New Orleans mayor seeks to remove Lee statue

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu (D) on Wednesday came out in support of removing his city’s statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Landrieu told city officials that he backs replacing the historic monument in Lee Circle, according to The Times-Picayune.

{mosads}“Symbols really do matter,” he said. “Symbols should reflect who we really are as a people.”

“We have never been a culture, in essence, that revered war rather than peace, division rather than unity,” he added.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that Landrieu’s remarks were part of his new racial reconciliation initiative, which aims to address the city’s history by reexamining which monuments are displayed on public property.

“These symbols say who we were in a particular time, but times change,” a spokesperson for Landrieu’s office had said of the initiative on Monday.

The paper added that Landrieu’s racial reconciliation efforts are part of the 2018 Tricentennial Commission, a group that is helping plan New Orleans’ 300th anniversary.

National debate over the use of Confederate symbols reignited last week following a mass shooting at a church in Charleston, S.C.

Dylann Storm Roof, the alleged gunman, reportedly displayed the Confederate flag on his car’s license plate.

Roof allegedly uttered racial epithets before attacking the church’s predominantly African-American congregation.

Multiple state governments have since launched reexaminations of how they use the historic emblem.