New Orleans Mayor Uplifts Civil Rights by Removing Memorials
A recent series of NPR segments have covered the mission of a New Orleans mayor to alter the memorial landscape of the city. Three monuments were taken down in the middle of the night. The final one, the Robert E. Lee statue, a symbol of the Confederacy during the Civil War, was removed in broad daylight. For an overview of the statue removal and a video, click here to view the article.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu delivered a speech about the effort on 16 May 2017. During the oration, he said, "To literally put the Confederacy on a pedestal in our most prominent places in honor is an inaccurate recitation of our full past, is an affront to our present, and it is a bad prescription for our future." For a full transcript (primary source), click here.
This event contains a variety of primary and secondary sources to teach the geography of civil rights in the classroom. It deals with human interaction with the environment; humans changing the way a place looks in order to change what it means to people. The take-downs also represent one way that Americans are coming to terms with its turbulent and conflicted past.
(Photo Source: NPR, Associated Press)