Monumental Battle

Ja'el Gordon's love of history has led her to take an unpopular stance

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Editor's note: The opinions expressed in Country Roads are those of the authors or columnists and do not reflect the views of the editorial team.

"People think that just because I'm a person of color, I'm supposed to have the mindset of erasing history," said Baton Rouge native and historian Ja’el Gordon. "But doing so greatly offends me.”

Gordon has always been an independent thinker, and she has a nearly lifelong fascination with history and genealogy. Those traits have made her adamantly opposed to the removal of the Confederate monuments in New Orleans.

Gordon earned a B.A. in history from Southern University in Baton Rouge, and upon graduation in 2012 went to work on campus as Coordinator of Student Organizations and Campus Involvement. Then, while working full time and raising her daughter, she took weekend classes at Southern University at New Orleans, where she earned her master's degree in museum studies in 2015. Her work toward the degree included staging exhibits of narratives of former slaves from interviews conducted by the Federal Writers Project in the 1930s. 

She is currently working on a Ph.D. in higher education at Jackson State University in Mississippi. "My dissertation is a comparison of student activism and protest in the Civil Rights era and the Black Lives Matter era."

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Although she realized that removal of the monuments seemed inevitable, Gordon did not back down from defending them. “I'm unbiased in pursuing historical facts and research. My job is to tell the story. I can't tell it if there's nothing to show for it, nor can I tell it from one group's perspective only. It's just not fair, in my opinion."

In December 2015, Mayor Mitch Landrieu signed an ordinance calling for the removal of four monuments related to the Confederacy and its aftermath. 

The Liberty Place monument, an obelisk commemorating a violent uprising in 1874 by New Orleanians who rejected Reconstruction, was the first monument scheduled for removal. After major construction work on Canal Street in 1989 required that the monument be temporarily removed, it was relocated to a less prominent location between the Canal Place parking garage and a floodwall, and the inscription was altered to say "in honor of those Americans on both sides of the conflict." In the dark of night on April 24, it was removed completely. 

In the pre-dawn hours of May 11, masked workers took down the statue of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, who died in New Orleans. Protesters from both sides were present at the site of the monument at Canal Street and Jefferson Davis Parkway as it came down. 

The monument to P.G.T. Beauregard, a Louisiana native who served as a Confederate general during the War, was also removed from its location in front of City Park under the cover of darkness on May 17. Supporters and opponents of the monuments have engaged in heated online debate, and sometimes, physical standoffs at the sites. 

The namesake of Lee Circle, Alexander Doyle’s bronze statue of Robert E. Lee, a Confederate general who led the southern forces against the Union Army and was stationed at Jackson Barracks en route to the Mexican War, came down on May 19.

Never shy about expressing her opinion, Gordon has often stated her views on the issue. "I've been very public about the monuments," she said. "I've been known to have unpopular black opinions. I think from a human point of view. When you are a person of color and you divert your thoughts away from the masses, there's a mob of people ready to attack you. We live in a world where everybody is offended," she said. "We're so politically correct. 

"My reaction to the monuments controversy is, 'What in the world is going on?' It's a travesty. It should never have come to this point. With a history background, I pride myself on being unbiased. I want to know as much as I can and just tell the story. I've always loved hearing stories about people's lives," said Gordon. "I'm always the one to visit cemeteries and read obits."

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Her genealogical research, which Gordon said she has pursued since the age of twelve, led her to discover a great-great-great-grandfather who was a Confederate soldier. "My mother's ancestry included the Bouie family in Catahoula and Rapides parishes," Gordon said. "They were free persons of color who owned slaves themselves. I dare not be biased ever!”

Col. James Gordon (1833–1912) served under Jeb Stuart and Nathan Bedford Forrest, and later became a state senator from Mississippi. In addition to two children with his white wife, Gordon fathered children with a woman of color named Martha Law, or Laws. Their son Marshall is Ja'el Gordon's great-great-grandfather. 

She discovered that James's father Robert immigrated from Scotland in the early nineteenth century. In 1836, he built Lochinvar Plantation near Pontotoc, Mississippi, which is still standing. Gordon has visited the plantation, now owned by retired neurosurgeon Forrest Tutor, who restored it and wrote a book about its former residents, Gordons of Lochinvar. 

"We have shared photos and information back and forth," said Gordon, who has assembled an extensive collection of photographs of her forebears, both black and white. She is eager to meet one particular 96-year-old man who lives in the area. "He knew my great-great grandfather Marshall, who died in 1941 and is buried on the plantation along with his wife Alice Duke Gordon."

In the course of her research, Gordon found a relative, the great-granddaughter of James Gordon, who lives on the east coast. "We've communicated for years, and about a year or two ago we finally met in person," said Gordon. "Later she sent me family heirlooms that had been owned by Colonel Gordon. They have such historic value. I've looked at photos of my grandfather and her father--they could be twins."

Gordon discovered that both Robert and James had kept diaries, which are now at the Mississippi State Archives in Jackson. The archives also houses an album of 46 albumin-print photographs taken at Lochinvar between about 1880 and 1891.

"I do ancestry and genealogy work, so history is always on my mind," said Gordon, who has taught workshops on the topic in Baton Rouge and Pontotoc.

"I don't think the opponents of the monuments know much history.  People don't pay attention to history because they think it's boring,” Gordon said. “I don't think Louisiana does a good job of teaching Louisiana history. Here at Southern, history is an elective.

"New Orleans wants to be a historic place. It's a museum that people live in. There are plenty of tour guides and researchers who can deliver the correct information. What are they going to talk about if everything is gone? 

"I wanted to be a tour guide. You can be certified if you take a course at Delgado Community College and then pass a test. But why should I even bother to do that if I go to St. Charles Avenue and want to talk about Robert E. Lee and the monument is gone? It's not fair to people who want to learn. They're talking about putting the monuments in a museum. But if New Orleans is a museum, what's the issue? I don't find the monuments any more offensive than walking down Bourbon Street and seeing a naked woman on a swing.

"Just taking them down won't solve anything. Let us tell the story and how we've progressed,” Gordon said. “Think of all the money that has been put into the monuments. The Robert E. Lee monument fund was started in 1870, right after he died. It's a commemoration of what they knew." 

After years of fundraising, the monument to Lee was erected in 1884. The Davis monument was finished in 1911, and the Beauregard in 1915. Many of the subscribers were survivors of soldiers who had fought in the war, which saw 620,000 lives lost.

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Gordon noted that the city of New Orleans has pressing problems. "After Katrina, nobody worried about the monuments. Most of the people of New Orleans don't know who these monuments are,” Gordon said. “Taking them down won't improve life in New Orleans. There is still so much racism. The different sections, the haves and have-nots, kids tap-dancing on the street to make money. The wealthy-to-poor ratio is huge. There is continuous crime, continuous corruption. Removing the monuments isn't doing anything to fix those problems.”

Gordon also questioned the secrecy surrounding removal of the monuments, including the source of funds to pay for their removal and the fate that awaits them. 

"It's all fishy. There's no transparency. I don't want to hear about anonymous donors. I don't think they got enough conversation from the people." (The issue was not put to a popular vote but decided at a meeting of the City Council, which voted six to one for removal.) 

"I have reasons behind why I believe as I do," said Gordon. "I think outside the box as much as I can. Some people say that I'm not ‘woke’ or not conscious. But I actually do research, and I read before I speak.

"If everybody gets a sledgehammer, will that solve anything? Eliminating certain symbols isn't the answer. It's a mindset. Do we give everyone a lobotomy? What is going to be the replacement? Are you doing this to appease certain groups? If only we could just stop and have conversations.

"A city that does nothing for its citizens should be worried about bigger things. You don't want to brush history under the table and hide it,” Gordon said. “I'm an avid fan of history. I don't believe in tearing things down."