Replace Lee with Ike
20th July 2015 · 0 Comments
By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer
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Symbols matter.
To whites the pedestal to Robert E. Lee at the intersection of Howard & St. Charles symbolizes a man of integrity who told angry Confederates to lay down their arms become good Americans again, who never personally owned a slave and detested the institution of slavery.
To Blacks, Lee stands as the Union officer who betrayed his oath — despite his own misgivings over secession and slavery — and fought to maintain the bondage of an entire race of people.
Both statements are completely true. Can Robert E. Lee be a historic hero of honor as well as a treasonous hypocrite? Certainly, depending upon one’s point of view. However, as subject of such diametrically opposed views, the General cannot remain the statuesque entrance to Downtown New Orleans.
Nor can Jelly Roll Morton or Louis Armstrong, as Councilman Jared Brossett has suggested.
That is not to underestimate the cultural significance of both men in the musical history of New Orleans. Yet, over the past 125 years, the former Tivoli Circle has been transformed into the altar for a leader who many believe merged military and political genius into action.
cash advance loans mesa az The pedestal has stood as the entrance to the Civil War museum dedicated to the memory of his leadership and the blood cost of the war he led.
Lee Circle leads not only to the Civil War Museum but to the National World War II Museum as well. Yet no monument, prominent enough, stands to Dwight Eisenhower. That general, in a strange sort of way, is the reason the WWII Museum sits in the Crescent City.
Twenty-nine year-old Stephen Ambrose had just published a biography of Union General Henry Halleck when he received a call from Eisenhower inviting the young historian to write the former president’s biography — so impressed was Ike with the job Ambrose did on the Civil War General.
Upon meeting, The first words “Ike” said to Ambrose were “You’re from New Orleans. You must know Andy Higgins. He’s the man who won the war for us.”
That the former Commanding General of D-Day and SHAEF saw that without the Higgins Boat, whose five-inch draft was the key ingredient of victory at Omaha, Utah, and the other Normandy beaches (not to mention the many Pacific D-Days), the Allies might not have prevailed. That a Creole Irishman payday loans augusta ks championed the Cajun flatboat as a solution was a peculiar solution that only a New Orleanian boat builder could have devised.
And, only a General of Eisenhower’s caliber could have recognized the unorthodox boat’s potential, saving thousands — and perhaps even millions — of lives. The World War II Museum sits on the property where Andy Higgins turned the “Lafitte Skiff” into the most famous landing craft in history. The museum honors him, just as it tries to honor Ike appropriately.
But, something more is needed than a chronicle of Eisenhower’s organizational genius. Remember, this is the President who sent the 101st Airborne to enforce the Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision. His executive accomplishments match his military exploits.
As the first Republican ever to win Louisiana, Eisenhower also stands as a figure that most of the conservative Caucasian population can look to as an adequate replacement for Lee. “Ike Circle” could be more than just a statue to a man, but a monument to a military and civil rights hero who enjoys wide biracial & bipartisan support.
Renaming Jefferson Davis Parkway for Dr. Norman Francis, as Mayor Mitch Landrieu has suggested, ranks as a comparatively simpler task than payday advance plus altering an altar which welcomes visitors from our most iconic Avenue into the CBD. To rename a boulevard that runs into his beloved university for the educational leader who built Xavier into the powerhouse of today costs little in social strife.
Jefferson Davis is not Robert E. Lee, however. The Confederate “saint” requires a little bit more historical sensitivity in his replacement. At least, the Virginian requires a Kansan of equal military stature, even if it is the substitution of one white general for another in a city that remains majority-Black.
Lee himself need not travel far. The grounds of the Civil War Museum were donated by the Howard family to serve as a “perpetual memorial to the Confederate dead.” Placing Lee on the lawn before Confederate Memorial Hall would placate many critics who claim we erase history by his removal. Lee could even look back upon the pedestal on which he once stood.
And, since Jefferson Davis laid in state in Confederate Memorial Hall’s romanesque structure upon his death, giving his statue a final resting place at its door as well seems somehow appropriate.
As for Jelly Roll Morton or another African-American cultural icon, the entrance to loans for bad credit in dekalb il the New Orleans Museum of Art seems appropriate. The circle’s current occupant P.G.T. Beauregard, deserves an appropriate home as well, though. One dedicated to the teaching of history.
As the Howard behest’s grassy knoll might lack space after hosting both the Southern general and President, what better locale for equestrian monument than Chalmette Battlefield?
A young Pierre Toutant-Beauregard looked daily upon the remains of Line Jackson as a boy from his neighboring farm. Inspired by his relatives’ defense of New Orleans on January 8, 1815, he became the first white Creole to attend West Point.
P.G.T. and his rearing horse could stand sentinel in front of the summer home on the edge of the Battlefield that his son Judge Rene Beauregard latter built to be reminded of that day’s military valor, even though decades had passed.
Artifacts to could be placed in the currently empty house to remember the history of St. Bernard Parish’s most famous son, mere steps from his birthplace.
It’s time for Beauregard to return home, just as it is time for Lee and Davis to enter their museum.
This article originally published in the July 20, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
