Panel makes right call to allow New Orleans to decide fate of Confederate monuments
BY STEPHANIE GRACE
April 7, 2016; 6:03 p.m.
... Wednesday .. the state Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee rejected a bill by new Franklinton state Sen. Beth Mizell that would have required New Orleans to get approval from a state committee in order to take down the four Jim Crow-era monuments.
... it’s .. too bad that vote divided committee members by both party and race, with five African-American Democrats uniting to kill the bill over the objections of four white Republicans. The whole discussion over the fate of the statues of Confederate figures Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, P.G.T. Beauregard and the White League, which rose up against Louisiana’s biracial Reconstruction-era government, has exposed deep rifts that clearly go beyond attitudes toward these historic figures and events.
... according to a new University of New Orleans survey ... Fifty percent of the 403 New Orleanians surveyed .. want the monuments to come down, while 31 percent oppose their removal. The remaining 19 percent offered no opinion ...
Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser, who oversees tourism, argued that moving the monuments might discourage visitors from traveling to the city. But does anyone think people come to New Orleans just to see Robert E. Lee preside over a busy traffic circle? Besides .. visitors .. can always stop by the Civil War-themed museum just down the block ...
http://theadvocate.com/news/opinion/15410137-176/stephanie-grace
