In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History
Written by Mitch Landrieu
Narrated by Mitch Landrieu
4/5
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About this audiobook
The New Orleans mayor who removed the Confederate statues confronts the racism that shapes us and argues for white America to reckon with its past. A passionate, personal, urgent book from the man who sparked a national debate.
"There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence for it." When Mitch Landrieu addressed the people of New Orleans in May 2017 about his decision to take down four Confederate monuments, including the statue of Robert E. Lee, he struck a nerve nationally, and his speech has now been heard or seen by millions across the country. In his first book, Mayor Landrieu 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. His father, as state legislator and mayor, was a huge force in the integration of New Orleans in the 1960s and 19070s. Landrieu grew up with a progressive education in one of the nation's most racially divided cities, but even he had to relearn Southern history as it really happened.
Equal parts unblinking memoir, history, and prescription for finally confronting America's most painful legacy, In the Shadow of Statues will contribute strongly to the national conversation about race in the age of Donald Trump, at a time 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.
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Reviews for In the Shadow of Statues
27 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5As a northern who went to college and lived in New Orleans I found this book to be a courageous documentation of what it means to be a Southerner in this society. I applaud Mayor Landrieu's courage to tell this story.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mitch Landrieu was mayor of New Orleans when the statues came down. His book, In the Shadow of Statues, is about why he decided that he needed to use all of the political capital he'd built up over decades of public service to bring them down and the challenges he faced in doing so. But first the book is about growing up in NOLA, and how he entered politics, what it was like living through Katrina (he was Lieutenant Governor at the time) and what that experience taught him, as well as a bunch of wonky details about the work of campaigning and governance.It's a mixed bag. Landrieu is a likable guy and his perspective, as a white Southerner whose family has been in Louisiana for generations, is an interesting one. His father was mayor of New Orleans during the desegregation of the schools and his memories of that time were well worth reading. Landrieu has a talent for seeing people as people, whether that person is in prison, a politician in the opposing party or yelling at him in the street. That quality of valuing everyone is a good one for a politician to have (and for the rest of us, too). But the book wandered off into the weeds for me for much of the middle section, as Landrieu talked about various political campaigns he'd run or been part of, and he sometimes fell into the carefully coached language of a seasoned political operative as he discussed what could and could not be achieved. In the end, though, In the Shadow of Statues ended with the heart of the book, that difficult fight to pull down those symbols of racism and segregation in a city that has a majority black population and of what message those statues sent. As someone who was deeply immersed in the history of Louisiana, his journey from dismissal of the idea to coming to the realization that it was the right thing to do was fascinating. And his final words, the speech his most famous for, is a powerful piece of writing.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I originally picked this up to hear an argument for the removal of Confederate statues. Instead, I read about how race tensions have always been present in the author’s life. And about the politics of race in New Orleans/Louisiana.
Still worth the read. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Moral courage is a rare and all too valuable thing. Physical courage, the courage to charge into a fierce battle or burning building, as admirable as it is, occurs daily. Moral courage, the ability to stand against prevailing opinion, injustice, popular belief, racism, public judgment, etc, occurs all too infrequently and is often met by violence.
Mitch Landrieu served as mayor of America's most famous and loved Southern city, New Orleans. The accomplishments of his administration are legion: rebuilding the city after Katrina, restoring faith in government after a corrupt administration,, leading a recovery from bankruptcy. As a leader, he succeeded by almost any measure.
Despite those challenges, however, his biggest accomplishment was to look racism and hatred in its ugly face and confront it in a public, meaningful and substantial, Culture changing way. He initiated and oversaw the removal of statues of Civil War leaders revered by many white Southerners, statues that were erected in the first place, not as monuments to the traitors they depicted, but as monuments to the idea of slavery, injustice and racial hatred. The removal of these monuments represented a repudiation of the ideas for which these people stood and of the way their bigotry continues to play out in the minds of many, both in the South and the North, today.
Like all moral leaders, Landrieu faced hatred, threats, criticism, and every other form of vile behavior that can bring no pride to humanity.
This book traces the struggle to do the right thing, the moral thing by spending a great many of its pages discussing the background, the context in which the final removal of the monuments took place. It is not a story about a courageous mayor or a Southern city confronting hatred so much as it is a story about what America in general could do, needs to do, must do about the long standing moral cancer we continue to endure because we lack the moral fiber to finally and permanently put an end to it.