BookMitch Landrieu.
Summary: "There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence for it." When Landrieu addressed the people of New Orleans in May 2017 about his decision to take down four Confederate monuments, he struck a nerve nationally. Here he discusses his personal journey on race as well as the path he took to making the decision to remove the monuments; tackles the broader history of slavery, race and institutional inequities that still bedevil America; and traces his personal relationship to this history. -- adapted from jacket. "When Mayor Mitch Landrieu addressed the people of New Orleans in May 2017 about his decision to take down four Confederate monuments, he struck a nerve nationally, forcing into the open a reckoning with the institutional racism that shapes us today. Now Mayor Landrieu retraces his personal journey on race and the path he took to making the decision to remove the monuments. A book that looks forward as well as back in time, In the Shadow of Statues tackles the broad legacies of slavery, race, and inequality that still bedevil America. Landrieu recounts his own relationship to this history with insight. He grew up with a progressive education in a racially divided city, but even he had to relearn Southern history as it really happened. His father, as state legislator and then mayor, was a huge force in the integration of New Orleans in the 1960s and 1970s. Early in his own career, Landrieu took on David Duke in the state legislature. He became a catalyst in the historic recovery of his hometown after Hurricane Katrina, a time that had its own troubling racial component. As mayor, he deals with poverty and urban violence daily in a city that is one of the world's beloved cultural treasures. At a moment when racism is resurgent with seemingly tacit approval from the highest levels of government and when too many Americans have a misplaced nostalgia for a time and place that never existed, this book is necessary reading. Equal parts memoir, history, and prescription for finally confronting America's most painful legacy, In the Shadow of Statues contributes a strong voice to the national conversation about race today. It is a passionate, personal, urgent book for all Americans."--Jacket.
Contents:
Prologue: Can someone get me a crane?
Broadmoor
Learning to see what's in front of me
David Duke and Donald Trump, a nightmare loop
Politics in disaster time
Rebuilding and mourning in NOLA
The shadow of Robert E. Lee
Epilogue
Truth: Remarks on the removal of Confederate monuments in New Orleans (speech made at Gallier Hall, May 19, 2017).
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