Facilities Renaming Initiative Update 4.20.21 Committee Meeting PUBLIC FEEDBACK UPDATE

• Public feedback closes 4.30.21 • Public Meetings • April 27, 2021 • May 3, 2021 Initial List of Facilities Recommended to Move Forward in the Renaming Process Site/Facility Name Slave Owner/ Confederate Official/ Segregation Supporter Allen, Henry W. Confederate Official/ Segregation Supporter Audubon School Slave Owner Fortier, Alcee Segregation Supporter Franklin, Benjamin ES Slave Owner Franklin, Benjamin HS Behrman, Martin Segregation Supporter Jackson, Andrew Slave Owner Lafayette, Marquis de Slave Owner Livingston, Edward Segregation Supporter

Lusher, Robert Mills Segregation Supporter

McDonogh, John Slave Owner McDonogh 07 McDonogh 15 McDonogh 28 McDonogh 32 McDonogh 35 (Kelerec) McDonogh 35 (Phillips/Waters) McDonogh 42 Walker, O. Perry Segregation Supporter Wright, Sophie B. Segregation Supporter Historian Team Rationale NAME RATIONALE

"Henry Watkins Allen moved to in 1852 and built Allendale, an estate in West Baton Rouge Parish where he grew sugarcane and owned approximately 125 slaves. He was elected to the Louisiana Legislature, serving from 1853 to 1854. In 1861 he published The Travels of a Sugar Planter in 1861. During the Civil War, he was commissioned lieutenant colonel of the 4th Louisiana Regiment, and rose to the rank of brigadier Allen, Henry W. general. After his military service, he was elected governor of Confederate Louisiana on November 2, 1863. He was sworn into office on January 25, 1864. During his tenure, he worked to restore the state’s economic and industrial standing. After leaving office on June 2, 1865, Allen went into exile, settling in Mexico, and establishing the Mexico Times, an English-language newspaper. Governor Henry W. Allen passed away on April 22, 1866 in Mexico City. He was buried at the Old State Capitol in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Historian Team Rationale

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Jean Jacques Audubon gave himself an English name, John James Audubon, when he came to the United States. In "The Myth of John James Audubon," Gregory Nobles, the noted biographer of Audubon, says of the ornithologist, "he was a man of many identities: artist, naturalist, woodsman, adventurer, storyteller, mythmaker (who) traveled North America in the 19th century...to document all of the continent's avian life, he is above all known as a champion of birds. ... Audubon was also a slaveholder." To those who say "he was a man of his time," Nobles notes that there were abolitionists in Audubon's time, as well, who took a "stand against the institution of slavery." Audubon "dismissed the abolitionist movement on both sides of the Atlantic." Audubon and his wife, Lucy Bakewell Audubon, "took a stand for slavery by choosing to own slaves." They owned nine John James Audubon enslaved people in the early 1800s while living in Henderson, Kentucky. It was the beginning of Audubon's use of humans as chattel. Variously through his life, he bought slaves, and as he did with the nine, he sold them when faced with hard financial difficulties. This occurred during the 1820s and 1830s. He made use of expertise of Indigenous and African enslaved peoples to understand birdlife; never giving them credit. Nobles shows that Audubon created a false narrative about his birth, claiming his mother as a "lovely and wealthy `lady of Spanish extraction' from Louisiana." Actually, Audubon was born in Saint Domingue (Haiti) "to one of his father's two mistresses on a sugar plantation (which) suggests that he may have shared some measure of African descent." His mother's death at her young age caused his father to send the young Audubon and his sister to France, where his father's wife reared and educated them. He arrived in Pennsylvania to live on his father's estate. From there, his remaining story is a journey in this country, eventually to Louisiana. Historian Team Rationale

NAME RATIONALE Alcée Fortier (1856-1914) was an internationally acclaimed writer and historian who served as a professor of Romance languages and an administrator at Tulane University for thirty-five years. His publications in English and French included folktale collections, a novel, literary criticism, and histories of France, Mexico, and Louisiana. In addition to serving as the longtime president of the Louisiana Historical Society, he was president of the Modern Language Association (MLA) in 1898 and chaired the history jury at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. Fortier was also a strong proponent of public education who advocated for compulsory education, higher teacher's' salaries, and better school facilities as a member of the city's Public School Alliance. Fortier's commitment to white supremacy, however, influenced all of these endeavors. Like Robert Lusher, whose work he praised, Fortier viewed public support for the education of white children as a means of fortifying white dominance. Early in his life, Fortier fought with the White League during the 1874 Battle of Liberty Place in an unsuccessful Fortier, Alcee effort to overthrow the Republican state government because of its commitment to racial equality. This was not a fleeting engagement with white supremacy. In his later academic writing, he celebrated the White League and regularly articulated his belief in white superiority and Black inferiority. Historian Team Rationale

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According to noted historian Gordon S. Wood's biography, Benjamin Franklin owned slaves, later repudiated the institution, and became president of the Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. His is a trajectory "supposedly enlightened" bondsman to avid anti-slavery proponent. Wood noted, "In a statement in November, 1789, signed by Franklin, the society declared that slavery was `such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils." In February 1790, Franklin Franklin, Benjamin signed a memorial to the new federal Congress requesting the abolition of slavery in the United States. "The petition predictably outraged many in the Congress and the country, and Franklin and the Quakers were viciously attacked. Congressman James Jackson of Georgia was especially vociferous in defending slavery in the House of Representatives." Jackson argued for continued enslavement of people of African descent, claiming that the "fields of the South" would be left untended, as he asked, "Who else could do the work in the hot climate?" When Franklin read Jackson's speech, he ridiculed it in his newspaper, the Federal Gazette. Historian Team Rationale NAME RATIONALE

BEHRMAN, Martin, politician, Mayor of ., School Board member. Born, New York City, Family moved to New Orleans, 1865; parents died while Martin still a teenager. Married Julia Collins, 1887, and had 11 children, only two of whom survived to adulthood. Wholesale grocery salesman until 1888; deputy city assessor, 1888-1892; clerk of New Orleans city council, 1892-1896; member, board of education, 1892-1906; state senator, 1904. Mayor of New Orleans, 1904-1920, 1925-1926. Behrman was a colorful turn-of-the-century urban “boss”, more attuned to patronage than to progress. A capable if conventional machine politician, Behrman did lead several improvements and modernization of infrastructure, public services, and sanitation. He was enduringly popular as shown by the length of his service as mayor. Behrman, Martin Behrman was an active participant in the denial of 14th and 15th Amendment rights to Louisiana citizens via the Louisiana Constitutional Convention of 1898 in his role as Delegate and by his acknowledged support of the poll tax. He provided the political and logistical support for a massive public school building program between 1910 until his death, which carried over through the 1930s. However, that program in the segregated school system provided then-state-of-the -art schools for White children and inadequate and under-capacity schools (elementary only) for Black children. He is believed to be the last NOLA Mayor to have educated his children in the public schools. Historian Team Rationale NAME RATIONALE

"Andrew Jackson was an American lawyer, soldier, and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Jackson purchased a property later known as The Hermitage, and became a wealthy, slave owning planter. By the time he was elected president, he owned nearly one hundred slaves; an estate inventory following Jackson’s death counted 161 slaves, split between The Hermitage and a plantation. Jackson's victory in 1815 at the Battle of New Orleans made him a national hero. Jackson then led U.S. forces in the First Seminole Jackson, Andrew War, which led to the annexation of Florida from Spain. Jackson briefly served as Florida's first territorial governor before returning to the Senate His presidency marked the beginning of the ascendancy of the party ""spoils system"" in American politics. In 1830, Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, which forcibly removed most members of the major tribes of the Southeast to Indian Territory; these removals were subsequently known as the Trail of Tears. " Historian Team Rationale

NAME RATIONALE Marquis de Lafayette, in full Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette, Lafayette also spelled La Fayette, (born September 6, 1757, Chavaniac, France—died May 20, 1834, Paris), French aristocrat who fought in the Continental Army with the American colonists against the British in the American Revolution. Later, as a leading advocate for constitutional monarchy, he became one of the most powerful men in France during the first few years of the French Revolution and during the July Revolution of 1830. Although Lafayette initially owned slaves, he became actively involved in the abolitionist cause. He worked to free slaves in the Caribbean where the slave trade was booming, and also made a proposal to George Washington that they consider a joint venture for gradual emancipation. With Jefferson’s help, he composed a draft of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which he presented to the Assembly on July 11. The document was adopted on August Lafayette became an advocate for emancipation is not known. One important influence was his friend John Laurens from South Carolina, a fellow soldier in the Continental Army. Although his father was a slave owner in South Carolina, John was greatly influenced by Enlightenment ideas and he spoke to Lafayette often about the evils of slavery and proposed (unsuccessfully) to grant the enslaved their Lafayette, Marquis de freedom in exchange for military service. Also, Lafayette became well-acquainted with an enslaved soldier by the name of James Armistead, who volunteered to serve with Lafayette during the siege of Richmond in 1781. Later that year, Lafayette paid Armistead to spy on General George Cornwallis by posing as a fugitive. The information Armistead gathered was invaluable to the American and French forces and contributed to their victory at Yorktown. In appreciation, Lafayette helped Armistead win his freedom after the war. Another major influence on Lafayette might have been, quite simply, the irony of fighting for freedom in a country where one-sixth of the population was enslaved. Lafayette was a man of logic and therefore unable and unwilling to accept such irony. Lafayette was also a man of action and not content merely to talk about emancipation. By 1783, he had hatched a plan to do something about slavery. Lafayette decided to purchase a plantation in the French colony of Cayenne on the northeastern coast of South America with the intention of freeing the enslaved workers through gradual manumission, which he hoped would demonstrate a way to end slavery. He would outlaw the whip, grant the enslaved more free time with their families, provide them with an education, and pay them a wage – actions that Lafayette thought would prepare the enslaved for freedom Historian Team Rationale

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LIVINGSTON, Edward, (1764-1836) attorney, politician, U. S. senator, diplomat. Edward Livingston was appointed Secretary of State by President Andrew Jackson on May 24, 1831. His tenure as Secretary of State ended on May 29, 1833. Livingston brought considerable legal expertise to the office but operated under strict presidential constraints upon his authority. He studied at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), graduating in 1781. Following his admission to the bar in 1785, he practiced law in New York City. With the benefit of political advice from his older brother Robert, who had served as Secretary of Foreign Affairs during the Articles of Confederation government, Livingston won election to the U.S. Congress as a Representative of New York and served from 1795 to 1800. He next served as U.S. Attorney for the District of New York and Mayor of New York City from 1801 to 1803. Livingston, Edward In 1804 Livingston moved to New Orleans and practiced law. He served as an aide-de-camp to General Andrew Jackson during the Battle of New Orleans. According to Professor Kenneth Aslakson, soon after Livingston’s arrival in New Orleans, he helped lead the charge to protect local control of slavery and to oppose federal restrictions on slavery in the new territory. In those battles, he represented the New Orleans slaveholding elite. On other civil and criminal law matters, however, Livingston is credited with major contributions to reforming Louisiana law for the better. In 1820 Livingston returned to politics and enjoyed a series of victories: first to the Louisiana State House of Representatives; next as a U.S. Representative from Louisiana from 1823 to 1828; and finally, as a U.S. Senator from Louisiana from 1829 to 1832. As Secretary of State, he handled many major diplomatic issues. In one major issue, Livingston struggled with Britain’s interest in suppressing slavery, protesting the British Government’s decision not to return U.S. slaves who reached British soil. Historian Team Rationale

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Robert Mills Lusher (1823-1912) was born in Charleston, SC. He served in the Confederacy as Louisiana state commissioner and marshal as well as Chief Collector of Confederate tax for Louisiana. A proponent of public education, he promoted public schooling as a means of maintaining white supremacy in Louisiana rather than as a path to racial equality. He was opposed to integrated schools and insisted that black children were best served by industrial education. Shortly before being elected as the State Superintendent of Education in 1865, Lusher wrote to Gov. Madison Wells that “the white educable children” of the state were “the spes ultimae Louisiana Lusher, Robert Mills — the main hope of our beloved State — our only existing pledges for the perpetuation of her dignity as an enlightened commonwealth.” Lusher used his office to ensure “the supremacy of the Caucasian race” by educating “every white child within her limits.” The passage of the state Constitution of 1868, which prohibited segregated schools, marked an end to Lusher’s first term as Superintendent. He served as superintendent again between 1876 and 1879. In his last term, Lusher advocated industrial education for African , declaring that “the true interests of the colored people, if not their ultimate safety” lay in “the direction of manual training.” With a 43% minority student body, today’s Lusher is one of the most diverse public schools in the city of New Orleans and one of the highest ranked in academic achievement. The building named for Robert Lusher is located on Willow Street. Historian Team Rationale

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John McDonogh (1779-1850) was a businessman and a sugar plantation owner in New Orleans. More specifically, McDonogh’s business interests placed him at the center of the sugar-plantation complex and the Atlantic and U.S. slave trades. The consensus of historians is that slavery was the “mainspring” of economic growth in the United States and across the Atlantic World, and that slavery is the enduring contradiction of American History. The evidence clearly establishes that John McDonogh’s wealth was directly and inextricably tied to the use of slave labor within the Atlantic World. John McDonogh did not believe that blacks and whites would ever be able to live side-by-side in the same society. Like many, such as Abraham Lincoln, he believed that blacks would never be considered equal or be safe as free men and women in the U.S. Without McDonogh, John ignoring that McDonogh was involved in and profited greatly from slave labor, it is also true that he put a significant amount of time and money into modifying his use of permanent chattel slavery into a quasi-indenture system. He also established a program through which those he enslaved could “earn” their freedom in 15 years by working extra hours. Certainly, such a program seems insulting today, but it put him well beyond the vast majority of slave owners in terms of recognizing to some degree the humanity of the people he enslaved. Along with this surprisingly liberal stance in the context of the Deep South in the early 19th century, John McDonogh held a Calvinist/Presbyterian belief in the value of hard work for himself and others. His work and his beliefs embodied the central, complicated contradiction in U.S. History: how can a country proclaim equality and liberty and justice for all and condone the owning of enslaved people? Historian Team Rationale

NAME RATIONALE O. Perry Walker (d. 1968) was a longtime public school teacher and principal who twice served as superintendent of the Orleans Parish Public School System. Born and raised in New Orleans, he attended the city's segregated public schools for white students before beginning his teaching career in segregated white schools in 1922. After serving as principal of Benjamin Franklin Elementary and F. T. Nicholls, he became acting superintendent in 1951 and served until 1953. During that first stint as superintendent, he defended segregation as Black New Orleanians demanded an end to it. On November 12, 1951, for instance, attorney A.P. Tureaud presented Walker and the school board with a petition calling for an end to segregated schooling . Tureaud presented this petition in anticipation of filing a lawsuit seeking desegregation. The board responded at a meeting on November 26, 1951 by unanimously rejecting the petition on the grounds that “such a radical change of policy could not, at this time, serve the best interests of the system.” Walker also issued a statement in response to Tureaud's petition, though further research is required to identify the contents of that statement. Walker's remarks to the Young Men's Business Club the day after this momementous board meeting, however, provide insight into his thinking. In that speech, he focused his remarks on public apathy toward the public schools rather than the challenge to segregation. His silence here is arguably significant, as it suggests that when Black New Orleanians demanded that the school board Walker, O. Perry address inequality and end segregation, Walker willfully stood by as the school board vigorously fought to preserve segregation. During his first term as superintendent, Walker was at the helm as the system advanced a construction agenda that deepened segregation. That agenda included the board’s commitment to the construction of the Carver complex on swampy land that it knew was among the worst in the city. Walker was on the whole fairly ineffectual and very much beholden to the board that had fired his predecessor and installed him with the expectation that he would be a pliable caretaker. He served a second tenure as interim superintendent from July 1961 to 1965, which was a period when the district sought to minimize the extent of desegregation. While Walker opened his second term as superintendent by encouraging white New Orleanians to remain in public schools rather than boycotting them to protest desegregation, his apparent moderation did not necessarily reflect a disavowal of white supremacy. Like white school leaders throughout the South during the early 1960s, he sought to maintain white dominance by limiting desegregation as fully as possible and by implementing on terms most amenable to white residents. By 1965, a mere 873 Black students attended formerly all-white schools, and only one white student attended a formerly all-Black school. The district's total enrollment at the time was 104,000, with Black students comprising roughly 64 percent of the student population. Historian Team Rationale

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Sophie B. Wright (1866-1912) was an educator and activist from New Orleans who embraced Progressive era educational reform for white children and working people. Disabled from a childhood accident, she created schools for disabled white girls in New Orleans and became founder and principal of the Home Institute for Girls, a white high school recognized by the state in 1894. Wright also started a night school for white working adults, the success of which fueled the New Orleans public school system’s renewed investment in evening education. By 1903, it enrolled some fifteen hundred students. At her death it was reported that she had educated some 25,000 white working people. Wright’s success in educating working-class whites reinforced racial disparities in public education while her prominent role in the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) promoted “Lost Cause” ideology rooted in white supremacy. The daughter of a Confederate veteran, Wright was elected the first president of the Stonewall Jackson Chapter of the UDC in 1908. Under her leadership the UDC Wright, Sophie B. raised funds for Confederate monument associations and laid a wreath at the “Battle of Liberty Place” monument. Several white associations dedicated the monument in 1882 to former Confederate members of the White League, a Reconstruction-era terrorist group. Historian Karen L. Cox, argues that the aim of these dedications was to “prepare future generations of white Southerners to respect and defend the principles of the Confederacy.” The public charter high school that bears Wright’s name, located on Napoleon Avenue at Prytania Street, has a majority black student body. Upon its dedication in 1912, Mayor Martin Behrman declared the school building a “monument” to Wright and her work educating poor and working-class white students through her night schools. Sophie B. Wright Place, which passes in front of the former Home Institute at 1440 Camp Street, has been identified for renaming by the CCSRC.