On December 17, the New Orleans city council voted 6 to 1 to remove “prominent Confederate statues” in the city.
This includes removing the statue of “Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that has stood at the center of a traffic circle for 131 years.”
According to Daily Mail, Democrat City Council President Jason Williams suggested the removal of the statues would represent “severing an ‘umbilical cord'” which ties New Orleans to old Democrat policies like slavery and Jim Crow. Williams said, “‘If anybody wins here, it will be the South, because it is finally rising.”
Council member Stacy Head—the lone dissenter in the vote to remove the statues—predicted the effort to remove the statues would divide the city rather than unite it. She said, “I think all we will be left with is pain and division.”
Prior to the vote, Sons of Confederate Veterans commander-in-chief Charles Kelly Barrow said, “This has never happened before. I’ve never heard of a city trying to sweep (away) all Confederate monuments.” Barrow indicated he will sue to stop the city from following through on the council’s vote, saying, “I’m going to do everything in my power to take on these people. I’m not going to let this happen under my administration.”
The cost of removing the Confederate monuments is estimated at cost $144,000, all of which will be paid by an “anonymous donor.”
Breitbart News previously reported that the New Orleans city council declared the Confederate statues “nuisances” on July 9, thereby opening the door to the pursuit of their removal. This effort was supported by Mayor Mich Landrieu (D) and came just two days after the Memphis City Council voted to exhume the bodies of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife from their 110-year resting place and sell the statue of Forrest “to anyone who wants it.”
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.