Future of Liberty Place monument to be considered (LA)

[struggle4progress]

10:49 a.m. CDT September 2, 2015

NEW ORLEANS -- Another public meeting will be held Wednesday to determine the future of another city monument, when the Vieux Carre Commission discusses the Liberty Place monument located on Iberville Street.

... The 5,000 White League members, predominately ex-Confederate Democrats who opposed Republican-led Reconstruction, including civil rights for blacks following the Civil War, led an armed uprising against the 3,500 member bi-racial Metropolitan Police force. The attempted coup left dozens dead, and briefly disposed the sitting governor, but helped to ultimately end Reconstruction. The White League uprising represents one of the largest killings of municipal police in American history.

A monument was erected in 1891, and listed the names of those White Leaguers killed in the uprising.

In 1934, a new plaque was put on the monument to further solidify the intentions behind the battle, reading, "McEnery and Penn having been elected governor and lieutenant-governor by the white people were duly installed by this overthrow of carpetbag government, ousting the usurpers, Governor Kellogg (white) and Lieutenant-Governor Antoine (colored). United States troops took over the state government and reinstated the usurpers but the national election of November 1876 recognized white supremacy in the South and gave us our state" ...

[struggle4progress]

1. Vieux Carre Commission calls for removal of Liberty Place monument

BY JAQUETTA WHITE
Sept. 02, 2015

... None of the commission members spoke before the unanimous vote, which followed comments from more than a dozen members of the public ...

“The literature that is on those monuments ... that’s the kind of literature that programmed and motivated that young boy that went into that church and killed those people,” Morgan said. “To be exposed to that, what is it going to do? It’s going to motivate them to have copycat killings of what took place in that church” ..

“I think it’s divisive,” Reeves said. “I believe it’s racist. It’s as racist as the Confederate flag is” ...

James Logan, vice president of the Louisiana Landmarks Society, .. argued in favor of keeping the monument where it is. He said the offensive language has been removed from it and it should be preserved as a milepost of the city’s history ...

http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/news/13339750-172/vieux-carre-commission-calls-for