When protests against police violence and white supremacy swept dozens of long-standing memorials to the Confederacy this summer, a 105-year-old monument on the grass field in Lake Charles, La., Stood.
Until Hurricane Laura tore the statue on it.
“It’s a blessing, a small blessing, in a very devastating situation,” said Davante Lewis, who grew up in Lake Charles and supported the removal of the monument.
The debate over what to do about the Defenders Memorial, which depicts a Confederate soldier on a marble pedestal, has been the “hottest thing in town” in recent months, Mr Lewis said on Thursday, until residents turned their attention to on preparing for one of the strongest hurricanes to ever hit the region.
The monument was the object of anger and protests after the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by the Minneapolis police. The political decision on his fate was largely broken down by racial rules, although Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter, a white Republican, had expressed support for the removal.
But two weeks ago, the police jury of Calcasieu Parish, an elected body that acts as a commission of commissioners and has jurisdiction over the ownership of the courthouse, voted 10 to 5 at a special meeting to hold it.
The jury received 945 written responses from the public in support of the monument, according to The Lafayette Daily Advertiser, and 67 who wanted it removed.
“I see it as military, and it’s just the way I’ve been raised, to show respect for all statues or monuments,” said Ashton Richard, a white jury member who voted for the memorial. retained.
After the vote, Protestants said the battle was not over; they began an economic boycott of every case as a church affiliated with the jurors who voted in favor of the monument.
“If the city had done what many of us asked it to do, that statue could have been in a museum, it could have been kept well together and not damaged,” said Mr. Lewis. “But unfortunately, they took other chances to keep it in the bright light of day, and Mother Nature had a different plan.”
Hurricane Laura’s strong wind – bound for the strongest ever to hit Louisiana – appeared to have torn the bronze statue of the soldier from its pedestal and left it lying next to the base of the monument on Thursday morning between a pile of broken tree trunks .
Officials said they did not know what would happen next.
“Today, it’s all about being safe and secure,” said Mike Smith, a police jury member who voted for removal.
Mr. Smith is one of four Black men, along with Mr. Lewis’ father, Eddie Lewis Jr., on the 15-member jury. It represents all the parliament of Calcasieu, whose inhabitants are 68 percent white and 24 percent black. But Lake Charles’ population is about 50 percent African-American.
The vote to remove the statue was mostly divided on racial lines, with only one white member voting to remove it.
“You have older white men making these decisions,” said Cary Chavis, a Black man and former teacher who helped lead the protests. “When we go before the police jury and say, ‘We want to do this,’ they do not have to do this because they do not look like us.”
The statue has fallen several times before – including in a storm of 1918, just three years after it was erected – but has always been restored. In 1995, it was blown down and repaired, despite protests from some local residents, including a district judge, who turned their backs when the soldier was returned to the pedestal.
Mr Chavis said he hoped this would not be the case this time.
“That’s what I’m hoping for – that when we put Lake Charles back together,” he said, “we put it back together, not with images of systemic racism or white supremacy on public grounds.”
