Nestled between the Aquarium of the Americas, The Westin, and a parking lot, the monument to the Battle of Liberty Place is difficult to find, even with the Historical Marker Database. Last week, I tracked it down.
This monument claims to pay tribute to the casualties on both sides of the 1874 battle—the New Orleans police on one side and on the other side, members of the White League who briefly overthrew the local government for three days, inflicted about 100 casualties, and even shot famed Confederate general James Longstreet. President Ulysses S. Grant sent in federal troops, finally ending the whole affair.
Scrawled on one side is BLACK LIVES MATTER FUCK THE POLICE. Ironically, members of the White League would agree with the latter half of that sentiment. Sleeping at the base of the monument are two homeless black men, in case we forgot what a black life can look like. It was 54 degrees and they were wrapped in sleeping bags and blankets.
I learned from an Uber driver that the vote to tear down this monument along with three Confederate monuments throughout New Orleans was recently blocked by a lawsuit. “You’ll never tear those down. They’ve been here for hundreds of years. You can’t just wipe out history like that.”
You can, however, diminish its presence with massive buildings.
So who are the people that want to tear down this monument? They include the City Council, the Historic District Landmarks Commission, the Human Relations Commission, the Vieux Carre Commission, the Chief Administrative Officer, the City Attorney, the Superintendent of the Police, and the Director of Property Management, and the Mayor of New Orleans. They are not seeking to tear it down, however. Rather, they want to remove it from public display and put it indoors in a museum along with other relics (statement here).
Indiana Jones would approve.
My Uber driver may be right, at least for a while. The local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Louisiana Landmarks Society, and Foundation for Historical Louisiana have filed a lawsuit to stop the removal of the monument, as well as monuments to Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and P. G. T. Beauregard. The case for each monument has its own reasoning, but the technicality for Liberty Place is that it was already refurbished and moved using federal funds in a prior controversy. Moving it would thus be a violation of the National Historic Preservation Act without revisiting the original case to remove it in 1989.
This opens up Pandora’s Box for those of us outside of New Orleans. A local professor emphasized the torrid history of the monument—erected in 1891, modified in 1932 to emphasize white supremacy, asterisked in 1974 to emphasize that people just don’t think like that anymore (or least shouldn’t), moved in 1989 to its current spot, and finally, and modified again in 1993 be less racist.
This begs the question—can we remove the racism from a group literally named THE WHITE LEAGUE?
The local professor saw a slippery slope in building up, tearing down, and replacing monuments willy-nilly to fit the modern politics with virtually no regard to the history. He wants to avoid brushing aside the past of New Orleans, but instead he wants to ensure no one forgets it.
The verbiage from the city council declared the monument a “nuisance.” It will remain in place until the lawsuits are settled. In the meantime, the controversy gives folks in New Orleans a chance to discuss their history. For those of us looking from the outside, we should discuss it too.