A collection of thoughts from people who spoke at a meeting of the citizen advisory committee appointed by the Caddo Parish Commission to recommend what to do with the Confederate monument on courthouse grounds in Shreveport. (Henrietta Wildsmith/The Times)


The Caddo Parish Confederate monument in downtown Shreveport is by far the most significant memorial at the Caddo Parish courthouse, a place that presents itself as dedicated to fairness, to justice.

I was a member of the citizens advisory committee to the Caddo Parish Commission that was to recommend what, if anything, should be done with the monument. Prior to the committee’s vote on Aug. 10, I made a statement in which I argued that something should be done. My statement was published in this newspaper on Aug. 20.

In my statement, I argued that part of what it memorializes is the slavery of African-
Americans, the reason the southern states seceded from the United States and among the least fair, most unjust, social institutions there has ever been, an institution supported by the belief in white superiority and black inferiority.

More: Caddo Confederate monument: Construction, not destruction

That contradiction, between the fairness sought in proceedings at the courthouse and the unfairness of slavery, provides reason, I argued, to be upset by the monument’s presence at the courthouse. And it provides reason to remove it to a more appropriate place, one free of the fairness contradiction. Or, as an alternative, to provide sufficient context that the contradiction is at least made clear and made to disappear in favor of fairness or justice, if such a context is even possible.

But there is a second reason to be upset with the monument, a second reason to remove it or to put it sufficiently into context if that can be adequately done. And this reason has to do, not with what the monument memorializes, but with the monument itself. In my statement I argued:

Also troubling and a continuation of the assertion of white supremacy, the monument was erected during a period when the right to vote of almost all freed slaves and their descendants had been abridged by whites using the poll tax, literacy tests and widespread terror, including terror by public lynching often on courthouse lawns. Caddo Parish is third in the nation in reported lynchings between 1877 and 1950 behind only Phillips County, Arkansas, and Lafourche Parish, Louisiana. Thus, because they were unable to vote, despite being citizens and more than 60 percent of the Caddo Parish population from 1900 to 1910, African-Americans had no say in the decision permitting the erection of the monument.

I have obtained additional information since I first made my statement. According to the census records, Caddo Parish’s population in 1900 was 62 percent black. By 1910 it was 68 percent black.

However, according to Louisiana voter registration records, the black population of the parish was not reflected in voter registration. In 1900 there were 10 “colored voters” registered out of a total of 2,994 voters. In 1902, the parish had 15 “colored voters” registered among 3,554 total voters. In 1904, seven “colored voters” registered out of 2,400 total voters. And in 1906, just two “colored voters” registered among 4,597 total voters.

Voter registration at the time was unfair and unjust.

What do these numbers have to do with the Confederate monument? The period between 1902 and 1906 was the period during which the United Daughters of the Confederacy received permission from the Caddo Parish Police Jury (the governing body which preceded the parish commission) to place the monument on the courthouse grounds, money was raised, a design was agreed upon and the monument was constructed and commissioned.

Whether the police jury actually conveyed the land on which the monument sits to the UDC, all of its acts were as an undemocratically elected, supposedly representative, body. That is, the decision to permit any monument at all to be placed on courthouse grounds was made by a public body that did not fairly and justly represent the citizens of the parish.

And had blacks been permitted the vote in proportion to their percentage of the parish population, it is very unlikely that the particular monument that sits on the courthouse lawn, or any monument memorializing slavery and the belief in the black inferiority thought to justify that slavery, would have been erected.

Thus, there are two good reasons that something should be done with the monument. Doing nothing is not enough. The monument memorializes something unfair, and it is there at all because of something unfair.

And it is up to the Caddo Parish Commission, certainly a more democratically elected body than the Caddo Parish Police Jury that permitted the monument in the first place, to decide what that something is.

John Ratcliff is a retired civil rights lawyer who lives in Shreveport. He was one of nine members of a citizen advisory committee appointed by the Caddo Parish Commission to recommend what, if anything, should be done with the Confederate monument at the parish courthouse.

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