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Mitch Landrieu 1: Speech on the Removal of Confederate Monuments in New Orleans (2017)

Thank you for coming.

The soul of our beloved City is deeply rooted in a history that has evolved over thousands of

years; rooted in a diverse people who have been here together every step of the way – for

both good and for ill. It is a history that holds in its heart the stories of Native Americans […],

5 the enslaved people from Senegambia 2, Free People of Color 3, the Haitians, the Germans,

both the empires of France and Spain. The Italians, the Irish, the Cubans, the south and central

Americans, the Vietnamese and so many more.

You see – New Orleans is truly a city of many nations, a melting pot, a bubbling caldron of

many cultures. There is no other place quite like it in the world that so eloquently exemplifies

10 the uniquely American motto: e pluribus unum – out of many we are one. But there are also

other truths about our city that we must confront. New Orleans was America’s largest slave

market: a port where hundreds of thousands of souls were bought, sold and shipped up the

Mississippi River to lives of forced labor, of misery, of rape, of torture. America was the place

where nearly 4000 of our fellow citizens were lynched, 540 alone in Louisiana; where the courts

15 enshrined ‘separate but equal’; where Freedom riders 4 coming to New Orleans were beaten

to a bloody pulp. So when people say to me that the monuments in question are history, well

what I just described is real history as well, and it is the searing truth.

And it immediately begs the questions, why there are no slave ship monuments, no prominent

markers on public land to remember the lynchings or the slave blocks; nothing to remember

20 this long chapter of our lives; the pain, the sacrifice, the shame … all of it happening on the soil

of New Orleans. So for those self-appointed defenders of history and the monuments, they are

eerily silent on what amounts to this historical malfeasance, a lie by omission. There is a

difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it.

For America and New Orleans, it has been a long, winding road, marked by great tragedy and

25 great triumph. But we cannot be afraid of our truth. As President George W. Bush 5 said at the

dedication ceremony for the National Museum of African American History & Culture, “A great

nation does not hide its history. It faces its flaws and corrects them.” So today I want to speak

about why we chose to remove these four monuments to the Lost Cause of the Confederacy 6,

but also how and why this process can move us towards healing and understanding of each

30 other. So, let’s start with the facts.

The historic record is clear, the Robert E. Lee 7, Jefferson Davis 8, and P.G.T. Beauregard 9

statues were not erected just to honor these men, but as part of the movement which became

known as The Cult of the Lost Cause. This ‘cult’ had one goal – through monuments and

through other means – to rewrite history to hide the truth, which is that the Confederacy was

35 on the wrong side of humanity. First erected over 166 years after the founding of our city and

19 years after the end of the Civil War, the monuments that we took down were meant to

rebrand the history of our city and the ideals of a defeated Confederacy. It is self-evident that

these men did not fight for the United States of America. They fought against it. They may

have been warriors, but in this cause they were not patriots. These statues are not just stone

40 and metal. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments

purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the

enslavement, and the terror that it actually stood for.

After the Civil War, these statues were a part of that terrorism as much as a burning cross on

someone’s lawn; they were erected purposefully to send a strong message to all who walked

45 in their shadows about who was still in charge of this city. Should you have further doubt about

the true goals of the Confederacy, in the very weeks before the war broke out, the Vice

President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, made it clear that the Confederate cause

was about maintaining slavery and white supremacy. He said in his now famous ‘cornerstone

speech’ that the Confederacy’s “cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not

50 equal to the white man; that slavery – 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.”

Now, with these shocking words still ringing in your ears … I want to try to gently peel from

your hands the grip on a false narrative of our history that I think weakens us. And make

55 straight a wrong turn we made many years ago – we can more closely connect with integrity

to the founding principles of our nation and forge a clearer and straighter path toward a better

city and a more perfect union. […]

870 words

Landrieu, M. (2017). Speech on the Removal of Confederate Monuments in New Orleans. 23 May, 2017.

(published with friendly permission of the former Mayor of New Orleans, Mitch Landrieu)

1 Mitchell (Mitch) Landrieu – American politician and lawyer who was Mayor of New Orleans from 2010 to 2018

2 Senegambia – loose confederation between the West African countries of Senegal and Gambia

3 Free People of Color – people of mixed African and European descent who were not enslaved

4 Freedom riders – civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in the 1960s

5 George W. Bush – US President from 2001 - 2009

6 Lost Cause of the Confederacy – ideological movement which views the American Civil War (1861-1865) as an honorable struggle for the Southern way of life while downplaying the role of slavery in triggering the war

7 Robert E. Lee – commander of the Confederate States Army

8 Jefferson Davis – President of the Confederate States

9 P.G.T. Beauregard – general of the Confederate States Army

1 Outline what Mitch Landrieu says about monuments in New Orleans. (30 %)