It’s Official! Orleanians are now traveling on the Norman C. Francis Parkway
25th January 2021 · 0 Comments
By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer
When New Orleans city officials announced that the process for renaming dozens of streets that bear the monikers of white leaders connected to the Confederacy, slaveholding or the support of institutionalized segregation and racial oppression, they said the rebranding of the city’s history would be a long, steady one.
A process that had begun in earnest in 2017 with the removal of four statues honoring the brutal legacy of racial oppression, now plunges ahead with an effort that, in all reality, should have started long before this.
In December 2020, the City Council voted to change the name of Jefferson Davis Parkway – a major thoroughfare in New Orleans, with a great deal of commercial and residential development – to the Norman C. Francis Parkway in honor of the revered long-time former president of Xavier University, much of which is located along the parkway. The street’s name officially changed this month.
In an interview with The Louisiana Weekly, Dr. Francis said he is grateful for the honor, but he added that what means the most about the renaming, as well as the removal of a statue to Jefferson Davis in 2017, is what it represents for society as a whole.
“It’s a great event because [the rename] took so long to change, and to change America in general,” he said. “There was a number of people who said change would come, but it had to be a reflection of us. It was a signal that times are changing.”
He added that such change is part of the fabric of our country in 2021.
“I feel it is part of the American dream and making sure we are going to achieve it, somewhere, somehow, and we are there.”
The fact that much of Xavier University is located along or near the parkway imbues the renaming with an additional feeling of justice and progressive societal development. Placing the name of such a legend in Black education, and education in general, is very appropriate, said current Xavier President Dr. C. Reynold Verret to The Louisiana Weekly.
“It has great meaning because of who Norman Francis is and what his career represents,” Verret said. “His career is about working for the people of New Orleans and the work he did to make us a better community.”
The name change is anticipated to be the first of up to 37 streets or locations in the city to undergo such alterations, following the recommendations of the New Orleans City Council Street Renaming Commission. The City Council will have the final say for all the renamings.
District B City Councilman Jay H. Banks, whose district includes a portion of the Francis Parkway, told The Louisiana Weekly that the renaming process is ongoing and inclusive, with the parkway being the much-needed first step.
“It will be a fair and open process,” Banks said, “which is much different than it was many, many years ago. All citizens are invited to participate as much as possible. It will be open and done by the citizens.”
Banks countered the criticism that renaming landmarks effectively eliminates some of the city’s long history from the record by saying that it’s not a matter of changing history. Rather, it’s to honor the right parts of history. “There’s no attempt to erase history,” Banks said. “We have the right to honor whomever we choose to honor, and I see nothing wrong with letting the community choose the people it wants to honor.”
He said that only a fraction of the city’s streets are currently named after African Americans, even though the city and its history are multicultural and diverse. He also noted that many of the streets currently named after Confederate figures weren’t even the original monikers. They were only changed after the Civil War to glorify the Confederacy and its values – namely slavery, segregation and the fallacious notion of white supremacy.
District A City Councilman Joseph I. Giarrusso III, whose district also includes part of the parkway, expressed similar thoughts.
“One of the goals of this renaming process is to honor Norman C. Francis, whose impact on our city cannot be understated,” Giarrusso said in an email statement to The Louisiana Weekly. “Our major thoroughfares should reflect our values as a city. Congress, in a broad bipartisan manner, agreed that military bases named for Confederates should have different names.
“Remember Jefferson Davis Parkway used to be named Hagan Street,” he added. “Renaming streets is nothing new. This is an inflection point to honor New Orleanians who have contributed to the community.”
However, with his comment – specifically, that the parkway was originally named Hagan Street (or Hagan Avenue, depending on the source) – Giarrusso refers to a fact that reflects just how deeply the legacy of racial oppression and white supremacy is embedded in New Orleans.
When Hagan Avenue was rebranded as Jefferson Davis Parkway more than a century ago – the City Council OK’d the change in late 1910, and the official change took place the following year – the city was simply replacing the moniker of one large slaveholder for another.
Moreover, not only did the Hagan family of 19th-century New Orleans own human beings like chattel, one of them – land developer John Hagan – was a significant slave trader and seller in the antebellum South, with bases of business here and in Charleston, S.C., and significant relationships with major slave traders in Richmond, Va.
In the first decade of the 20th century, Hagan Avenue was designated to be a parkway, or speedway, that would connect City Park and Audubon Park and allow both city residents and tourists to easily and quickly move between the two landmarks, as well as all points (residential, commercial and civic) in between. The goal was to spur development, boost the local economy and make the city more appealing to visit or even move.
Newspapers, business owners and park commissioners expressed full support for the idea as a way to rectify the existing shoddy, decaying quality of the city’s streets, open up commerce and tourism and bring New Orleans’ image and appearance in line with other great Southern cities. In essence, supporters asserted, it would begin a massive makeover for the city.
And that’s where Jefferson Davis entered the picture. Davis, who died in 1889 in New Orleans while traveling, was first suggested as a possible new namesake for the parkway shortly after his death. The idea simmered for two or three decades until the commissioning of an elephantine statue of Davis – the very same statue that was removed in 2017 – promoted the renaming of the roadway along which the monument would be placed.
As the monument was being made, the City Council voted to change the moniker of Hagan Avenue (or Parkway) to the Jefferson Davis Parkway, a switch that more or less became official during the ostentatious unveiling ceremony for the monument in February 1911.
Over the decades, countless public events took place along the parkway, such as picnics, reunions, concerts and even weddings. The city’s white citizens prized the parkway, while members of the New Orleans Black community were made to keep away from the transportational jewel at the same time they were constantly being reminded of its alleged greatness, and the great mythos of its namesake.
From the very beginning, the roadway was explicitly linked to the legacy of white supremacy and racial oppression – including the rogue country’s president.
“Aside from the honor this [memorial] association has done to the memory of Davis and to him, to the spirit that animated the South during the four years of civil war, every citizen of New Orleans should feel grateful to it for the change,” boasted the arch-conservative Times-Democrat in April 1911.
As such, Jefferson Davis Parkway became a consistent tool in promoting the mythos of white supremacy in New Orleans, and local officials made sure the street remained in excellent shape to help present the city in a positive, “progressive” light for both local residents and the world at large.
That ongoing homage to racist doctrine was reflected in the number of gala events honoring the Confederacy and glorifying the “Lost Cause” narrative propagated by white Southerners, such as Confederate veteran reunions.
Through the 20th century and into the 21st, the parkway has always maintained a significant place in the city’s economy and image. A 2010 report by a private firm evaluating the status of the Mid-City neighborhoods to the New Orleans Landmarks Commission laid out the role the street played, and what it could play in the future. It even compared the parkway’s significance in New Orleans to that of Richmond’s famed “Monument Avenue,” along which stood several of the country’s largest, most publicized Confederate statues.
However, even as the hagiographic Confederate legacy was being glorified by the white establishment, including governmental bodies, Black New Orleans realized what the legacy of Davis – and all the roads and landmarks named for him – truly meant to them, knowing what Davis stood for and how rotted the deification of him had made society, regardless of the public image the city tried to express to the world.
Although the end of Reconstruction and the institution of legalized segregation and systemic racism from the late 1870s onward made voicing such feelings publicly extremely dangerous, Black New Orleanians used what brief, post-war years of freedom they had to remind everyone about Davis’ legacy.
In May 1865, shortly after the assassination of the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, a local African-American newspaper, the New Orleans Tribune (the original publication from which the modern publication takes its name) voiced the sadness and fury many felt at the time. As for Davis, the paper asserted that execution was too swift and painless for a war criminal like him. Perhaps a more proper punishment, the paper suggested, would be to doom him to the type of life he and his cohorts forced upon others – a life of slavery.
“Could Jefferson Davis complain of it?” the paper posed. “Has he not proclaimed slavery a benediction, a moral benefit for the slave himself? Give him a fair chance to try it. Should an institution be good enough for an innocent man, and too bad for an infamous criminal? Involuntary servitude has been abolished through the land, except in case of crime and after due conviction by a competent tribunal. Let Jefferson Davis be duly convicted by a competent court; and, if found guilty, let him be ‘an involuntary servant’ of the American people; let him be a living example, a permanent illustration, before the eyes of the nation and the world. Let the men look at him with disgust, the women with horror, the children in amazement. And let the last of slaveholders terminate his days in misery and wretchedness, and be himself the last slave. Would this not be a hundred times harder than death; and would not that spectacle not be more grand, more striking and more impressive than common hanging?”
Dr. Francis said that while the past informs the present – and, indeed, the future – that it’s important not to dwell on the past too much, lest it hinder our collective, progressive move forward. That remains the way he views our city and our country.
“You have to be careful being in the past, because it can make you lose focus [on the future],” he said. “My goal was always challenging the past but not living in it. That’s how we make [our community] better.
This article originally published in the January 25, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
