New Orleans Finally Begins Taking Down Confederate Monuments

A monument described by New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu as the "most blatant affront" to American values was removed early Monday, the Associated Pressreported. The 35-foot Liberty Place monument had been previously put in place to mark the "failed" white supremacist uprising of 1874 and is the first of four Confederacy-related statues set to be removed.

"We will no longer allow the Confederacy to literally be put on a pedestal in the heart of our city," Landrieu said. According to the AP, the monument's removal was scheduled for the early morning hours due to "death threats and fears of disruption." The statue, Landrieu added, was installed to "honor the killing of police officers" by white supremacists. "Of the four that we will move, this statue is perhaps the most blatant affront to the values that make America and New Orleans strong today," he said.

An NBC Newsreport from Monday added that "a handful of people" gathered for a vigil at the Jefferson Davis statue to express their disapproval of the monument's removal. Robert Bonner, a Civil War re-enactor, lamented what he called a "terrible thing" by mentioning something about a loss of money. "When you start removing the history of the city, you start losing money," Bonner said. "You start losing where you came from and where you've been."

Three additional statues depicting General Robert E. Lee, P.G.T. Beauregard, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis will be removed at undisclosed times in the coming days. All four monuments will be housed in storage, Landrieu said, until "an appropriate place" for display is agreed upon. Though New Orleans City Council voted to remove the monuments back in 2015, legal hurdles delayed their removal until this year.

Meanwhile, state government offices in Mississippi and Alabama are closed Monday for some bullshit called "Confederate Memorial Day."