Landrieu apologizes for slavery, racism

By Mason Harrison
Contributing Writer

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu earned himself a place in the city’s history books last Wednesday, offering a surprise apology at the Mahalia Jackson Theater for racist policies and their aftermath. The watershed political moment comes in the shadow of a racially motivated attack on an historic Black church in Charleston, S.C., by a white supremacist June 17 leaving nine dead, including a South Carolina state senator. Landrieu’s remarks—part of an event geared toward healing racial division—were accompanied by a promise to remove a number of Confederate statues littered across the city.

The Mahalia Jackson Theater played host to more than 300 residents who turned out for the public debut of the Landrieu administration’s yearlong Welcome Table initiative, a product of the Mississippi-based Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation designed to yield healthy discussions about race. Over the past year, volunteer participants in the program met at regular intervals to discuss ways to move past racial bias. The event revealed the results of those discussions and made clear how the program will continue in the months to come as participants graduate from discussions to implementing projects to heal racial wounds.

“When we started this process, we met with people who thought this would be a good idea,” said Judy Reese Morse, the city’s deputy mayor for citywide initiatives. “But there were also skeptics.” Reese Morse said participants were divvied into four working groups, or circles—Central City, Little Woods, Algiers and St. Roch. But what started as a class of more than 300 dwindled to just under 100 a year later. “Yes, there were people who left the circles. There were those who said that it wasn’t what they thought it would be or that they weren’t getting out of it what they thought they would. This is hard work.”

Landrieu praised the participants for “their courage to share and listen, for their open minds and open hearts,” calling their willingness to enter the process demonstrative of “the new way in New Orleans.” Landrieu first became aware of the program as lieutenant governor in 2005, with plans to bring the program to Louisiana. But recovery efforts from Hurricane Katrina sidelined any plans for racial reconciliation. “It is my belief that we must find ways to gain a greater understanding of others, and…a greater understanding of ourselves. When this happens, anything is possible. Historical wrongs can be addressed.”

Landrieu addressed those wrongs early in the program when he discussed the country’s history of slavery in a contrite fashion, but cautioned that America should “go further than a much needed apology.” Landrieu joins a small club of white politicians willing to wade into the issue of slavery even as the U.S. House of Represent­atives and Senate passed similar resolutions against the backdrop of President Barack Obama’s election victory in 2008. Legis­lators in Mississippi are also mulling an official mea culpa.

Seven years after the president’s election, more than 60 percent of Americans view race relations in a poor state, which—in the wake of the controversial shootings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Jordan Davis, the deaths of Eric Garner and Freddie Gray in police custody, and the riots in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore—is the highest figure since 1992, according to national polling data.

Tensions increased this month when churchgoers were gunned down after hours at a predominantly Black church in Charleston, S.C. The accused perpetrator is depicted in several photographs posing with the Confederate battle flag, referred to by sympathizers as the “stars and bars.” The murders have prompted nationwide calls for Confederate memorabilia and monuments to be ejected from public view, including South Carolina’s long-controversial display of the battle flag on state grounds.

Landrieu has followed suit and committed to remove perhaps the city’s most prominent nod to the old Confederacy—the 100-foot monument dedicated to Gen. Robert E. Lee in the Central Business District, with possible plans to dethrone monuments to other Confederate heroes in the months to come. “The only way we can start moving forward is if we acknowledge our nation’s original sin and make amends,” he said, offering that reconciliation requires forgiveness then action in order to be effective.

“I believe this effort provided a tangible benefit for those involved,” said Erich Caulfield, a member of the St. Roch circle. “I made friends for a lifetime. We learned that some people who you might expect to agree didn’t and people who you might expect to disagree didn’t. It was an incredible experience because we were able to come together and work to make a city that everyone hopes we can be.”

This article originally published in the June 29, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.