How history will remember Jeff Landry and Liz Murrill

Not as reformers, but as racists.

Gov. Jeff Landry, Attorney General Liz Murrill, and state Sen. Jay Morris of West Monroe may win their battle against Calvin Duncan and the people of New Orleans.

They have the power and the votes. They have a Legislature that will do Landry’s bidding. They have a Louisiana Supreme Court that, by a 4-3 vote, upheld the Legislature’s decision to abolish the Orleans Parish Criminal Clerk of Court office after Duncan won the position.

And now that the special prosecutor in Orleans Parish has dropped criminal charges against Murrill for her unhinged threats against New Orleans officials, she and Landry may go all the way and crush New Orleans much like Huey Long in 1934.

But it all started with Duncan, a Black man who spent nearly three decades in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. After his exoneration, he attended college and graduated from law school. He built a life of service and reform.

If you’re looking for something inspiring to read, I highly recommend Duncan’s riveting memoir, The Jailhouse Lawyer. That Landry and Murrill chose to start this fight with New Orleans over Duncan speaks volumes about their low character and lack of concern for the well-being of the parish and its residents.

Recall that New Orleans voters elected Duncan criminal court clerk with 68 percent of the vote.

What did Landry, Murrill, and Morris do when this impressive, Black, exonerated Angola inmate won this office?

They erased the office.

Landry, Murrill, Morris and their allies may dress this up in the sterile language of “efficiency,” “consolidation” and “reform.” That is what politicians always do when the plain truth is too ugly to say out loud.

But this was not about courthouse reorganization or efficiency.

It was the state of Louisiana, controlled by white Republicans, moving against a majority-Black city after its voters elected a Black man whose very life exposes the racism, cruelty, and incompetence of Louisiana’s criminal justice system.

Morris carried the bill. Landry signed it. And Murrill defends it.

This is Landry’s and Murrill’s governing philosophy: punish New Orleans, override Black voters, protect your friends, and call it reform.

For now, Baton Rouge will dominate New Orleans.

Duncan will be denied the office that voters gave him. Murrill will escape accountability for her misconduct. Landry will get the fight he wants with the state’s most important city. And Morris will earn a few pats on the head from the MAGA crowd for doing their dirty work.

But history has a long memory, and this is really nothing new.

For generations, powerful white officials in Louisiana have used the law to nullify Black political power, then insist, with wounded innocence, that race has nothing to do with it.

The segregationists of the 1950s and 1960s had their laws, courts, sheriffs, legislative committees, and legal briefs, too. They also spoke the language of order, efficiency, and tradition.

But today, we don’t remember them as defenders of good government. We remember them as racists who used their public offices to humiliate, intimidate, and disenfranchise Black citizens.

That is the historical company Landry, Murrill, and Morris have chosen.

They may win this round, but if there is any justice in public memory, their victory will tarnish over time.

History won’t remember them as reformers. It will remember them as racist officials who saw a Black exoneree elected by New Orleans voters and decided those voters had to be overruled.

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