 The monument in 2015 | |
  Location in Louisiana | |
| Coordinates | 29°58′11″N90°05′39″W / 29.96985°N 90.09427°W Coordinates: 29°58′11″N90°05′39″W / 29.96985°N 90.09427°W |
|---|---|
| Location | New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. |
| Dismantled date | 2017 |
The Jefferson Davis Monument, also known as the Jefferson Davis Memorial, was an outdoor sculpture and memorial to Jefferson Davis, installed at Jeff Davis Parkway and Canal Street in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States from 1911 to 2017. [1]
Richmond artist Edward Virginius Valentine was the sculptor of the monument. A stone marker about 20 feet behind the sculpture reads: Site of Jefferson Davis Monument/Dedicated June 3rd 1908. [2]
The statue itself was dedicated on February 22, 1911. The ceremony included a mass of schoolchildren dressed in red, white, and blue making a formation of a Confederate flag, and a speech by then-Louisiana Governor Jared Y. Sanders Sr., followed by the children singing "Dixie". [3] Former Confederate officer Bennett H. Young also spoke at the ceremony. [3] [4] The date of dedication was said to correspond with the 50th anniversary of the inauguration of Jefferson Davis as President of the Confederate States of America, though the actual anniversary would have been four days earlier since Davis's inauguration was on 18 February 1861.
Since at least 2003 the statue was the subject of frequent vandalism. [5] [6]
After the Charleston church shooting in 2015, a concerted effort was launched to remove several monuments from public spaces in New Orleans, with Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell citing the Jefferson Davis Monument as "the one that really has some momentum around it." [7] A grassroots activist group, Take Em Down NOLA, campaigned for their removal. [8]
By decision of the New Orleans City Council in December 2015, the statue was ordered to be removed [9] and stored in a warehouse until another location is sought. [10] Pro-monument supporters bearing Confederate flags and open-carrying firearms, surrounded the monument for weeks. [11] [12] They were confronted by locals who supported removal, and confrontations grew more heated until the City cordoned the area. [13] [14]
The New Orleans local chapter of the Green Party of Louisiana issued a statement in support of the removal. [15]
On May 11, 2017, the statue of Davis was removed, on order from the City, despite the presence of dozens of protesters and supporters. [17] Those removing the statue wore masks and helmets to hide their identities and the company name on their truck was hidden. [18] After the statue's removal, the pedestal and base were also removed, leaving only the foundation. The cost of removing the statue was split between private donations and the City of New Orleans. [19] [20]
The statue has been placed in storage at an undisclosed location. The city has stated that it will be relocated, but no specific plans have been announced. [21] The parkway was then renamed for former Xavier University of Louisiana president Norman C. Francis in 2020. [22] [23]
Monument Avenue is a tree-lined grassy mall dividing the eastbound and westbound traffic in Richmond, Virginia, originally named for its emblematic complex of structures honoring those who fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Between 1900 and 1925, Monument Avenue greatly expanded with architecturally significant houses, churches, and apartment buildings. Four of the bronze statues representing J. E. B. Stuart, Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis and Matthew Fontaine Maury were removed from their memorial pedestals amidst civil unrest in July 2020. The Robert E. Lee monument dedicated in 1890 was removed on September 8, 2021. The last remaining statue on Monument Avenue is the Arthur Ashe Monument, memorializing the African American tennis champion, dedicated in 1996.
Mitchell Joseph Landrieu is an American lawyer and politician who served as Mayor of New Orleans from 2010 to 2018. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana from 2004 to 2010.
William Harold Nungesser is an American politician serving as the 54th Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana.
The Robert E. Lee Monument, formerly in New Orleans, Louisiana, is a historic statue dedicated to Confederate General Robert E. Lee by noted American sculptor Alexander Doyle. It was removed (intact) by official order and moved to an unknown location on May 19, 2017. Any future display is uncertain. The monument was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. It was included by New Orleans magazine in June 2011 as one of the city's "11 important statues".
The Battle of Liberty Place, or Battle of Canal Street, was an attempted insurrection and coup d'etat by the Crescent City White League against the Reconstruction Era Louisiana Republican state government on September 14, 1874, in New Orleans, which was the capital of Louisiana at the time. Five thousand members of the White League, a paramilitary terrorist organization made up largely of Confederate veterans, fought against the outnumbered New Orleans Metropolitan Police and state militia. The insurgents held the statehouse, armory, and downtown for three days, retreating before arrival of Federal troops that restored the elected government. No insurgents were charged in the action. This was the last major event of violence stemming from the disputed 1872 gubernatorial election, after which Democrat John McEnery and Republican William Pitt Kellogg both claimed victory.
Lee Circle is a central traffic circle in New Orleans, Louisiana, which featured a monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee between 1884 and 2017. The monument was a bronze statue by Alexander Doyle, a prominent American sculptor known for statues of Civil War figures. Lee Circle is located at the intersection of St. Charles and Howard Avenues. Prior to the erection of the monument, the location was known as Tivoli Circle or Place du Tivoli. Tivoli Circle was an important, central point in the city, as it linked upriver areas with downriver areas. It was a common local meeting point and the site remains a popular place to gather for Mardi Gras parades.
The General Beauregard Equestrian Statue, honoring P. G. T. Beauregard, was located in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. The statue, by Alexander Doyle, one of the premier American sculptors, was officially unveiled in 1915.
The Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee Monument, often referred to simply as the Jackson and Lee Monument or Lee and Jackson Monument, was a double equestrian statue of Confederate generals Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, formerly located on the west side of the Wyman Park Dell in Charles Village in Baltimore, Maryland, alongside a forested hill, similar to the topography of Chancellorsville, Virginia, where Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee met before the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863. The statue was removed on August 16, 2017, on the order of Baltimore City Council, but the base still remains. The monument is in storage and some city council members have called for all Confederate monuments in the state to be destroyed.
The Battle of Liberty Place Monument is a stone obelisk on an inscribed plinth, formerly on display in New Orleans, in the U.S. state of Louisiana, commemorating the "Battle of Liberty Place", an 1874 attempt by Democratic White League paramilitary organizations to take control of the government of Louisiana from its Reconstruction Era Republican leadership after a disputed gubernatorial election.
Jefferson Davis is a statue depicting the American-Confederate politician of the same name by Pompeo Coppini. The sculpture was commissioned in 1919 by George W. Littlefield to be included in the Littlefield Fountain on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. It was installed on the university's South Mall from 1933 to 2015, when it was relocated to the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History in Austin, Texas.
Since the 1960s, many municipalities in the United States have removed monuments and memorials on public property dedicated to the Confederate States of America, and some, such as Silent Sam in North Carolina, have been torn down by protestors. The momentum to remove Confederate memorials increased dramatically following high-profile incidents including the Charleston church shooting (2015), the Unite the Right rally (2017), and the murder of George Floyd (2020). The removals have been driven by historical analysis that the monuments express and re-enforce white supremacy; memorialize an unrecognized, treasonous government, the Confederacy, whose founding principle was the perpetuation and expansion of slavery; and that the presence of these Confederate memorials over a hundred years after the defeat of the Confederacy continues to disenfranchise and alienate African Americans.
Jefferson Davis, created by Henry Augustus Lukeman, is a bronze sculpture of Jefferson Davis – a U.S. Senator, U.S. Secretary of War, plantation owner and the only President of the Confederate States of America – commissioned by the U.S. State of Mississippi for inclusion in National Statuary Hall Collection at the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall, in Washington, D.C. The statue was controversial at the time of its unveiling and there have been efforts to remove it from the Capitol from 2015 onward.
Charles Didier Dreux was the first Confederate field officer killed during the Civil War. He was the son of Guy Dreux and Léontine Arnoult. Prior to the Civil War, Dreux had served as district attorney and a member of the Louisiana state legislature. 30,000 mourners attended his funeral in New Orleans. He is buried in Metairie Cemetery.
Norman C. Francis Parkway, formerly named Jefferson Davis Parkway or Jeff Davis Parkway, is a street in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. It runs southwest from the head of Bayou St. John in the Mid-City neighborhood to Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard in the Gert Town neighborhood. Like most streets in New Orleans, the segment of the parkway to the north east of Canal Street is named "North" Norman C. Francis Parkway while the segment to the southwest is denoted as "South". The parkway is wide with a grassy median except for where it crosses over the Pontchartrain Expressway.
The United Daughters of the Confederacy Monument is a Confederate monument in Cleveland, Tennessee owned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. It was sculpted in 1910 and installed in 1911.
Media related to Jefferson Davis monument, Mid-City New Orleans at Wikimedia Commons
