A landmark in the city of New Orleans now has a new name after the city council stripped the name of Confederate Robert E. Lee and removed a statue of the secessionist general, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports.
The traffic circle and its park will now be known as Égalité Circle, a name by the French and Haitian revolutions chosen to reflect the city’s unique heritage and to honor the civil rights movement in New Orleans and throughout the United States.
“Nothing that we do is an attempt to rewrite history. This is, however, us exercising the authority to honor who we choose to honor,” Councilman Jay Banks said at the start of Wednesday’s New Orleans City Council Street Renaming Commission meeting. “No one can rewrite history, but this city has the authority and the ability and the responsibility to pay respect to the people who we deem are necessary.”
The city is working to rename 34 remaining street and location names that honor Confederates, secessionists and proponents of slavery. The Commission took one other location off the list when it determined that Gen. Taylor Street was named in honor of President Zachary Taylor, not his son who was a Confederate general.
In March 2017, the statue of Lee’s likeness was removed from a pedestal in the middle of the park, although the pedestal remains. The city has not decided what, if anything, will be put on top of the pedestal in the future.