Five Places Where Confederate Monuments Recently Disappeared (or Soon Will)
By Jason Daley
smithsonian.com
an hour ago
... there are about 1,500 Confederate monuments on display United States based on federal, state, and local data compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Just physically removing them would take years and millions of dollars, and overcoming public opposition has made the process even slower. But activists are making headway ...
In December 2015, the New Orleans city council voted to remove four major city-owned Confederate monuments. They voted to remove monuments of General Robert E. Lee and General P.G.T. Beauregard, along with a statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America. Also on the chopping block: a plaque honoring the “Battle of Liberty Place,” an 1874 clash in which members of the White Citizens League battled the municipal police, effectively ending Reconstruction and implementing segregation in the city. But there was a problem, reports the Associated Press: because the city didn't own the equipment to remove the monuments, it hired a contractor, H&O Investments to do the job.
While H&O workers were taking measurements of the monuments in early January, white supremacists and Confederate supporters set about sabotaging the project. Very specific threats were phoned into the company, and the owner’s Lamborghini was set on fire near his office in Baton Rouge. H&O dropped out of the project, and the city was unable to find another contractor ...
The removal is now tied up in two lawsuits in federal court attempting to prevent, in the words of the plaintiffs' filing, the “needless damage to or destruction of four priceless works of art that have graced the New Orleans cityscape for more than a century” ...
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/five-confederate-monuments-have-recently-disappeared-or-soon-will-180960173/?no-ist
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