Video Still, Amazing Grace featuring President Barack Obama, 2015-2016

Amazing Grace featuring President Barack Obama is a rap gospel that memorializes Black lives lost to racist institutionalism and individual acts of violence while voicing reactions among the living.

Soundtrack | The beat and chorus sample audio from the White House archives of President Obama singing Amazing Grace during his eulogy of Pastor Clementa Pinckney, one of nine Black lives murdered in 2015 at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Rap lyrics written and performed by K.G., a New Orleans musician, reflect on Charleston and Obama’s eulogy. K.G. draws connections to police shootings and witness videos that have spread public knowledge of brutality against Black men through social media, news and Black Lives Matter activism. K.G.’s mom is the female vocalist.

Visuals | A performer costumed as the Statue of Liberty, resembling the marketing symbol of the predatory financial services Liberty Tax, walks New Orleans’ streets passing Confederate monuments deemed a “public nuisance” by the city after the Charleston Church shooting. Witness and memorial images sourced from news and social media recall the lives and deaths of Tamir Rice, Walter Scott and Alton Sterling who were shot and killed by police, as well as fragments from photos by friends and family of the nine churchgoers murdered in Charleston, Pastor Clementa Pickney, Reverend Sharonda Singleton, Myra Thompson, Reverend DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lee Lance, Tywanza Sanders and Reverend Daniel Simmons, Sr.

Monuments | After the Charleston church massacre, a website manifesto by the killer surfaced that celebrated historical emblems and sites associated with racial violence. Shortly thereafter, New Orleans aligned with a national movement to remove monuments to Confederates in the U.S. Civil War of 1861-1865. The City identified four prominent artifacts to relocate from public space to a museum: Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis statue, P.T. Beauregard statue and Liberty monument. As of October 2016, the monuments have yet to be moved amidst legal challenges and harassment of contractors who bid on the removal jobs that has included financial and death threats to their business, family and employees. One contractor who accepted a job found his car burned when he returned home to Baton Rouge after he was seen at a monument doing early stage prep work.

Many others in New Orleans, such as activists organized as Take ‘Em Down, advocate that removing only four monuments is not enough. Take ‘Em Down NOLA has researched a long list of symbols of white supremacy they want removed from city and privately-owned spaces that interface with public, educational and civic life.

New Orleans, the Civil War and the Lost Confederate Cause

The population of New Orleans is currently over 50% black, Creole or mixed heritage. More people identify most intimately as black than not.

To many Confederate monuments glorify 19th century leaders willing to kill and die to preserve legalized slavery and brutality against black people. Political and economic resentment also sparked the Confederate cause. Southern states felt disenfranchised from political seats in the North. Seceding and forming a new nation where it was acceptable to divide, sell and own people was a way for those in power, predominately men of European heritage, to maintain financial and social privilege at the cost of enslaved blacks, Native Americans and other servants.

The Confederacy officially surrendered to the Union in 1865 though racial divisions and opportunities for civil and economic participation still feel like day-to-day matters of life, death or liberty for many. Segregation in employment, education, health services, housing, feelings of respect or love, and access to many basic human needs are plainly visible across the state of Louisiana.

Those who trace lineages to enslavement can imagine stories of ancestors’ horrors of forced labor, murder, rape, beatings, separation from family, poor conditions and living in fear due to immoral causes. Descendants of slave owners can imagine ancestors participating in horrific acts against other people. Descendants of Confederate fighters can imagine ancestors’ willful or coerced wartime sacrifices. Some believe that symbols of those who died, fought or sacrificed comforts under Confederate leadership should remain in public view. Others are ambivalent or disinterested.

For too many, however, public display of Confederate monuments legitimize unfair legacies born from laws and practices of slavery and war. They are demoralizing reminders of painful times and feel like official, contemporary validation of 19th century acts of reactionary militarized rebellion and war over commercial profits that exploit racial cruelty and human rights.

New Orleans, Louisiana

Many Louisiana stories diverge from common narratives in United States history. New Orleans was named by French colonists in 1718, established and still operates as a port important to international commerce. Here’s a webpage we like to start learning more on New Orleans’ specific memories of incorporation in the United States, the Civil War and aftermaths: www.knowla.org/entry/776/