Next Confederate statue falls to cheers, jeers

The monument is the third of four monuments to the Confederacy scheduled to be removed from the city.

"Today we take another step in defining our city not by our past but by our bright future", Landrieu said in a statement on Tuesday.

"When I was a little girl the statue was something fun that I drove by on my way to school", said Janet Rupert, a supporter of removing the monuments.

The City Council voted 6-1 in 2015 to remove the monuments after a succession of contentious public meetings where impassioned monument supporters and opponents heckled each other.

Still awaiting removal is the statue of Robert E. Lee, whose likeness stands atop a column in the center of Lee Circle.

Celebrated New Orleans trumpet player Terence Blanchard told Nola.comThe Times-Picayune (http://bit.ly/2rqKQWv) that he came to watch with his wife and two daughters when he learned the statue was coming down.

Hillyer said his comment is not just some random right-wing response but reflects how bad Landrieu has handled the monument situation.

But for many in this majority black city, the monuments pay homage to a history of slavery and segregation.

In first addressing the issue, Hillyer said, that one "Will probably, in fact not probably definitely, not find a conservative New Orleanian in the media who has been nicer or more complimentary through the years to Mitch Landrieu than I. You would not think that that I would have been so complimentary because he's a liberal and I'm I'm a conservative". In Shreveport, a citizen advisory committee is discussing whether to remove a 1906 monument commemorating a Confederate soldier and four generals, including Gens. But to some it was the most objectionable. The issue rose to prominence after the 2015 massacre of nine black parishioners at the historically black Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina, by a self-described white supremacist.

It had been tied up in legal battles over efforts to remove it since at least the 1980s.

Beauregard's statue, near City Park, was erected in 1915 in honor of the prominent general who led the attack on Fort Sumter in SC, a siege that marked the beginning of the Civil War. The Davis statue stood atop a roughly 12-foot column and depicted him with his right arm outstretched, towering over the street also named after him. He spent the night holding an American flag at the blocked-off portion of Carrollton and City Park avenues to show his unending support for the history of New Orleans. It's been there since 1915. It was unveiled in 1884. "Mayor Landrieu has clearly indicated that the removal of the monument is imminent", the statement said, "and we hope it will be done safely and that all parties, while exercising their first amendment rights, respect the laws of our city and state".