The Civil War and monuments to the losing side's leaders remain touchy topics in the South, as shown by four statue removals this month in New Orleans. Mayor Mitch Landrieu's goal was unity, but the dismantling highlights emotional divisions in the Louisiana city and throughout the region. Taking down tributes to the war of secession has sparked legal challenges and demonstrations, both in favor and against the statues of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Gen. Robert E. Lee, Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard on horseback and other stone monuments. "These statues are not just stone and metal," Landrieu says. "They’re not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy — ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, ignoring the terror that it actually stood for."

Malcolm Suber, a leader of a local Take 'Em Down movement, praises the white mayor and denounces other white politicians and business leaders for not backing him. "Not one of them came out and said they support taking down the statues," Suber says. "That really reflects how the beliefs of white supremacy exist broadly."

On the other side, New Orleans businessman Frank Stewart published a long open letter to the mayor that defends “the magnificent memorials of real history” and decries "the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to accomplish your politically motivated desire to remove these National Historic Register treasures." In a much shorter letter, resident Sascha Bollag writes to The New York Times: "Mayor Mitch Landrieu should be applauded for taking the bold and brave step of removing these monuments, especially in the face of such vehement opposition and threats."

The debate also arises in Charlottesville, Va., where city officials plan to remove a Robert E. Lee statue in a park named for that general, commander of the Confederate Army from 1862 until surrendering in 1865. Carrying torches and chanting angrily, white demonstrators marched to the park in mid-May. Police dispersed them after about 10 minutes. "This event involving torches at night in Lee Park,” says Mayor Mike Signer, "was either profoundly ignorant or was designed to instill fear in our minority populations in a way that hearkens back to the days of the K.K.K." He refers to the Ku Klux Klan, a previously murderous white supremacy group.

Jazz musician says: "This is something I never thought I'd see in my lifetime. It's a sign that the world is changing." – Terence Blanchard, New Orleans trumpeter

Critic says: "Memorialization of fact and history that cannot be denied. It's time to live, to forgive and learn from the memorialized past. Construction, not destruction, is life's hope." – Frank B. Stewart, Jr., New Orleans businessman

Historian says: "If we hide them away in a museum, it becomes easier to evade their implications. Let the statues to white supremacy stand alongside monuments to the brave Americans who challenged it." – Jonathan Simmerman, retred professor, University of Pennsylvania

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