LAFAYETTE, La. (AP) - A monument of a Confederate general in Louisiana was damaged, with several holes punctured from its head to jaw and half of its nose taken off and missing.
It’s not clear when the damage happened on Confederate Gen. Alfred Mouton statue in Lafayette. It was first noticed Tuesday night but The Daily Advertiser reports authorities were unaware when reporters asked about it. Lafayette police are now looking into it, KLFY-TV reported.
“I’m surprised that someone decided to vandalize the statue because that’s not what we had in mind to happen,” said Fred Prejean, the president of Move the Mindset, a group pushing for the statue to be moved to a museum.
The monument is owned by the city and there’s been efforts to get it moved. But The United Daughters of the Confederacy, which erected the monument in 1922, opposes that and is claiming in court the city does not have the rights to move the statue.
Gen. Mouton, who was born in 1829 in Opelousas, was the son of former Louisiana Gov. Alexandre Mouton. He, along with his father, helped train a “Vigilante Committee” who whipped and lynched Black people in Lafayette Parish, the newspaper said.
Mouton was elected to Lafayette police jury in 1860 and joined the war the next year, rising up the Confederate ranks to become commander of all forces south of the Red River by 1863, according to the historical association. He died in battle the next year.
As with other Confederate statues across the South, critics say the statue is a glorified symbol of white supremacy and racism.
“If this statue was simply a testament to Gen. Mouton’s valor in battle, it might be less objectionable. However, this specific statue was erected in 1922” during Jim Crow, when Black people were denied their rights, Lafayette Mayor-President Josh Guillory said last summer.
“It was a time that glorified and preserved the idea that people of color are somehow less than others, that they are not equal,” he said.
Guillory wanted to remove the monument at that time, but a court order obtained decades ago by the United Daughters of the Confederacy prevents it from being moved.
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