New Orleans' Past and America's Future By Kent B. Germany t its 300th anniversary, New New Orleans was organized around the environment. The mid-1980s and 1990s Orleans sits in a familiar spot. concept that people with African ancestry were a brutal period. For much of the city, It has serious problems regard- were not equal to other residents and were things picked up at the end of the 20th ing race and inequality — and deserving of enslavement or treatment as Century, then Hurricane Katrina showed Aeven bigger ones regarding water. Its his- second-class citizens. Race and the power how much they had not improved. The tory, though, suggests that it may have a of its categories form a historical arc from population declined long-term by about bright future in a 21st Century dominated slavery to Emancipation-Reconstruction to 100,000, mostly African-American. by globalism and multiculturalism. New Jim Crow to the post-1945 Civil Rights era This essay offers a brief glimpse at Orleans has been battling over those things to the period of so-called “white flight” to a few parts of three centuries in New for 300 years. Its history is defined by the Hurricane Katrina and beyond. Orleans. In its simplest form, it is a story of confusion of outsiders becoming insiders, After two and a half centuries, the blood and ink, violence and law. Lawyers, and those insiders trying to keep every- dominance of white supremacy apparent- judges and lawmakers gave it form and set one else in their place. Today, new waves ly came to an end in the 1960s. Southern its legacies. Slavery defies easy analysis. of outsiders, especially young people and economic modernization, unprecedented But every modern person has to cope with college graduates, are flocking to New national economic growth and national the unforgettable reality that people took Orleans (and other coastal metropolises). fiscal and social policies reduced startling out ads to sell humans, while other humans Some geographers call them part of an pre-1950 levels of inequality and empow- took out loans to buy them. Systems like urban “creative class” launching a new ered African-Americans in unprecedented that may end, but their echo of anguish information-driven American epoch. As ways. Activists, lawyers and local people never does. they grow older, what will the United seized the opportunity to change the rules Several acts of violence in the 19th States become? What will it mean to be regarding race at the federal, state and lo- Century serve as testament to the will- an American in their America in 2028 or cal level. They forced the political system ingness of white Louisianians to preserve 2058? A short answer is to look to New to act, and the result became modern mul- white supremacy. In 1811, several hundred Orleans. It will tell us. It always has. ticultural America. It was more inclusive, slaves revolted in St. Charles and St. John Be prepared, however. The city’s an- more tolerant, more creative, more global. the Baptist Parishes and headed toward swers have not always been happy. For Those trends sent approximately New Orleans with visions of freedom. 300 years, New Orleans has been a divid- 200,000 white New Orleanians to new Suppression was brutal and quick. Some ed city, whether by race, gender, religion, lives in neighboring parishes. In 1950, of the revolters supposedly had their heads ethnicity, country of origin, class, sexuality white residents made up 67 percent of the cut off and put atop poles as a warning. In or a range of other factors. The color line, city. By 2000, the number was 28 percent. 1866, a year after the Civil War, a white however, has been the most fundamental The shift from 1960 to 1980 was the big- mob in New Orleans clashed with black divide (with the meaning of “Creole” cre- gest, from 62 percent white to 40 percent. men trying to secure the right to vote. ating enormous variability). For the most By the mid-1980s, the oil bust devastated Known as The Absolute Massacre, it left part from the early 1700s to the mid-1960s, the area, as did a general antiurban political 38 people dead, most of them African- 388 April / May 2018 American. In North Louisiana in 1873, the Colfax Massacre involved the murder of upwards of 150 pro-Republican black men by a mob of white men upset about a Reconstruction election. The legal re- sponse to it in the Cruikshank case under- mined the 14th Amendment and actually diminished the power of black residents. In 1874 in New Orleans, the Battle of Liberty Place resulted in approximately 35 deaths. In a military street battle, the Crescent City White League crushed the pro-Republican police force. Two decades later, civic lead- ers put up a monument honoring leading citizens for defeating the “usurpers.” Into stone they celebrated the recognition of “white supremacy in the South.” That monument came down in 2017. Lynchings were prominent, too. Louisiana had almost 400 from the 1880s to the 1960s. Approximately 85 percent were African-Americans. One notable episode Depicted are documents from the record in Ex Parte Plessy. Courtesy of Historical Archives of the in New Orleans involved anti-Italian senti- Supreme Court of Louisiana, Earl K. Long Library, University of New Orleans. ment. The 1892 “Who Killa Da Chief” in- cident left 11 Sicilians either shot or hanged P.B.S. Pinchback, became the first black color to defend themselves, their economic by a mob after acquittals in a trial over the governor of any state in U.S. history, if position and their rights as citizens. The murder of the New Orleans police chief. only for a few weeks. two decades after Plessy produced a fanat- In 1900, in another explosion of violence, Overwhelming and often vicious ical, culture-wide devotion to what schol- Robert Charles, an African-American re- white opposition demolished most of it, ars refer to as “whiteness,” reflected by cently arrived from Mississippi, shot and though, and restored white supremacy. the popularity of the 1915 film The Birth killed several New Orleans police officers The Jim Crow system of racial segrega- of a Nation. The epic movie canonized the and residents. He was finally located in tion solidified in the 1890s. The 1898 Lost Cause mythology of the confederacy, Central City and killed. The related riots by Louisiana state Constitution was a model belittled black Americans as incompetent white mobs led to multiple other deaths and for racial segregation and for taking the fools and euphorically celebrated the rise the burning down of a school for African- vote from African-Americans, while sav- of the Ku Klux Klan. At its end, a Jesus- American boys. ing it from many poor whites through like figure blesses the restoration of white Public violence could be an effective the novel Grandfather Clause. Three supremacy. way to assert majority control, but it was Louisiana cases — Slaughter-House Jim Crow and the “southern way of unpleasant and usually bad for business. Cases, 1873; Cruikshank, 1875; and life” was set. Generations believed that Abandoning the rule of law was danger- Plessy, 1896 — were crucial for crafting segregation was natural, that the law af- ous and disorderly. It made bankers ner- the legal foundations of that Jim Crow era. firmed something first ordained by God. vous. The law, therefore, usually bent to In combination with other decisions from Resistance to Jim Crow grew dramatically the will of the majority. The major legal elsewhere, they drastically restricted the after World War II, and so did white oppo- turning points came with Emancipation- 14th Amendment’s protections, leaving sition to any changes to the racial regime. Reconstruction (1862-ish to 1877), the rise African-Americans increasingly vulner- Activists, attorneys and political leaders of Jim Crow (1880s-ish to early 1900s) able to an increasingly fearful white ma- used the U.S. Constitution (particularly and the end of Jim Crow (1950s-1960s). jority at the state level. the 14th and 15th Amendments and the Emancipation and Reconstruction offered Plessy, in particular, signaled the new Commerce Clause) and grassroots politi- a brief victory for egalitarians. U.S. con- era was to begin. In a cultural sense, the cal power to crack it apart. Considering its stitutional amendments established birth- case asked who deserved to be a full long history, the end of white supremacy right citizenship, equal protection and American. Did an anxious white majority was relatively swift. It did not come easily. universal adult male voting. A new state have the right to restrict the citizenship of More than 250 people in the South were Constitution, the development of deseg- people of color? Homer Plessy and his at- killed in that period by individuals and regated schools and the election of black torney Albion Tourgée said no. The U.S. groups opposed to the civil rights move- leaders were startling departures for New Supreme Court essentially said yes. The ment. In 2006, the FBI began its Cold Case Orleans. Congress backed it up with the result was an unrelenting, systematic deci- Initiative to take a new look into more than military. In 1872, a New Orleans man, mation of the power available to people of 100 of them. Among them was the 1965 LouisianaLouisiana Bar Bar Journal Journal Vol. Vol. 65, 65, No. No. 6 6 389389 drive-by murder of Deputy O’Neal Moore least a brief mention. By 1968, the War on desegregation in 1960. “Vomitings of de- near Bogalusa. Another was Frank Morris, Poverty had led to the creation of a small moniac people” is how John Steinbeck burned alive in his shoe shop in Ferriday but powerful local legal force, the New described what they did and said.