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Another Court Fight Over Confederate Monument

Tegan Wendland
/
WWNO
Richard Marksbury, of the Monumental Task Force, says the statute of Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard is not city property.

The fight to preserve one of three Confederate monuments set for removal is heading back to court.

The Monumental Task Committee is renewing its battle to keep the statue of Confederate General P.G.T Beauregard on his horse at the entrance to City Park near the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Tulane University professor Richard Marksbury is the plaintiff. He’s lived in the city since 1973, and been involved with the Monumental Task Committee since the drive to remove them began in 2015.

“City Park is an incorporated association under the Lieutenant Governor’s office, owns the land that the monument is on and owns the monument," he said.

A federal judge has already ruled the city is the owner, but Marksbury says new documentation disputes that finding. A Civil District Court judge yesterday afternoon denied the group a request for a temporary restraining order. It would have stopped the city from removing the statue while the lawsuit proceeds. A hearing is set in that court tomorrow.

The city has already removed the Liberty Place marker on Canal Street, honoring a deadly attack on the city’s integrated Reconstruction-era police force.  Chain link fences have been erected around the two other statues the city wants out – one of General Robert E. Lee, the other, Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser wants all the monuments to remain. He wrote to the City Park commissioners, telling them do their duty to protect what he calls “an historic work of art.”

Eileen is a news reporter and producer for WWNO. She researches, reports and produces the local daily news items. Eileen relocated to New Orleans in 2008 after working as a writer and producer with the Associated Press in Washington, D.C. for seven years.

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