New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu On Why Confederate Monuments Were Taken Down | National Geographic

I went and said to me one morning, "I want you to think about something." I said, "What about these statues, man? We need to do something special. That statue of Li, there's no reason for them never to have a statue in the waters even win anything."

I think my first reaction was a few of us, and the issue is this is a symbol of a defeated general. I always wanted to remove it. I used to dream about blowing it up. Of course, I wasn't going to do it, but I would dream about it like in high school, and it was always on my mind. That was the first time I actually put myself in somebody else's shoes, and then I just started researching it.

Something will put out, well, after the Civil War had ended by the Daughters of the Confederacy and the cause of the Lost Cause. The people that lost decided to put these statues up to send a message to people just like when that you're lessening. Even though we lost the war and the United States won, we're not coming along.

That's why Robert E. Lee's arms are folded, and he's looking north. It's an affront to the idea of what America was supposed to be post-war. Where are the monuments for, of course, the four million American citizens who were enslaved, beaten, tortured, raped? I mean, that's what slavery was.

As Landrieu was contemplating what to do, nine black parishioners were murdered in the Charleston AME Church by Dylan Roof, a 21-year-old self-proclaimed white supremacist who posted photos like this one online.

[Music] The time has come. As a result, the Confederate flag flying over the South Carolina Statehouse was lowered for good, and nationwide there was a reexamination of Confederate symbols.

It is specifically the moment that South Carolina happened when I said to myself, "You know what? We can't wait anymore to do this. These issues have to be confronted." But it wasn't easy. It took our seven different lawsuits, thirteen separate judges. I mean, people were really kicking and screaming.

In the spring of 2017, after the City Council voted to remove the four statues, the first of them came down. There were imminent death threats that were coming. Again, the reason three of them were taken down at night was on the advice of security personnel who basically said it's harder to get shot by a sniper at night.

But there were also celebrations in New Orleans. [Music] When the final statue of Robert E. Lee was removed from its nearly 60-foot column, Landrieu gave a speech that got national attention.

These monuments celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy, ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, ignoring the terror that it actually stood for.

[Applause] [Music]