State Senate cmte. rejects monuments bill

11th April 2016   ·   0 Comments

Those hoping to prevent the City of New Orleans and other local governments throughout the state from removing historical monuments from public spaces without the approval of the State Legislature saw those hopes dashed when a state Senate committee rejected the bill last week.

The rejection of the bill authored by state Sen. Beth Mizell, R-Franklinton, was the latest in a series of defeats suffered by supporters of four Confederate-era monuments in New Orleans. After the New Orleans City Council voted in December to remove the Liberty Monument and three statues of Confederate leaders from public spaces, the federal court and civil court sided with the City of New Orleans on the issue.

The Advocate first reported that the bill, which would have required a commission to approve the removal of historical monuments or statues before local governments could do so, did not survive a vote in a Senate committee hearing.

The vote of 5-4 in the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee was strictly along party lines, with only state Democrats voting against the bill and Republicans in favor.

Among those who spoke in favor of the bill was former state Sen. Elbert Guillory, who likened efforts to remove the Confederate statues to efforts to do away with Nazi-era monuments and the destruction of ancient monuments in the Middle East by groups like ISIS.

“There is no such thing as good history and bad history,” Guillory told the committee. “There is just history.”

Jonathan Maki, a member of the pro-monuments group Save Our Circle, said the removal of the monuments could open up a can of worms and pave the way for other historically significant monuments to be taken down in New Orleans, including those of U.S. Sen. Henry Clay who owned slaves and New Orleans founder Jean-Baptiste de Le Moyne, who promoted slavery.

“The Ursuline nuns in New Orleans owned slaves,” Maki told the committee last week. “Should we close down their convent?”

Also speaking in support of the bill was Lt. Governor Billy Nungesser, who told the committee, “These sites are an important part of the tourism product we promote. I ask you to please allow this bill to go to the floor.”

While the bill would have protected all historic monuments in Louisiana, the bill was authored after the City of New Orleans approved plans to remove the Battle of Liberty Place monument and statues of Confederate leaders Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and P.G.T. Beauregard.

Efforts to prevent the removal of the statues has gotten ugly at times with a Baton Rouge-based contractor pulling out of the project after he and his wife received death threats and a campaign launched by Save Our Circle that encouraged monument supporters to call potential contract bidders to express their disapproval of these companies’ involvement in the removal project.

After the latter, the City of New Orleans removed information about prospective bidders from the City’s website.

The Advocate reported that Senate Bill 276 died after about 90 minutes of fiery debate and a discussion about the preservation of history.

A Tulane University professor recently raised the stakes in the monument debate in New Orleans when he told local elected officials that the statue of President Andrew Jackson that is displayed prominently in the French Quarter’s Jackson Square should also be removed because Jackson owned enslaved Africans and was actively involved in the mass removal and extermination of Native Americans.

This article originally published in the April 11, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.