January 6th, 2021
Shannon Flaherty
More and more of Goat in the Road’s work is looking to the past for lessons in our present. The last two immersive shows we’ve done have been about Reconstruction-era New Orleans, a time that resonates deeply with this current moment in our country. Reverend William J. Barber says we are living through a ‘third Reconstruction’ (thinkprogress.org, December 2016); a time when our nation is making the moral decisions about who will be involved in our democracy.
Henry Louis Gates Jr., in his excellent history of the Reconstruction-era Stony the Road, says this: “I’d venture that few American historical periods are more relevant to understanding our contemporary racial politics than Reconstruction. Think of the fundamental questions the study of the period forces us to consider: Who is entitled to citizenship? Who should have the right to vote? What is the government’s responsibility in dealing with terrorism? What is the relationship between political and economic democracy? These are all Reconstruction questions.”
White-led terrorism was the biggest threat to democracy at the time, and is still our biggest threat. The mob that stormed the capital yesterday carried Confederate flags and hung nooses outside the Capitol. More than Russia or other foreign adversaries, the biggest threat to America’s democracy is white supremacy.
The link below is to an overview of the ‘Battle of Liberty Place’, which should rightly be called ‘The White Supremacist Uprising on Canal Street’. Although the story is complex, the essence of it is this: the White League of New Orleans pitted themselves against the Metropolitan Police Force in order to overthrow the election and establish Whites-only rule.
As story tellers, we must remember that our work for fellow citizens is through the narratives we perpetuate. Bryan Stevenson says this about the post-Civil War period, which is instructive: “The true evil of American slavery was the narrative we created to justify it…[T}he North won the Civil War, but the South won the narrative war. There was no actual accountability. There was no reckoning.”
It's time for truth. It’s time for accountability. It’s time for reckoning.
Link to 64 Parishes’ overview of the Battle of Liberty Place.