Confederate memorial removals divide New Orleans
Under cover of night, masked workmen wearing bullet proof vests removed a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis Thursday from a New Orleans park. Authorities dismantled the statue amid cries by supporters and cheers by opponents of Civil War era monuments. Alva French reports.
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Under cover of night, masked workmen wearing bulletproof vests removing a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis Thursday from a New Orleans park. New Orleans authorities dismantled the statue amid cries by protesters waving Confederate flags and cheers from a group that said the monument glorified racism in the U.S. South. The Jefferson Davis statue, which has stood for more than a century, is the second to be removed by Mayor Mitch Landrieu. (SOUNDBITE) (English) MAYOR MITCH LANDRIEU, D - NEW ORLEANS, SAYING: "These particular monuments were put up by a particular group of people for a particular purpose. The purpose was really to white-wash history and to tell a sanitized version of the Confederacy." These dueling protests raging in recent days, with demonstrators on both sides taking to the streets. The removals are part of a trend across the Southern U.S. to move slavery-era monuments into museums and out of public places. That trend intensifying after the 2015 shooting deaths of nine African-American churchgoers at the hands of Dylann Roof, a Confederate-flag waving white supremacist.