Take Em Down NOLA has always subscribed to the revolutionary belief that in the face of global racist oppression, any act of resistance is a win. So to that end, we would like to salute the parents, community members, organizers, and Shelton P. Smith, Sr. (the lone Black schoolboard member) of St. Bernard Parish, who waged a valiant struggle against their backwards, racist schoolboard this past Tuesday evening when they challenged them to change the name of Andrew Jackson Middle School. The schoolboard voted 10-1 to keep the name of the genocidal warmongering Andrew Jackson at a middle school comprised of over 60% students of color. This blatantly ignorant act shows the deep disregard the board has for Black lives in a moment of global reckoning, no less, with the world’s treatment of Black people. Despite this disrespect, and the fact that the racist coward schoolboard broke state law by sneaking the meeting in without announcing it on their website, the community still organized themselves enough to show up strong and push for the bureaucrats to come out of their racist past and stand on the right side of history.
Andrew Jackson’s viciously racist track record is well known. His egregious anti-Blackness showed up in the fact that he died owning more than 140 enslaved Black people. He was also the architect of the Fort Negro Massacre that was said to have slaughtered some 200 Black people and 100 Seminole and Choctaw indigenous people in Florida in 1816. Most infamously, he was the author of the Trail of Tears, which displaced dozens of thousands of Creek and Cherokee indigenous people from their native lands killing at least 3,500 Creek and 5,000 Cherokee along the way. Lesser known is the fact that even in the Battle of 1812 which Andrew’s usually working-class white defenders praise him for, he was violently oppressive to even the white people of Louisiana that he worked with. Andrew Jackson left a legacy that no worker or person of color anywhere can take pride in. The only people that can possibly find pride in him, are other members of the rich ruling class—especially the most blatantly racist among them. No wonder Trump claims him as his favorite president. Which should tell us everything we need to know about how the preservation of horrific figures from our history negatively affects the character of our nation and makes way for those negative characteristics to reemerge. Our present occupant of the White House is a prime example of that.
In preserving the foul legacy of Andrew Jackson at a school mostly comprised of children of color, whose ancestors Jackson would have killed or enslaved without a second thought, the St. Bernard Parish schoolboard displays their disgusting disregard for non-white lives, their shameful allegiance to the myth of white supremacy and their stubborn commitment to uphold it in the present. By standing up to this ignorance, the SBP community shows that like their ancestors that resisted this kind of oppression, we will not be silenced nor moved from our stance. The time of reckoning with the ghosts of our racist history is upon us. For the sake of our children and their right to be free of the shackles bestowed on our haunted past, we will continue to fight for their future until the battle is won. And if the so-called powers that be don’t want to hear us and adhere to our just demands, they’ll hear from us the day after that when we return. And the day after that. And the day after that.
Take Em Down NOLA stands in solidarity with the righteous struggle of the St. Bernard Parish community. We encourage them to keep up the good fight and plug into the collective struggle that we continue to wage here in Orleans Parish, where a major street and square are still named after the racist bigot that was Jackson, and the most prominent statue remaining in the city is of his likeness. As we always say, “We can’t get no satisfaction! Till we take down Andrew Jackson!” And that remains true from parish to parish, till Jackson and all symbols of white supremacy are removed once and for all. Onward to the revolution!