119. In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History - Mitch Landrieu

The blog is back!

I heard Mitch Landrieu, the former mayor of New Orleans, speak on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah about his book shortly before it was going to be released.  He shared a really honest and revealing perspective of his controversial decision to remove several prominent Confederate statues, and I immediately bought the book online. 

I hadn't realized that Mayor Landrieu had initiated the conversation about removing the statues well before the national conversation started (which was mostly after the massacre in Charleston).  I appreciated Mayor Landrieu's acknowledgement of his ignorance in trying to understand the pain behind Confederate images for black folks.  He admitted that he grew up seeing these monuments and other Confederate images every day, and didn't think much about them.  He only was forced to consider them when he asked his good friend, Wynton Marsalis, to come back and perform for the City's tricentennial.  Marsalis conditioned his acceptance on Landrieu considering removing the statue of Robert E. Lee.

Landrieu did a deep dive into learning the history of the Confederate monuments and understood that they were constructed to send a specific message to African Americans more than they were to ever serve as a memorial to those who were killed in the war.  Marsalis asked Landrieu why he thought so many black folks left NOLA (Louis Armstrong left there, and even refused to be buried there).  Landrieu soon realized that "they are not of our age, nor of our making, and they deserve no prominence in our city."  He also realized that he had the best chance at making the removal happen, because he was a white mayor toward the end of his second term (this was around 2015). 

I remember hearing about the removal of the statues in the news, but I had no idea about all of the violence and drama leading up to the removal.  White supremacist groups surfaced.  The city had contracted with a company to effectuate the actual removal, and the owner of that company pulled out after he started receiving death threats and his sports car was set on fire while parked in his company's driveway.  The FBI had to get involved in the planning and preparation, SWAT teams were staked out the days the removal happened, and the employees of the contractors involved wore bullet proof vests and face masks, covered the logos on their company’s trucks, and removed their license plates.  The statues came down in May of 2017. 

A significant part of this book was about Hurricane Katrina, and those stories were really sobering. Landrieu was honest, even where it wasn't pretty.  It was striking to read stories about sites in NOLA that I had just visited over Memorial Day weekend a few months ago.  The Hyatt Regency, where I stayed, was ground zero for coordinating emergency operations, because it was just across the street from the Superdome, which of course was serving as an emergency shelter for thousands of people, and behind City Hall, which was flooded.  Clergy from Alabama set up a grill outside of Harrah's Casino to cook food for people who were taking shelter at the Superdome. 

Overall, this book was a fantastic read. I have to admit that the first third or so moved slowly for me (a bit of the history of Louisiana and New Orleans, setting the framework for the story of NOLA politics, etc.), but it was important for context.  I wish I'd finished reading it before my trip to NOLA, but now I have a better understanding and perspective of the city for the next time I go back!

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