Creating the Big Easy: New Orleans and the Emergence of Modern Tourism, 1918-1945

Acknowledgments

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In many ways, my family helped fulfill New Orleans businessmen’s dreams—tourists who fell in love with the city so thoroughly that they moved there. Uncle David drove to New Orleans in the late 1940s and was charmed by the French Quarter, by the broad boulevards lined with stately homes, by the people. A decade later, he leapt at the chance to return to New Orleans—this time to accept a job as a chemist at a federal research facility. My paternal grandparents began to visit him, usually in the winter months to escape the Kentucky cold. They eventually decided to stay permanently in New Orleans, renting a second-floor apartment carved out of a house near the intersection of Canal Street and Jefferson Davis Boulevard. My parents followed in the 1970s. I was born in an old military hospital a few blocks from Audubon Park. Although I was raised in the suburbs, I spent a lot of time visiting my grandparents, accumulating memories that have kept alive my passion to write about my hometown. As a child, I played in the shadow of the Jefferson Davis statue, a monument regularly defaced by spray paint— acts of protest against the racial regime represented by the former Confederate president. From the Canal Street neutral ground (“median” for those not familiar with the city), I stared at the distant skyscrapers downtown. Glowing red letters spelled Marriott near the top of the tallest building in view. Family drives carried me past Bayou St. John ix to the Fairgrounds—my grandfather loved “betting on the ponies,” as we called it. From the upstairs window of my grandparents’ apartment, I watched in excitement the passing Mardi Gras parades: Endymion, Mid-City, Pegasus, Carrollton, Truckers. I remember the chiropractor who rented an office on the first floor of the apartment building. “Doc” liked to wear women’s footwear. He said the shoes were more comfortable and better for the feet. Years later, in my teen years, I saw him dressed in full drag on Mardi Gras. I also recall the day drops of dried blood appeared on the front porch. The previous night a wounded burglar had attempted to escape pursuing police officers by hiding in the shadows. As I aged, I went to a Catholic elementary school, a Catholic high school, and a Catholic university. I realized two things in high school. First, my high school history teachers, particularly Brian Altobello and Tom Rice, instilled in me a deep curiosity about the past. I knew that I wanted to become a historian. Second, I began to recognize the powerful role of race—even more than religion—in shaping New Orleans culture . Religion courses were sparse on theology. Instead, the curriculum substituted messages about social justice, an odd emphasis in a school that could best be described as a segregation academy, a suburban institution founded during the heat of the school desegregation battle in the city proper. Little had changed by the time I attended high school in the early 1990s. Only 3 of the 214 students in my graduating class were black. My university experience finally exposed me to the diversity that is New Orleans, a place that has long defied neat categorizations that attempt to separate white from black. Racial identity nevertheless remains a force in New Orleans and, as the pages ahead show, the tourism industry. One day, during my graduate studies at Vanderbilt University, fellow student Cheryl Hudson asked me to explain a peculiarity about New Orleanians. In New York, strangers will ask each other how much each pays in rent. In Los Angeles , strangers will ask each other about involvement in “the business,” meaning Hollywood. But New Orleanians pose a very different question when they make an acquaintance. They’ll ask, “What high school did you go to?” Cheryl wondered why residents of the Crescent City x Acknowledgments were so preoccupied with their secondary schools. I had never noticed that I too carried this cultural baggage. In many ways, high schools in metropolitan New Orleans continue to be markers of class and race. Legacies are important. In 2000, I drove with a colleague, Rob Lawson, to a conference in Charleston, South Carolina. One evening, we had dinner with another graduate student. She was a native New Orleanian. We talked about tourism, about the blues, and about race. She asserted that she was not...