Today on Louisiana Considered, in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day we look back on a time when a group of survivors confronted neo-Nazis in New Orleans. Plus, we hear the fifth episode of our musical segment, Liner Notes, featuring Baton Rouge artist Dalton Hamilton, also known as BandG33k.
When neo-Nazis came to New Orleans, a group of Holocaust survivors fought back wrkf.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from wrkf.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Just four years ago, New Orleans was reckoning with its own history of insurrection.
After a city council vote, the city removed a conspicuous stone obelisk that had been erected to honor an 1874 armed rebellion against its own state. It was emblazoned with an egregious, racist message lamenting that the federal government had restored power to the elected Republican “usurpers” at the time but proudly claiming a later election “recognized white supremacy in the south and gave us our state.”
The monument to commemorate the so-called “Battle of Liberty Place” was completed in 1891, but the inscription to white supremacy wasn’t added until 40 years after that. In those years, New Orleanian ex-Confederates and white Democrats celebrated the insurrection annually with memorial ceremonies. The obelisk was a towering relic of the long-standing conviction that the insurrectionists had struggled nobly for the white race against a corrupt state government.