NEW ORLEANS - An anonymous donor is offering to pay the $126,000 city officials say it will cost to remove four prominent Confederate monuments.

New Orleans joined a number of other Southern cities moving to eradicate Confederate and white supremacist symbols after the killings of nine worshippers at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina in June.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu and the City Council are looking at removing statues of Robert E. Lee, P.G.T. Beauregard and Jefferson Davis and a monument honoring a white militia attack on an integrated Reconstruction-era government in New Orleans. 

In a letter to the City Council this week, the Landrieu administration said an anonymous donor was ready to pay the cost of taking down the monuments.

The City Council must vote on the statues' removal.