JBE plans to spend Christmas break taking a deep dive into Louisiana’s history of racism

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Gov. John Bel Edwards plans to take a deep dive into Louisiana's history of racism over Christmas break, listing off his winter reading list on his monthly radio show Wednesday.

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First up is "Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation," by Steve Luxenberg. The book chronicles the seminal Supreme Court case that established the principal of "separate but equal" and made racial segregation the law of the land.

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Next up is "Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause," by Ty Seidule, a history professor at the governor's alma mater, West Point.

Part history, part memoir, the book promises to deconstruct the truth about the Confederacy — that its undisputed primary goal was the subjugation and enslavement of Black Americans.

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Lastly, the governor plans to read "The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction," by Charles Lane.

The book chronicles the aftermath of the 1873 Colfax Massacre, when more than 60 Black residents in rural Grant Parish were slaughtered by a small army of white, ex-Confederate soldiers, who were enraged by the freedmen's attempts to assert their new rights as citizens.

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