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Season 3 Episode 4 | 26m 46s | Video has closed captioning.
Monuments to the Confederacy permeate the American South. Emotions run high and tensions mount when, in 2015, the New Orleans city council convenes a public debate over the fate of its Confederate statues. As the council prepares to vote, Divided City reveals deep divisions about the history and symbolism of the monuments, and their place in the public space and in the South.
Aired: 02/12/18
Expires: 06/30/24
- Hey, I'm Darius Rucker.
Coming up on Reel South .
- Join the crowd as we move forward, demanding justice!
Join the crowd!
- [Man] Ladies and gentlemen, at this time I'd like to discuss Confederate monuments.
- [Darius] In New Orleans, reckoning with the past ain't always easy.
- This guy right here, he fought to keep it that way.
- [Darius] In the year of tumult, the citizens of the Big Easy stand their ground in the face of monumental controversy.
- [Man] This is a battle for the public spaces.
- [Darius] A "Divided City" cries out.
This time, on Reel South.
- [Female Narrator] Support for this program is provided by South Arts, sponsors of the Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
[bluesy guitar rock] ♪ [piano blues] ♪ - When I was a little girl, my mother and I would take the streetcar all the way downtown, and I'd bounce along, and I would look at all the beautiful monuments.
And we lived out near City Park, where the statue of Gerald Beauregard is.
I was crazy about his horse.
Every time I would go by the statue, I would go, "Horse, horse!"
and I'd get very excited.
So the idea that they would take that statue down is, it's part of my roots.
I'm thinking, I have a brand new grandchild, and I look forward to taking my grandchild by the statue and saying, "Look at the horse!
"Look at the man on the horse!"
[downbeat music] - Everybody's life out here is some type of domino effect, an after effect from past generations, right?
My grandmother's grandmother, she sold cookies to buy her husband out of slavery, and if she didn't sell those cookies and didn't get him out of slavery, we might have had a very different life.
That's what we lived through, that's what our ancestors lived through.
This guy right here, he fought to keep it that way.
- Ladies and gentlemen, at this time I'd like to convene a committee to discuss the Confederate monuments.
Before we begin, I would ask that everyone in here look to their left and look to their right and recognize their fellow citizen and recognize that whatever they have to say, regardless of what side they're on, is important and needs to be heard by this body and the listening public.
With that being said, I want to call our first speaker.
- Saying Christian people do not direct monuments, it is muslims, jackabons and communists who are bent on destroying memory and rewriting the past.
It should be clear to everyone north and south.
[cheering] - How the hell are we, in a black city, discussing if we gon' let them remind us of our damn subjugation every day?
- Oppression is when a tourist comes to New Orleans and gets his face kicked in by a couple of thugs.
That's oppression, that's subjugation.
- This is not just about New Orleans.
This is about all the different places around the world where they're understanding that white supremacy, as James Baldwin said 50 years ago, must die, must go.
We are challenging you, we are also inviting you to be on the right side of history and understand this is the legacy that we pass to the black boys and girls that I help educate every day.
Look at that future.
We're talking to you.
History is in your hands.
♪ Whenever you'll be okay ♪ ♪ We'll talk for real time ♪ - [Shell] Good mornin' everybody.
It's Shell Perkins comin' at you live on this beautiful Thursday morning, to all of y'all out there listenin'.
I know some of the people on this city council, it's time for the monuments to go.
It's time for us to live in a city where we ain't gotta be walking the past, Robert E. - [Man] Four confederate monuments, the mayor's office is requesting a vote from council, and that vote could come as early as the next session.
- [Man] We need to talk about a plan of action for these monuments.
We can't just lay down without a fight.
This is part of our city, this is not a white thing, this is not a confederate thing.
This is about history.
- [Man] Mr. McGraw.
- I'm Pierre McGraw, I'm president of the Monumental Task Committee, which is an all volunteer organization, nonprofit, that has been taking care of all city monuments for 26 years.
The city has millions of dollars worth of some real fine quality monuments that any other city would just love to have.
In a short period of time, we collected over 31,000 petitions of concerned citizens against the removal of these monuments.
The role of monuments is to take a message that's considered important at some point in time and send that message to future generations.
They're meant in do or tan.
They're made out of durable materials.
I mean, history has happened, it is what it is.
How do we handle it and go forward?
Trashin' each other's cultural icons is not the answer.
- A lot of white people think, "Well, it's just history."
Well, there's a lot of ugly history.
Why do we celebrate it, though?
I'm not opposed to havin' this in the textbook.
We better know about it.
But when you venerate it, when you worship it and celebrate it, you send a very different message to your populace.
- [Woman] No justice!
- [Crowd] No peace!
- [Woman] No justice!
- [Crowd] No peace!
- No justice!
- [Crowd] No peace!
- [Woman] No racists!
- Takin' down Nola's goal is to remove all symbols of white supremacy in the city of New Orleans.
And the movement was goin' out of South Carolina in response to the shootings in the church last year in Charleston.
We're essentially picking up the torch from our ancestors 50 years ago, Civil Rights activists, and now we're saying that as we're here, there's still a few things that need to chance.
- [Woman] No justice!
- [Crowd] No peace!
- In 1968, when Stokely Carmichael and Willie Riggs started shouting black power, that was a clarion call to me to fight for the freedom of our people, and I think this time, is that clarion call to the young black people, "Stand up for your rights, fight for your rights."
And so this is a battle for the public spaces in their city.
- For all the people who are watching us along this journey, you don't have to be a bystander!
Join the crowd as we move forward, demanding justice!
Join the crowd!
- [Man] Thomas Taylor, please come up.
Thank you, Mr. Taylor.
- 154 years ago, the citizens of New Orleans came together to defend it.
And before you now is a proposal to take down the monuments to their leaders.
Please don't let political correctness attempt to erase four years of history because you don't agree with it.
When I was a little boy and I was in the South, and the Sears catalogs would come out before Christmas, and in it were two little boys.
One of them was in a Yankee uniform, the other one was in a confederate uniform.
And I wanted one of those uniforms desperately.
I never got it, because we were not financially well off.
Sons of Confederate Veterans is one of the oldest heritage organizations in the United States.
We defend the good name of the confederate soldier and the values that he inspired in which we also cherish.
- I'm a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and of course, I am, I am very proud of what our ancestors did.
These monuments are part of what makes New Orleans a southern city, and no amount of political correctness can change that fact.
- Monuments that honor traitors, monuments that uplift slavery should not be in our city.
They should have.
- Today, you might think the southern people are just bad, bad folks who enslaved a race of people, and treated 'em horribly and...
The war was about states rights, freedom.
They were southerners.
They considered their states autonomous, but they felt the United States had abandoned them.
[shouting] - [Crowd] Take them down!
Take them down!
Take them down!
- These people have been taught to maintain the myth of the lost cause, that somehow the north had invaded the south.
- An invading army, Grant, Sherman, Lincoln.
They're war criminals.
- People were taught that the Civil War wasn't about the ending of slavery.
- The so-called Civil War wasn't about slavery, it was about states rights.
- The war between the states was about succession, not about slavery.
[shouting] - To everybody with any real sense knows that that whole war was about slavery.
[shouting] - Love, love, love, love!
- I hear a lot of these old white men trying to talk about history and most of it was a distorted narrative.
- Part of that struggle to reaffirm our history is to get rid of these statues.
- It's been my realization that the great majority of people living in the city are clueless about our monuments and who they're honoring or their special histories.
They see 'em all the time.
Rarely do they get out and go look at 'em and hug 'em and learn from 'em.
I think that's a shame.
If you look back at New Orleans and Louisiana, they'd just survived a devastating war.
- The men of that time were ashamed of themselves, and the women were ashamed of them.
The laws of Reconstruction meant they couldn't take their place in political society.
They were ousted from that.
- In the aftermath of a defeated peoples, I think they wanted to show their resilience and that their cause was noble.
- People started banding together and saying, "You know, we did an honorable thing.
"We fought for our confederate states, "and we should build a monument to "the great men who represented us."
And so they raised money for these statues.
- Understand that these confederate monuments were not put up by the confederate government, and it long ceased to exist.
The citizens of New Orleans couldn't put up anything until reconstruction was over.
[piano playing] - Because of the Compromise of 1877, we were sold out!
We were sold out, the northern troops left, and now we got this backlash.
Now we got these vicious white racists in the South who are angry and pissed off for all of the gains we made during that brief period of Reconstruction.
All of these confederate monuments were placed there when black people in this country were being besieged by a reign of terror.
When Beauregard's monument is being erected, here's some of the things that was happenin'.
"John Richards, a negro, was lynched by a mob last night.
"He's said to have insulted a white woman."
"Caesar Sheffield was taken from the prison last night "and shot to death by an unknown parties.
"No trail has been found of the slayers."
"Cordella Stephenson was found without any clothing, dead.
"The body was hanging to a limb of a tree "about 50 yards north of the railroad, "and the thousands and thousands of passengers "that came in and out of this city "were horrified at the sight."
These confederate monuments, we know that the people who placed them there, they understood the power of symbols.
- [Reporter] There is growing outrage tonight after an unarmed African American teenager was shot and killed by police in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson.
- [Man] Demanding answers in the shooting death of 18 year old Michael Brown at the hands of a police.
- [Man] Suspect being put into the back of a police van.
That suspect, Freddie Gray, would later die.
- [Man] Friday, police pulled Sandra Bland over for changing lanes.
- [Man] Outrage over the shooting death of Alton Stirling by two Baton Rouge police officers.
- History's not history.
We're still dying daily.
Anything but America.
What dark phantoms are creeping the underbelly of your dream, huh?
What ocean of skeletons tap dance on your bed at night?
What terror do you dress black bodies in if you all turn to bulls eyes under your scalp, how rigid must be my walk?
How docile of a smile... My whole life has been fear, 'cause you know, I grew up with Rodney King when I'm 11, you know?
I grew up being harassed by police time and time again with my best friend, with my little brother, with my girlfriend, with my friend, with my mom, you know?
All these scenarios, so I had a context with effect that you know what?
All of these boys they killin', I narrowly escaped being that boy several times.
And so at a point, it just makes the blood boil.
If you gon' teach my kids a miracle about indolence, about turning of the cheek, what with all that blood rushin' to your heads.
The sickness that is white supremacy, the disease, it has very direct and real consequences for black people in our black bodies.
- You want to call a monument racist or oppressive?
They're an inanimate object.
They talk about civil unrest around them, but historically speaking, from the police reports from New Orleans police department, there has been no police reports of any civil unrest around any of these monuments until Black Lives Matter started to deface them.
- Now I wasn't gonna chime in, but Avery Alexander got choked out in front of the White League monument.
- The 1993 reverend Avery Alexander was attacked out here with us protesting.
Avery Alexander was one of our heroes, and the New Orleans police were defending the right of the Klan to be here and protesting.
The black community in New Orleans has fought for decades to rid this city of what we black people in the city of New Orleans call the white supremacy monument.
- The Liberty monument might be America's most interesting monument.
It was dedicated to local citizens who were considered patriots at that time.
- In the aftermath of Reconstruction, a number of white supremacist organizations developed all over the South, the most famous of which was of course the Ku Klux Klan.
But in the city of New Orleans, they founded the White League to overthrow the Reconstruction government.
- The Reconstruction government, their armed force was called the Metropolitan Police, and it was made up of a large amount of African Americans, and also a lot of carpet baggers.
So the local people, they had a rebellion of sorts.
- And of course this is the only statue in the United States that celebrates the attack on a police force.
This was their attempt to reestablish white supremacy in this state.
As long as that stands, I think that's the statement that it makes.
- You know the New Orleans I grew up in, was one my family, I didn't know the difference of black and white.
[laughter] - Black families make 50% of what white families make in the city of New Orleans.
What has created those numbers?
What has created those systems?
This the same system that standing 60 foot tall over me in this city.
So if we worship that, then that's exactly what's gon' replicate in my life as a young black woman.
- The symbols are the heart of the matter.
They are the seed of the ideology that created the systems that keep us enslaved today.
- I work downtown, went to eat at a cafe called Huck Finn's and 'nigger' was typed on my receipt.
Those monuments standing are a symbol of why those types of people are bold enough to type that.
These need to come down now.
- The youth of this city deserves to see an honorable, organic living history, one that is not fixed in stone, one that changes, one that evolves, one that grows and expands, one that reflects our shared values and beliefs.
[cheering] - [Mam] Tomorrow, I hope with the help of the city council, we could do what we have to do and get rid of those things.
- [Man] It's not a moment, it's a movement and it's in the air.
I can feel it, I can smell it.
We moving forward.
- [Together] One nation, one cause, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
- Today, we are here to consider the removal of the confederate monuments.
- These statues were erected to revere the lost cause of the confederacy.
- Symbols count.
We started this meeting pledging allegiance to a mere symbol, and we have to understand how important those symbols are.
- I know what it means to look up at these monuments and feel less than.
To see those monuments and know that they were meant to remind me that I am not equal in the eyes of many people.
Lee's pedestal is the umbilical cord connecting this city to the confederacy.
It is time to cut that cord.
[applause] I call the question.
Six yeys, one nay.
[cheering] - [Man] The company hired to remove confederate symbols in New Orleans quit after the owner and his wife received death threats at their home.
- [Woman] Four groups are seeking a federal injunction to stop the city from moving forward with the removal process.
Legal analysts are predicting a long court battle.
Breaking news tonight after an appeals court upholds a ruling allowing the confederate monuments in New Orleans to come down.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu issued a statement, reading.
- [Mitch] These statues are not just stone and metal.
They're not just innocent remembrances of a benign history.
These monuments celebrate a fictional sanitized confederacy.
We cannot be afraid of the truth.
[cheering] [upbeat music] - [Man] They say as the South goes, so goes the nation.
The whole country and the whole world changes as we get freedom.
[cheering] - First, General Robert E. Lee.
- [Men] Down goes white supremacy!
- All right, all right, all right.
[cheering] - Yeah!
- Power to the people!
Power to the people!
Power to the people!
[upbeat New Orleans jazz] ♪ [bluesy guitar rock] ♪ - [Female Narrator] Support for this program is provided by South Arts, sponsors of the Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
