The Monroe City School Board next month will decide on a new name for Robert E. Lee, Jr. High School, although scores of names have been floated in meetings, forums, and petitions, two have risen to the top: Earnest L. Neville and Matthew Williams, Jr.
In light of the national push to remove memorials, statues, and building names that salute Confederate heroes, Robert E. Lee Jr. High School in Monroe is among those being renamed.
Monroe was loyal to the Confederacy during the Civil War. The parish government outfitted and financed the “Ouachita Rifles” a Confederate unit that became a part of the 4th Louisiana Battalion in the Confederate army. Company K of the 31st Louisiana Infantry was formed in Monroe and provided nearly 200 soldiers composed of colorful names such as the “Ouachita Rebels” “Ouachita Rifles” and the “Ouachita Blues.”
There are three major memorials to Monroe’s fight against the United States. The first is a towering memorial to the Confederacy on property donated to the United Daughters of the Confederacy by the City Council in 1907. Once the memorial was built, hundreds of former Confederate soldiers assemble under the statue as a salute to those who fell in the “war against Northern aggression.” As for…
