Monumental discussions

OUR VIEW: Exposing the ExposeDat settlement
May 23, 2017
A statesman and a dear friend
May 23, 2017
OUR VIEW: Exposing the ExposeDat settlement
May 23, 2017
A statesman and a dear friend
May 23, 2017

The deed has been done. The monuments to “Confederate heroes” – and the acts of some post-Confederate thugs, meaning those who took part in the Battle of Liberty Place – have been removed.

And while New Orleans is a distance from here, it is obvious that local folks have had a lot to say about the removals. A lot of talk has gone on, for instance, on my friend Nicole Lirette’s Facebook group, The Buzz, which attracts a lot of eyes and more recently a lot of comments about the statute removals.


Most recently, people have been having serious conversation about the statue at Jackson Square of Old Hickory himself, Andrew Jackson, former President of the United States, slave owner, oppressor of native people and the guy Donald Trump says could have stopped the Civil War had he been born a little later.

Some of the comments – through no fauly of Nicole’s – have been pretty ugly.

For the record, I am not a fan of statue removal anywhere. I do, however, understand the emotions on all sides of the issue. Giving such monuments historical context is one way of overcoming objections to statues still standing. And in the case of the statues recently removed in New Orleans, might accomplish much more than leaving blank bases.


But the City Council in that city has made its decision, with clear backing of its mayor, and since I no longer live in New Orleans I am in no position to trash it from all the way over here.

But I can say this.

As the author of a book on the 1887 Thibodaux Massacre, which did occur right here, I can tell you a bit about Louisiana culture at the time these statues went up – between Reconstruction and Jim Crow.


The desire of post-Reconstruction Democrats to elevate their heroes – Lee, Beauregard and Davis – to the level of statuary was clearly motivated by a desire to show who was in charge again. Showing is better than telling, in terms of any message. And in a city that had undergone a cruel occupation and reconstruction experience, the freedom to raise statues to those who had done battle against the United States of America was the creation of a message no doubt oppressive to both blacks and Republicans at that time.

The statues were part of a campaign of intimidation, and anyone who reads the newspapers of the time should know that. Black people in particular need nobody to interpret the message of the statues to them. The Confederate uprising may have been vanquished, the war may have been over, but the battle of economics had in ways been won.

Plantation workers in Lafourche, Terrebonne and other parishes got a clear message that they had become slaves by another name. As long as the practice of paying in plantation scrip for work done in the sugar fields was commonplace, and at many such places it was during more than half of the 20th Century, the statue raisers were clearly in charge.


It was this message that was addressed by the New Orleans City Council. That message may have been invisible to some New Orleanians. But those for whom it was meant got the message. They told it to their children, and their children’s children, and the result for all of them was the same.

Long-buried animosity began to surface, and ended with the statue take-down.

It is not a Terrebonne Parish fight or a Lafourche fight, and what fight there was is now over.


The random postings about Jackson being next are little more than expressions of antagonism. Those who wish to see statues taken down can claim that Simon Bolivar or Joan of Arc is next. But it’s just talk. Andrew Jackson if nothing else was President of the United States. And I believe that would tend to trump any other complaints. •

John DeSantis