Lee, Beauregard, and Jeff Davis statues could be gone by summer in NOLA

quote:

---

Three monuments in New Orleans honoring Confederate leaders could come down by the summer, according to documents released by Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration Wednesday.

The administration is formally seeking bids to remove statues of Gen. Robert E. Lee, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard after a previous contractor hired to remove the statues backed out in the face of death threats.

The bid documents do not include the monument to the Battle of Liberty Place, a post-Civil War insurrection by a white supremacist militia against the state’s biracial Reconstruction government. That statue is protected by a court order issued after an attempt to remove it decades ago, and the city needs to have that order lifted before it can move forward.

The city is giving bidders until March 29 to submit proposals on the three statues, requiring that the job be completed within 45 days of a contractor’s being selected. The documents do not shed any light on the ultimate fate of the monuments, though they say the city will arrange a police escort to assist in transporting them to a city facility.

---