New Orleans: Lee Circle Without General Robert E. Lee - Mayor Landrieu’s Stand

New Orleans: Lee Circle Without General Robert E. Lee - Mayor Landrieu’s Stand

May 24, 2017

I had heard rumblings about symbols of the Confederacy that remain in plain sight in New Orleans. The tipping point, fueled by unease after high profile police killings of black men across the country and Dylann Roof's murdering of nine black men and women in a Charleston church, raised the ante to make changes.

To me, a frequent visitor, the statue of General Robert E. Lee, was a sort of civic wallpaper, a vague reminder of southern history and as recognizable a site of New Orleans geography as Bourbon Street. To African-Americans and a growing number of white citizens, it was an offensive symbol of the Civil War's racial overtones.

Right thing to do or not, I never thought anyone would have the gumption to remove General Lee from Lee Circle.

On May 19, 2017, Mayor Mitch Landrieu did just that. The words he uttered to describe his decision were more powerful than the cranes that lifted the statue. 

Landrieu's mix of facts, aspiration, history, and personal anecdotes quoting conversations with some of the city's best known African Americans, was broad and inclusive, at times reaching lyrical and poetic heights. It should be required reading for every civic leader and every high school student in the land. It was not a calculated sound byte to be easily digested.

It was the kind of speech you wish politicians and leaders of every stripe would have the nerve to make. My guess is that, like me, you'll read it more than once because it is refreshingly American in the best sense of the term.

History drapes around New Orleans like the Spanish Moss hanging from its live oak trees. It's impossible to disentangle the moss from the trees. But words that Mayor Landrieu used in his declaration to the city that elected him go a long way to disentangle antebellum attitudes from modern day realities. Disappearing Robert E. Lee isn't going to disappear racial attitudes overnight but it's a powerful start.

New Orleans is not your typical southern city. There's nothing remotely typical about New Orleans. From its gumbo history of being owned by France then Spain then France again before being bought in the Louisiana Purchase, and the loads of Italian, Irish, German, and Haitian immigrants that co-existed with descendants of Spanish, French,  and Creole (free people of color) culture in the early 1900s, New Orleans was hard to categorize. It still is.

Shock waves created by Mayor Landrieu's act of civic courage have reached my home town of Boston. Ty Burr, a Boston Globe columnist and film critic, asks, "Are Boston's statues honoring all the right men?" 

Henry Cabot Lodge, Samuel Eliot Morison, and Christopher Columbus have prominent statues in their honor. Burr's profiles about the men's intolerance and views were embarrassing eye-openers. And are timely conversation starters. Should the statues remain? Should they be removed? Should their plaques be rewritten?

The fact that they were deemed worthy of a statue in the past speaks volumes about what the attitudes of the general public were at the time. How we manage their presence today represents who we are now.

What happened in New Orleans is likely to create a domino effect. Our assumptions about our local histories and heroes are about to be questioned. The answers, as in the case of Boston, are going to be hard to reconcile.

The biggest question: will the answers bring us closer together.

Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Comments

[Jeff Piccoli]

Can’t seem to really get my hands around you progressives. Your all over Trump, thinking he colluded with the Russians to win an election; you guys use to like those guys. Now you praise soviet revisionist history tactics of purging previous leaders free from historical records. New Orleans could have used the statue as a teaching symbol and a reminder of past errors. Now with all confederate historical items being purged, within a generation, no one will know the past, good and bad. Then to see Boston progressive idiots jump into the mix just to show their PC creds. You know Washington was a slave owner. Rally the Bastille mob and let’s march on the Public Garden and take that slave owner off his horse and remove him! I have a term for the likes of Mitch Landrieu, of the corrupt New Orleans Landrieu’s, a special kind of stupid.

[Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. aka pt at large]

I don't think there is a one size fits all kind of solution. What makes sense for New Orleans is not necessarily what makes sense for Boston. I agree that we need to live with and learn from our past - and think we don't do a very good job of doing that.
What I liked about the Ty Burr commentary is that he asked questions, provided facts and got us talking about a cultural and historic symbols that are present in every city in the country. There probably isn't one subject in America more third rail-ish than attitudes about race.
I don't think we need to revise history, do think we need to acknowledge some 'inconvenient truths' about some of our heroes, local and national...and use it to engage in the teaching moments you mentioned. Our history is so much messier than what is written in texts and on statues.

[Susaan]

Paul, I haven’t yet seen your response to Jeff, but I confess that my first instinct upon reading your revised ending was the same as Jeff’s. He wrote: "New Orleans could have used the statue as a teaching symbol and a reminder of past errors. Now with all confederate historical items being purged, within a generation, no one will know the past, good and bad.”

I found myself wishing they would post a plaque beside the statue to explain Lee's fall from grace as the result simply of the changing belief systems/values systems of the dominant cultural paradigm. Note that I didn’t say changing beliefs of Americans, because clearly some folks haven’t changed their beliefs at all. If we are indeed a democracy where free speech is welcomed, these ‘confederate’ values should be allowed to be presented in symbolic form - ie, Robert E. Lee’s statue.

And there should also be statues of Black Lives Matter heroes as well. Not just MLKing, but also Malcolm X and the Panthers.

"Let a hundred flowers bloom...” a worthy
idea, even if it's a quote from Mao Zedong

[JEFFERY PICCOLI]

Susan, when you elevate Malcolm X and the Black Panthers to hero status, I worry about your judgement.

[Myke Farricker]

Paul - Thanks so much for sending this. That was one of the greatest speeches I have ever read, or heard in my mind as I was reading it. Very moving, and how eloquent. Thanks again!

[Ty Burr]

Email from Ty Burr after I commented on his Boston Globe story.

Thanks Paul, for the kind words and for the link to your post. Very nicely said! Ty