We have mentioned from time to time here in the shebeen how much we admire Enda Kenny's speech to Dail Eireann condemning the Church's role in the abuse and exploitation of the children of Ireland who came under its care. (In fact, we mentioned it as recently as last Friday.) Sometimes, and not nearly often enough, a politician sees his way through the fog that surrounds his daily occupation and arrives at a truth so solid and unyielding that the politician can't do anything else except share it with the world. That's what happened with Enda Kenny. And that's what happened to Mitch Landrieu, the mayor of New Orleans.

Over the past few days, as his city rid itself of the monuments past generations had erected to pretend that the worst act of treason in the country's history had not ended as catastrophically as it did for the American South, Landrieu presided over the dismantling of memorials to Pierre Beauregard and to Robert E. Lee, and to an actual armed white-supremacist insurrection that took place in the city in 1874. Shortly before Lee was removed from the huge pedestal in Lee Circle on which he'd stood since 1884—Jefferson Davis himself lived long enough to attend the unveiling—Landrieu took to the stage at Gallier Hall and tore down the threadbare justifications for these monuments once and for all.

(Gallier is the old New Orleans city hall. Jeff Davis lay in state there. So, later, did Ernie K-Doe, who contributed far more to the country's history than Davis did. Now, it serves as a rallying ground for Mardi Gras parades every year. Yeah, I still sort of love New Orleans.)

The speech is worth reading in its entirety. Landrieu systematically eviscerates all the non-history by which the Confederate States of America were repurposed as a device to justify Jim Crow and white supremacy. Landrieu's indictment gave immunity to nobody for the crimes against history these monuments represented.

The historic record is clear: the Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and P.G.T. Beauregard statues were not erected just to honor these men, but as part of the movement which became known as The Cult of the Lost Cause. This 'cult' had one goal — through monuments and through other means — to rewrite history to hide the truth, which is that the Confederacy was on the wrong side of humanity. First erected over 166 years after the founding of our city and 19 years after the end of the Civil War, the monuments that we took down were meant to rebrand the history of our city and the ideals of a defeated Confederacy. It is self-evident that these men did not fight for the United States of America, They fought against it. They may have been warriors, but in this cause they were not patriots.

These statues are not just stone and metal. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, and the terror that it actually stood for. After the Civil War, these statues were a part of that terrorism as much as a burning cross on someone's lawn; they were erected purposefully to send a strong message to all who walked in their shadows about who was still in charge in this city.

This is a deeply compelling example of historical memory with the bark off. (On the electric Twitter machine, writer Jamelle Bouie compared it to Lyndon Johnson's extraordinary commencement address at Howard University in 1965, and Bouie was right to do so.) For all that it is an extraordinary ethnic stew, which has produced music as glorious as its food, New Orleans was something of an unfortunate landmark in the history of white reaction to Reconstruction. It was in New Orleans that Homer Plessy tried to ride in a Whites Only rail-car. It was New Orleans slaughterhouses that were the subject of the 1873 Supreme Court decision in which it was ruled that the protections of the 14th Amendment did not apply to the police powers of the individual states, for all the bloody mischief that would entail for nearly a century.

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The Liberty Place uprising was not the only act of armed sedition in Reconstruction Louisiana. In 1873, in the wake of a heated governor's race, a mob of armed white men rolled up a cannon and attacked the courthouse in the small town of Colfax. The black men defending the courthouse were executed on the spot by the mob, and the killing went on for hours.

This is the history for which those statues were erected to honor. Mitch Landrieu came to see it that way. As he said:

So I am not judging anybody, I am not judging people. We all take our own journey on race. I just hope people listen like I did when my dear friend Wynton Marsalis helped me see the truth. He asked me to think about all the people who have left New Orleans because of our exclusionary attitudes. Another friend asked me to consider these four monuments from the perspective of an African American mother or father trying to explain to their fifth grade daughter who Robert E. Lee is and why he stands atop of our beautiful city. Can you do it? Can you look into that young girl's eyes and convince her that Robert E. Lee is there to encourage her? Do you think she will feel inspired and hopeful by that story? Do these monuments help her see a future with limitless potential? Have you ever thought that if her potential is limited, yours and mine are too?

And all say amen.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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