The Monumental Task Committee, a volunteer organization that looks after New Orleans monuments, is hosting a public forum on Tuesday, August 25, 2015. The goal is to discuss the fate of four Confederate-themed statues.
The debate on whether New Orleans should continue hosting depictions of General Robert E. Lee and other Civil War Confederate heroes started in June, after the racially charged shooting of eight black parishioners at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. That state decided to stop flying the Confederate flag at the state capital. And soon after Mayor Landrieu opened a dialogue on his city’s use of Confederate symbols, namely a series of statues.