Mitch Landrieu

A century and a half after the Civil War, Mayor Mitch Landrieu asked his city to reexamine its past — and to wrestle with hard truths.

Many were funded privately. The public now deserves a say in their fate.

New Orleans shouldn't have removed its Robert E. Lee statue.

Taking down Confederate monuments helps confront the past, not obscure it.

Before New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu made his celebrated speech, a grassroots movement forced the city to take down its monuments to white supremacy.

How an old textbook lodged itself in the heart of New Orleans’ self-mythology.

Why did a predominantly black district have streets named after Southern generals? In Hollywood, Florida, one man thought it was time for change.

The golden age of American politics was illiberal, undemocratic, and bloody.

As museums formulate their approach to re-contextualization, they must also recognize their own histories of complicity.

The debate over a Charleston monument to John Calhoun exemplifies the problems of contextualizing Confederate monuments.

Civil War monuments erased an emancipated Black population, but the Sphinx looked to an integrated Africa and America.

Empty pedestals can offer the same lessons about racism and war that the statues do.

Only by the most specific, immediate definition can we consider the Confederacy to have lost the Civil War.

They force us to remember the worst parts of our history.

This negates a commonly used defense that Confederate symbols represent ‘heritage not hate’.

The fight against civil rights brought it back.

You cannot have reconciliation without empathy. And you can’t have empathy unless people know the past pain that informs our present.

"I think we have to increase our shame — and I don't think shame is a bad thing."