In a world of “fake news,” “alternative facts,” and a downward trajectory in our political discourse, it is refreshing to hear a speech which is both eloquent and historically accurate.
Such was delivered at Gallier Hall in New Orleans on May 19, 2017.
The speaker was the mayor of the city, one Mitch Landrieu.
If the last name sounds familiar, it’s because his sister, Mary Landrieu, served in the U.S. Senate for three terms from 1997 to 2015.
What led up to the speech is significant. New Orleans had four monuments honoring the Confederacy. Among them were two honoring generals Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard.
A third honored Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
In 2015, the New Orleans City Council approved removal of the statues and after a variety of legal challenges the statues came down in May 2017.
While Landrieu’s decision was controversial, his speech was designed to bring about healing and understanding.
While one might argue that this is an issue affecting only the people of New Orleans, it, in fact, raises issues quintessentially important to 21st century race relations in America.
To this day, many southerners view “plantation life” with nostalgia. They think of a genteel era when words like honor and civility had meaning.
This is not the south as depicted in Harriet Tubman’s classic Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
The reason the Civil War was fought is given by Alexander Stephens the Vice President of the Confederacy.
He states that the issue was “maintaining slavery and white supremacy.” He went on:
“…the great truth, that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — the subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
One can ask if these beliefs about racial inferiority are a thing of the past. The truth is that there are many neo-Nazi and “skinhead” groups across America which still cling to these erroneous beliefs about racial superiority.
Returning to the removal of the statues, Landrieu makes the point that…
“there are no slave ship monuments, no prominent markers on public land to remember the lynching or the slave blocks; nothing to remember this long chapter of our lives; the pain, the sacrifice, the shame…these self-appointed defenders of…the monuments…are eerily silent on what amounts to historical malfeasance.”
The importance of getting history right cannot be overstated. President George W. Bush made this point at a ceremony opening the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
“A great nation” he said, “doesn’t hide its history. It faces its flaws and corrects them.”
Landrieu spoke about a post Civil War movement known as the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy.”
Its goal was to “rewrite history, to hide the truth.”
According to Landrieu, soldiers who donned the grey uniforms of the south “did not fight for the United States of America. They fought against it. They may have been warriors, but they were not patriots.”
Such sentiments did not sit well with apologists for the Confederacy.
I hold that the best argument for removal of the monuments is the effect they have upon black Americans.
No black child should have to walk in the shadows of these monuments and no black youth should have to look up and see statues honoring those who enslaved them.
What lessons can we learn from these events? First, it is the duty of all Americans to learn from the mistakes of the past.
We must not glorify or whitewash the worst aspects of our history. When I see the south glorified through symbolism and statuary, I am repelled. Not because it is politically incorrect, but because when I conjure up images of the Antebellum South, I think of slaves, lashings, families torn asunder and the degradation of the human spirit. Mitch Landrieu, a true son of the south, showed great courage in trying to right these wrongs of the past.
Dr. Hal Sobel
Great Neck
