The White League’s 1874 coup was publicly memorialized as a white-supremacist victory.

Evidence

With success in Colfax, the White League then set its sights on New Orleans and the newly elected Republican governor. In 1874 more than five thousand armed members of the Crescent City White League, constituted primarily of ex-Confederate soldiers, attacked local New Orleans and state police and drove the governor from office, occupying government buildings for three days before President Grant sent federal troops that finally forced their retreat. This conflict became known as the battle of Liberty Place, and the white citizens of New Orleans memorialized this conflict with a monument installed prominently on Canal Street in 1891. Its inscription declared that the White League’s actions had overthrown the “carpetbag government, ousting the usurpers, Governor Kellogg (white) and Lieutenant-Governor Antoine (colored).” While the inscription noted that the “usurpers” were reinstated by US troops, it ended with this declaration of victory, echoing the Colfax monuments: “But the national election of November 1876 recognized white supremacy in the South and gave us our state.” This monument stood in place until it was finally removed in 2017 amid threats of violence by local whites. — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 85

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant to the monument-tearing theme of the author’s argument about how claimsscape works.