New Orleans Debates Whether to Restore Historic, but Racist, Downtown Monument

An obelisk three stories high, removed during downtown street repairs two years ago, remains in a warehouse while debate rages over whether it represents an important moment in history or is simply a monument to racism.

The monument commemorates an 1874 uprising in which the White League, seeking to restore white control, battled the mostly black Metropolitan Police representing the biracial state government imposed under Reconstruction.

About 30 people died and scores were wounded. The monument, erected in 1891, honors only those who fought for the White League. Inscriptions extolling white supremacy were added to it in 1932.

“It represents the effort of white people in New Orleans to overthrow the legally established government. It was an insurrection against both the state and the United States,” said the Rev. David Billings, a white Methodist minister and one of the monument’s harshest critics.

Whatever it represents, Leslie Tassin, the state’s historic preservation officer, said the monument must go back on display.

“That’s the bottom line,” Tassin said. “We’re simply implementing the federal law, which says the monument is a historical structure and the city has an obligation to restore it.”

The monument was taken down in November, 1989, while Canal Street was being repaired near the riverfront.

The federal government, which provided most of the $420,000 for the street repairs, originally gave the city until last May to put the monument back. That was extended to Oct. 1, but the monument remains in storage while city officials, historians and others argue.

The issue arises at a sensitive time in a city that is 62% black and in a state where a former Ku Klux Klan leader is running for governor. David Duke, who will face former Gov. Edwin Edwards in a runoff Nov. 16, has said the monument should go back up.

“We are between a rock and a hard place,” said Al Stokes, an aide to Mayor Sidney Barthelemy, who is black. “We hope to find a spot that is not as rocky or as hard, however.”

City officials have considered putting the monument at a National Guard compound on the edge of town or in a museum in the French Quarter. City and federal officials agreed when it was taken down that the words extolling white supremacy would be removed.

But proponents want it back in its original place, though they have agreed to the removal of the racist inscriptions.

“It’s a magnificent monument,” said Francis Shubert, a retired pharmacist. “I’m interested in history and I don’t want to see it erased or changed.”

Billings is equally adamant in his opposition.

“It was an effort to impose an apartheid situation on blacks here,” he said of the battle the monument commemorates. “Segregation, the black laws, all of that was imposed once the troops protecting blacks and the biracial Reconstruction government were removed.”