"To me, the Confederate Battle Flag is every bit as objectionable as the Nazi flag."

Me, too.  And I am Southern.  This is one old, white-haired, Southern white woman who thinks Mayor Landrieu has it exactly right.  We need a true history told, of slavery and the defense of slavery, of the loss of the war and the ensuing Jim Crow, attempting to continue the power of those who are white over those who are Black.  

Somewhere in all of this, we white Southerners have to name and acknowledge our shame.  Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.  

Equally - more? - importantly, we need to recognize that our African American neighbors and fellow citizens have attach an enormously different meaning to some of the symbols we think of as "glorious."  No state should have any element of the Confederate Battle Flag as part of the state flag and no state should have such an emblem flying on a flag-pole on state grounds.  Put it in a museum, surrounded with slave chains and whips for context.