Posted on 08/27/2020 11:45:52 AM PDT by Red Badger
Calcasieu Parish voted to keep the South's Defenders monument in August. Nature disagreed.
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In Lake Charles, Louisiana, the fate of a Confederate monument was decided by nature.
Hurricane Laura destroyed the South's Defenders monument, which stood on the grounds of a courthouse in Lake Charles.
This summer, amid a national reckoning on Confederate monuments, protesters called for the statue to be moved to a museum, a point of view shared by Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter. The statue was dedicated in 1915, part of a wave of monuments honoring the Confederacy during the Jim Crow era.
"When we think about this Confederate monument, it literally symbolizes white supremacy and enslaved African Americans,” Cary Chavis, who started one of three petitions to remove the statue, told local TV station KPLC in June. “So we have this monument out in front of our courthouse, which is to be a place where people can see justice and fairness and we have a monument that represents slavery in front of it, and that's not something we should ever support."
But on Aug. 13, the Calcasieu Parish Police Jury voted to keep the statue, the Lafayette Daily Advertiser reported.
On Aug. 27, Hurricane Laura reversed that decision.
News of the statue’s destruction spread quickly online, much to the joy of people supporting the removal of the monument.
“The Confederate general has fallen,” tweeted Davante Lewis, a director at Louisiana Budget Project, a watchdog organization.
“One might say it's God's Will,” local lawyer Donald Carl Hodge Jr. said on Facebook.
“Really scary images coming out of Louisiana after Laura. But this - where the hurricane took down a confederate statue that elected officials wouldn't - this is almost enough to make you believe in the arc of the moral universe,” tweeted Johns Hopkins assistant professor Christy Thornton.
Hurricane Laura is a Category 4 storm that began tearing through the Gulf Coast overnight, and observers fear it could spell an environmental disaster because of the over 60 refineries and petrochemical plants present in the region.
The hurricane didn’t spare the rest of Lake Charles. The city was hit hard this morning and a chemical fire erupted on the outskirts.
The Lord moves in mysterious ways.
Under normal circumstances, the monument would be repaired to its original state. Now?!
Johnny Reb can’t catch a break these days, although he did manage to take out one of the vandals/rioters in Portsmouth, VA.
It would appear that both Laura and that big tree are BLM and conspired to tear the statue down.
"When we think about this Confederate monument, it literally symbolizes white supremacy, Democrats, and enslaved African Americans,”
Man proposes, God disposes....
I think that was Columbus.
I bet we can fix him right back up@!
Sorry Friend I’m a Yankee. Consider the general to have been called up yonder.
please don’t consider all of us Yankees so ignorant that we would have the past erased. It’s a shame about this statue and I apologize for the other Yankee’s ridiculous comment.
You see too many of them only see slavery in their self righteous lunacy. They see the South as nothing else.
the south is in fact a great part of this country where many great military men have come from and many have proudly fought for this country and too many have died. They have a love of country and a patriotism that far surpasses that which I see around me up north..
My family wasn’t even in America yet but for someone up north to preach, especially the way things are up here lately, is hysterical and asinine.
God bless the south and the United States
Women! Can’t trust ‘em!
Yeah right.
God bless the south and the United States
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Nicely written and I agree with every point you make.
I find it strange that a monument up for 100 years through dozens of hurricanes, suddenly “breaks” the Summer of Malcontent.
No it was Portsmouth where the soldiers mon was.
Sorry, I meant Christopher Columbus, not Columbus OH.
You’re my favorite Italian-American. ;D
Well, maybe, after my mom’s best friend.
You are so correct.
Yes I know, but in Portsmouth one of the 4 soldiers’ heads broke and fell on a rioter. It was a big mon with 4 veterans around the base and more on top. It was not Columbus.
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