The Battle of Liberty Place Monument is a 35-foot stone obelisk that was erected in 1891 in the middle of Canal Street in honor of the “Battle of Liberty Place,” an 1874 insurrection of the Crescent City White League, a group of all white, mostly Confederate veterans, who battled against the racially integrated New Orleans Metropolitan Police and state militia.
The monument was meant to honor the members of the White League who died during the battle. In 1932, the City of New Orleans added a plaque to the monument, explicitly outlining its white supremacist sympathies, which explained that the battle was fought for the “overthrow of carpetbag government, ousting the usurpers" and that “the national election of November 1876 recognized white supremacy in the South and gave us our state."
In 1989, construction on Canal Street forced the removal of the monument and it was relocated to its current location on Iberville Street in 1993.
At that time, the 1932 white supremacist plaque was covered with a new plaque that read: “In honor of those Americans on both sides who died in the Battle of Liberty Place… A conflict of the past that should teach us lessons for the future.”
Paul McIntyre, who said his great-grandfather's name was one on the memorial, disputed the legacy afforded those whose names were on the obelisk.
"None of them owned slaves, none of them were fighting for slavery," he said. "In the documents you can access, it tells you it's over state's rights."