the monuments are crated and being stored in City-owned warehouses or secure facilities.
Mayor
Landrieu continued, “The
removal of the monuments took much longer and was harder than ever anticipated.
Following the removal, the city needed a moment to pause and reflect. The
process to relocate the four removed monuments should not be rushed. Therefore,
we trust that the next administration and City Council will have the
appropriate time to begin and finish such a sensitive process.”
HISTORY OF THE STATUES AND THE “LOST CAUSE OF THE CONFEDERACY”
The four confederate monuments in New Orleans were erected between
1884 and 1915, after Reconstruction and during the era of Jim Crow laws. Three
depict individuals deeply influential within the Confederacy, and the fourth honors
an insurrection of mostly confederate veterans who battled against the City's
racially integrated police and state militia.
The Robert E. Lee, the Jefferson Davis, and the P.G.T. Beauregard
monuments were erected to promote the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy.” Emerging
at the end of the Civil War, the “Lost Cause” was known for espousing a number
of principles, including that the war was fought over states’ rights and not
slavery, that slavery was a benevolent institution that offered Christianity to
African “savages”, and that the war was a just cause in the eyes of God.
The Battle of Liberty Place monument on
Iberville Street, was erected in 1891 (originally on Canal Street) in honor of
the Battle of Liberty Place, an 1874 insurrection of the Crescent City White
League, a group of all white, mostly confederate veterans, who battled against
the City’s racially integrated police and state militia. The monument was meant
to honor the members of the White League who died during the battle. In 1932,
the City added a plaque to the monument, which stated that the statue
commemorated the “overthrow of carpetbag government, ousting the usurpers…and
the national election of November 1876 recognized white supremacy in the South
and gave us our state." In 1989, construction on Canal Street forced the
removal of the monument, but it was relocated to its past location on Iberville
Street in 1993. At that time, the 1932 white supremacist plaque was covered
with a new slab of granite honoring "those Americans on both sides of the
conflict who died.”
The Jefferson Davis statue on
Jefferson Davis Parkway was erected in 1911 in honor of Jefferson Davis, the
president of the Confederacy. It was commissioned by the Jefferson Davis
Memorial Association.
The Robert E. Lee statue at Lee
Circle was erected in 1884 in honor of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate
General for the Army of Northern Virginia, at the site formerly known as
“Tivoli Circle.” Despite the fact that Lee has no significant ties to New
Orleans, this monument was commissioned by The Robert E. Lee Monumental
Association of New Orleans.
The P.G.T. Beauregard equestrian statue on
Esplanade Avenue at the entrance to City Park was erected in 1915 in honor of
Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, a General of the Confederate army who led
the attack on Fort Sumter, which marked the beginning of the Civil War. The
Beauregard National Register of Historic Places nomination says that “the General
Beauregard Equestrian Statue…is one of three major Louisiana monuments
representing what is known by historians as the 'Cult of the Lost Cause.' Statues of this type are tangible symbols of a state of mind which was powerful
and pervasive throughout the South well into the twentieth century and some
would say even today.”
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About
Foundation for Louisiana
The mission of Foundation
for Louisiana is to invest in people and practices that reduce vulnerability
and build stronger, more sustainable communities statewide. Since its founding in 2005, Foundation for
Louisiana has invested $41.5 million in more than 200 mission-critical
nonprofit organizations working throughout the state towards rebuilding a
better Louisiana.
About
Colloqate Design
Colloqate Design is a multidisciplinary Non Profit Design
Justice practice focused on expanding community access to, and building power
through the design of social, civic, and cultural spaces. Our mission is
to intentionally organize, advocate, and design spaces of racial, social and
cultural equity.
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