In the wake of the (latest) murder of black Americans in their church by a(nother) Confederate-flag-waving American racist, the movement to remove celebrations of that Confederacy from government-run spaces continues apace. In New Orleans, the city's Historic District Landmarks Commission on Thursday voted 11-1 to move four of those monuments from city spaces. The city's mayor, Mitch Landrieu, also wants to remove them.
But Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who continues to foist himself on the rest of us as supposed presidential material, needs new campaign fodder and is not terribly picky about what it might be. So he's decided that defending Confederate monuments from the mean city that doesn't want them anymore is a horse worth hitching his wagon to.
“Gov. Jindal opposes the tearing down of these historical statues and has instructed his staff to look into the Heritage Act to determine the legal authority he has as governor to stop it,” Jindal spokesman Doug Cain said in an email to the New Orleans Advocate.
One flaw with that plan might be that
there is no Louisiana "Heritage Act". There's one in South Carolina—perhaps he got his states confused?
Just so we're clear on Jindal's stance here, note that three of the monuments honor Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, and Confederate Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard. The fourth is the monument to the 1874 Battle of Liberty Place, which commemorates:
... a white supremacist group’s violent fight against a biracial state government during Reconstruction ...
Or more specifically, an
attempted overthrow of the New Orleans-based Reconstruction government by 5,000 white supremacists of the "White League," many of whom were ex-Confederate soldiers. Though the would-be occupiers turned tail and fled as federal troops approached, the violent uprising was seen as a damn noble thing by white supremacist sympathizers in later decades.
In 1891, as the Democratic legislature passed laws that disenfranchised most blacks,[4] the city government erected the Liberty Monument to "commemorate the uprising" of 1874 in the city.[3] The monument was prominently placed in the neutral ground (median) near the foot of Canal Street. In 1932 inscriptions were added to the monument which attested to the battle's role in establishing white supremacy.
So that's the bit of rock presidential candidate Bobby Jindal is weighing his options over, no matter how many people in the city itself might want to finally be rid of the thing. Because—and did I mention this?—he is running for president. Of the United States, apparently, but you couldn't tell that from the press releases.