New Orleans, Confederate Monuments, and the Dismantling of our History
The New Orleans City Council voted Thursday (12/18) to remove four confederate monuments—effectively dismantling a part of the history and culture that I was raised in.
As the youngest of four boys, I was usually the only one that my mother would drag along when she would make her monthly visit to her Aunt Dot, who lived on Hennessey Street right off of City Park.
Three things remain in my memory from the ritual. One, we usually took Aunt Dot to get her hair done somewhere (not incredibly exciting for an 7-year-old boy). Two, we would stop at Five Happiness for a lunch, a Chinese restaurant on S. Carrollton. And three, in both coming and going, we would pass the statue of P.G.T. Beauregard.
History is in my blood. Since as long as I can remember I’ve always enjoyed history, monuments, artifacts, old stuff, etc. As a child, I would sit in my dad’s bathtub and read about the history of New Orleans. I love a good story. And most old things are better than the new stuff they make today. I’d still rather live in an old house (like the 1906 Craftsman I live in now) than a newly built house any day. I appreciate the old and value the stories from our past.
So as a kid, how could I not love that statue of Beauregard—beaming down at me from its pedestal, whispering to me the mysteries of New Orleans’ glorious past? And aside from the historical part, the statue of P.G.T Beauregard just looked so cool. As kids, we liked to “play war”—both with toy guns and plastic “army men”—and Beauregard was like a giant army man, but only on a horse, which also made him like a knight.
There’s no doubt that this guy is a boss. When P.G.T. walks into the room, everybody knows he’s in charge. The hat he is wearing tells you he’s sporty. The raised leg of the horse tells you to move the hell o
ut the way or you’re going to get trampled on. Did I mention he is wearing what looks like a cape? And did I mention that there was a public middle school named after him 5 miles away from my house?
Because of all this, I knew (even before I knew about the Civil War or slavery or anything about ole’ P.G.T) that the guy on the statue must have been awesome.
Because even 7-year-old kid know that only the awesomest people have statues made of them. (And only super heroes wear capes).
If there’s a statue of you and you look like a knight-in-shining armor, you must really be, in some sense, a savior. You must have done something worth remembering, something worth celebrating.
You must have been so amazing that you deserve to captivate the attention of every 7-year-old boy riding by (being dragged by his mother from here to there) from now until—well until eternity, because whatever they made this statue out of, it looks like it’s going to outlast us all.
So whatever it was that I would learn about the Civil War or the horrors and injustice of slavery, I would learn them with the prior “knowledge” that those men who fought for the South and for slavery were led by noble, heroic, and brave men whom we remember, celebrate, and emulate.
No one every told me this. They didn’t have to. The statue did all of the talking. My parents didn’t have to say a word. They just had to drive on by (on the way to the park or on the way to hair-dresser or the way to a Chinese restaurant) and I would get the lesson.
Alexander Doyle’s masterpiece of a statue of ole P.G.T. conveys a crystal clear message about the South, the supremacy of white people, and the nobility of their cause in the Civil War and the struggle thereafter to free themselves from the tyranny of the conquering U.S. Federal Government which sought to impose their way of life and values on us—the civil, godly, Southern gentlemen.
When these kinds of messages are on a website or in a book—they are far less effective and often recognized as what our society thinks of as an archaic, blatant version of racism, the kind that even Donald Trump publicly decries. But this message in the form of a masterpiece statue, this message encapsulated in beauty, this message artistically crafted and displayed for the world to see on a pedestal in front of the most beautiful park in the whole city is extremely effective in captivating the hearts and minds of all who pass by.
Lee Circle, Aerial View
I already knew how great General Beauregard must have been, because I had seen his statue. I already knew that General Robert E. Lee was worthy of honor and praise. His image was raised on the highest pedestal I had ever seen in the middle of the only traffic circle I had ever driven around.
So whatever they tried to tell me about slavery being bad or that black lives matter as much as white lives or who was at fault in the Civil War, their message could only get so far. And even as some of their arguments for Civil Rights began to make sense, I had to balance them out with what I knew to be true from the messages of the statues. It was, after all, the message I heard from the beginning.
Today, there are a lot of folks in New Orleans who are unhappy about the removal of these masterful pieces of our culture—and included among the unhappy are no doubt many of my own friends and relatives. There is even a group that is suing the city in an attempt to block the removal. Their suit reads:
Regardless of whether the Civil War era is regarded as a catastrophic mistake or a noble endeavor, it is undeniably a formative event in the history of Louisiana…It is the source of much of the cultural heritage (of) this city and state, including countless novels, short stories, plays, monuments, statues, films, stories, songs, legends and other expressions of cultural identity.[1]
The Civil War could have been a noble endeavor on our part, right? Well, that is what our statues have been telling us since we were old enough to look out of the car window.
But even if it was a catastrophic mistake, it’s history folks! The Civil War was a “formative event” in our history. We can’t just forget it.
Right. We cannot forget it.
But can we change the way we remember it?
I’ve traveled Europe quite a bit. So I’ve been in a lot of museums and I’ve seen the heads and in some cases the busts and sometimes the whole bodies of Greek and Roman gods.
These statues represented thousands of years of history and culture for the Greco-Roman world. They were “undeniably formative.” These gods were the way of life. And their images were enthroned in the highest places, put on pedestals, and their stories were honored and remembered.
But pagan culture and religion was eventually replaced by Christian 
culture and religion. The very temples where people praised the statues of Zeus were eventually converted into cathedrals. According to the Christians, their God (the God of Israel, a God of love and justice) was the only true God. Following the God of Israel would lead to the greatest human flourishing, because his gospel was capable of producing the most good, just, beautiful, and true society imaginable. The pagan gods and their stories had led the people astray and brought about a society that was incapable of true love and justice and of rightly appropriating beauty and works of art. This is, at least, the story that Christians tell.
In various ways the Christians dismantled and reconfigured the history of the Romans. Many artifacts, which had been important to the pagan culture, were now forgotten. Masterful pieces of art and sculpture fell by the waste side while others were reappropriated.
Today, the only home poor Zeus has is in a museum. But there, his statue doesn’t get the praise and honor due to him—at least as his sculptor intended it.
What was wrong with those ancient Christians? Couldn’t they have just celebrated the cultural history of paganism even after most of society has moved on to a radically different way of existing?
They didn’t think so. The Christians were trying to destroy a powerful ideology—a system that was ingrained in the very fabric of Roman life. They recognized not only the power of “truth” (i.e. logic) but also the power of beauty. Even if the majority of the people bought into the message of Christianity, if the most beautiful monuments in town were pointing them to another way of life, they would always be drawn to re-imagine their old life as pagans as more noble, more heroic, and more just than it ever was. This is the power of art.
Should New Orleanians do away with their Confederate monuments? Should the statues of Generals Lee and Beauregard suffer the same fate as that of Vladimir Lenin’s statue in Berlin, Germany—which was unceremoniously removed in 1989 from it’s prominent, public location and then broken in 130 pieces before being buried in the ground?[2]
I prefer the “Zeus solution.” Let them be removed and forgotten about for a while. And then after a few centuries, display them in museums so that people can see the gods of Southern white supremacy—those beings that were curiously once regarded by (white) society as honorable, praise-worthy and deserving of reverence.
Then the people will look on with wonder (in quite the same way that we stare at a bust of Aphrodite or Zeus) and say, how is it that people truly worshiped these men?
[1] Cited online in the Washington Examiner http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/groups-sue-to-keep-confederate-monuments-in-new-orleans/article/2578760
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/11/giant-head-from-lenin-statue-unearthed-for-exhibition-in-berlin
