“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” ― George Orwell, 1984

A divisive statue of Confederate military leader Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard won’t go down without a legal fight.

Longtime resident Richard Marksbury (pictured above) is suing New Orleans and seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent the city from “touching, removing or doing anything with the Beauregard monument,” he told reporters Monday.

Marksbury is a founding member of the Monumental Task Committee — a group decrying the city’s planned removal of Confederate statues.
Those monuments have been the subject of heated protests, which flared up again Sunday.

The city has already removed the first of the four monuments: one commemorating the Battle of Liberty Place. It was erected in 1891 to mark a deadly fight between members of the “Crescent City White League,” a group opposed to the city’s biracial police force and state militia after the Civil War.

Last month, amid security threats, contractors wearing masks and tactical vests worked in the dark of the night to remove that monument.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu said the city will remove the other three monuments, honoring Beauregard, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. But the mayor’s office said it will not announce when those statues will come down, citing safety concerns.

Marksbury claims the Beauregard monument, which stands at the entrance of City Park, is on private land — not city land.

“We now have some documents that I believe will make a difference and show that City Park, as an incorporated association under the lieutenant governor’s office, owns the land that the monument is on, and owns the monument,” Marksbury said in front of the 15-foot sculpture.

Read more: CNN

 

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