New Orleans is cleaning up the city by removing Confederate statues, but there’s one former resident who’s going to do everything she can to protest their removal. Even if that means proving that there’s always that “one” black person.
Wearing a Confederate-flag T-shirt and waving a Confederate flag, Arlene Barnum, a native of New Orleans who now lives in Oklahoma, was one of a few people out protesting the removal of the Jefferson Davis statue.
“I felt I needed to be at the [monument] for Jefferson Davis because he was the one and only president of the Confederate States of America,” she told WGNO. “He’s the most significant of all the monuments to be taken down.” Barnum went on to say her race has nothing to do with the support of the Confederacy; “It’s about being on the right side of history,” she said.
On Monday the Liberty Monument, an 1891 obelisk honoring the Crescent City White League, was set to be removed. Up next for removal are the statues dedicated to Gens. Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard and Jefferson.
Barnum says she’s going to stand in front of the Jefferson statue from sunup to sundown. And her Facebook Live videos kinda prove she’s doing just that. Rachel Dolezal would never.