Shades of déjà vu and bulldozers
21st June 2021 · 0 Comments
Most politicians have dropped all pretenses of doing the will of the people who elected them. No matter how loud the protests, the feedback, or voters’ demands, elected officials are turning a deaf ear to the wishes of their constituents.
It’s a national embarrassment and a black eye for Louisiana that our elected officials on Capitol Hill are oblivious to the state’s needs and constituents. Our state legislators are not much better, save for a few voices crying out in the wilderness.
Thankfully, Mayor LaToya Cantrell is not willfully deaf. She listened to and heard her constituents, especially New Orleans’ Black voters, who asked her not to move City Hall into the Municipal Auditorium in Louis Armstrong Park.
We know Cantrell sought to leverage the $40 million FEMA dedicated to renovating the Municipal Auditorium with additional funds to create a new home for City Hall. It’s not lost on most citizens that the current City Hall is outdated and inadequate as the seat of local government. But it’s also been reported that the Municipal Auditorium is not large enough to house all of the city’s employees. So, is it a good location for City Hall?
By any measure, Mayor Cantrell is frugal. We saw that when she tried to restructure the city’s library millage unsuccessfully. Monied organizations connected to the library rallied voters against her proposal at the ballot box. Nonetheless, Cantrell deserves credit for getting the state to return the hotel occupancy tax New Orleans gave up to build the Convention Center.
Since winning office, Cantrell has done what most New Orleans residents have had to do, make the most of the little revenue they get.
The idea of using the city-owned property without shelling out massive amounts to purchase or lease new land was a frugal idea, if not a popular one.
The idea of putting City Hall in the Municipal Auditorium raised feelings of déjà vu among Tremé residents and culture preservationists who witnessed the desecration of the sacred ground used by early jazz pioneers and enslaved Africans who played crude instruments on that land.
New Orleans’ leaders disrupted the community by putting an interstate in the middle of the legendary Tremé community.
Historic Faubourg Tremé was the first African-American subdivision in the United States. Creoles of Color and freedmen and freedwomen owned property in Tremé. They financed and built St. Augustine Church.
Civil Rights Attorneys A.P. Tureaud and Ernest N. Morial had their law office in Tremé. The Knights of Peter Claver, a Black Catholic order, held meetings in the Peter Claver Building in Tremé, home to world-renowned Dooky Chase’s Restaurant, famous musicians, and the Black Masons Lodge.
As for Armstrong Park, the site is the birthplace of Jazz. Buddy Bolden and Freddie Keppard held “cutting contests” there. Also, the late record producer Cosimo Matassa recorded Fats Domino and other R&B legends in his studio adjacent to Armstrong Park.
Mayor Victor Schiro and Mayor Maurice Edward “Moon” Landrieu, both Democrats, had no problem destroying the predominantly black community in the late 1960s and early 1970s to build a “cultural center” at the site which housed the Municipal Auditorium nor running an interstate through the neighborhood.
They didn’t listen to Jim Hayes, Ron Chisom, and Cheryl Austin of the Tremé Community Improvement Association (TCIA). They demanded jobs and relocation funds for the homeowners forced to move.
TCIA helped 178 residents to relocate, many of whom were not paid fair market value for their homes. Eight blocks of Tremé homes disappeared. Hayes decried the destruction of Black cultural traditions, while Chisom demanded jobs for Tremé displaced residents, according to a 1972 article in The Times-Picayune.
Schiro and Landrieu facilitated the displacement of Black families and destroyed the generational wealth of the business owners on New Orleans’ own Black Wall Street. Upon the completion of I-10, 362 businesses and homes vanished.
Gone forever is the canopy of majestic Oaks under which residents celebrated the Carnival season with picnics and Mardi Gras Day during segregation. All that’s left are paintings of the Oaks on Interstate pilings and depictions of the area’s history-makers. Today Black Indian tribes continue to parade down North Claiborne Avenue along with the Baby Dolls and the Skeletons who congregate outside of Kermit Ruffins’ Mother-in-Law Lounge.
As is the case in other prosperous Black neighborhoods, the Greenwood neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma (aka Black Wall Street), and Rosewood in Florida, when interstates ran through the middle of their communities, Black residents got displaced and their neighborhood gentrified. Tremé might as well be called AirBNB Town.
Fast forward to 2021, and another democratic leader, Mayor Cantrell, is taking a different path. She has heard the protestations of Black leaders and is taking their counsel.
Congo Square in Armstrong Park is the historic gathering place of African slaves, the progenitors of Jazz, who assembled and played homemade instruments there. There also was the Tremé market nearby, where African Americans sold their wares. Before there was an Armstrong Park, Professor Longhair immortalized Tremé in his 1949 song, Go to the Mardi Gras. “You’ll see the Zulu King down on St. Claude and Dumaine,” he sang of the then-segregated event. In 2010, David Simon and Eric Overmyer showcased Tremé in the HBO drama of the same name.
Perhaps, Mayor Cantrell could temporarily relocate City Hall to the old Veterans Hospital, Pan Am Insurance Building, Benson Towers, or the old Supreme Court building; tear down City Hall and rebuild it? Duncan Plaza could become a parking lot.
Whatever she decides, we want Mayor Cantrell to know we appreciate her listening to her constituents.
This article originally published in the June 21, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
