WBR Council Votes To Keep Confederate Statue Outside Public Library

The West Baton Rouge Parish Council is turning down a request by the Port Allen City Council to remove a statue of a Confederate general and politician.

At a meeting on Thursday, the Parish Council voted 6-3 to keep the statue of Henry Watkins Allen, who served as Governor of Louisiana from January 1864 until the Confederacy surrendered in early 1865.

The City Council had unanimously backed a request to have the statue relocated from the courtyard of the Parish Library to a museum.

Before becoming governor, Allen was wounded at the battles of Shiloh and Baton Rouge and died in 1866 while hiding in Mexico, where he had fled to avoid being arrested for treason.