New Orleans after the Promises: Poverty, Citizenship, and the Search for the Great Society

13. Panthers, Snipers, and the Limits of Liberalism

CHAPTER THIRTEEN Panthers, Snipers, and the Limits of Liberalism It is time that we have begun to prove that moving on us isn’t such an easy job. The cards are on the table ‘the enemy has tobring [sic] ass to get ass’ . . . and we the oppressed ain’t giving up nothing. —Desire: Voice of the People, 1970 In 1964, a half-decade before Moon Landrieu’s election, New Orleans Urban League director J. Harvey Kerns had hoped that racial liberalism could produce “something new for the South.” At the dawn of the new decade, New Orleans seemed poised to do that, or at least to end the Dixie defined by Jim Crow.1 As several moments of violence demonstrated , however, the worst aspects of Dixie kept coming back. Two more episodes were added to a long history stretching back at least to the Absolute Massacre of 1866. First, in the fall of 1970, an effort to purge the Black Panthers from New Orleans led to two shoot-outs between the Panthers and local police and to a standoff between residents of the Desire housing project and the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD). Over a two-and-a-half-month period, several people were seriously injured, a teenage boy was killed, two black undercover officers were beaten after a community-led trial, and national attention was focused on the incidents , including a visit from the infamous actress Jane Fonda. Shortly thereafter, a controversial Thanksgiving week showdown between city 271 police and the Panthers highlighted the city leaders’ concern about the alienation of poor black citizens. The second episode was the rampage of Mark Essex, an embittered Navy veteran. In January 1973, he left the Downtown Howard Johnson Hotel in flames, ten people dead from gunshot wounds—including five police officers and Essex himself—dozens injured, millions shocked, and law enforcement agencies dazed and confused . Those violent episodes forced turning points in the local search for the Great Society. Debates had shifted from the high ground of inclusion appeals and community pride to the realities of Louisiana politics and post–Jim Crow confusion. The Panthers’ confrontations and the Essex tragedy shattered any illusions that the city had achieved Great Society status, and they were sobering lessons in the limits of liberalism. Since 1964, the War on Poverty had been a means to manage inequality and most important to involve black leaders in that management. One major public institution for managing the citizenry, however, was immune to much of the Great Society’s progressive racial influence. The largely white police force was the most direct governmental presence in black communities, and it was far more difficult to reform than other parts of the Jim-Crow state. Some black leaders were heartened by the attitude of Clarence Giarrusso, the police chief during the Desire episodes and the Essex incident. As one black leader explained, “We’d be just fine if Clarence were in every patrol car.” For them, the solution required not just good leadership, but reforming officers on the street.2 The historic tensions between that department and the black community threatened to undo the liberal triumph of 1970, and might have if not for so many white racial conservatives leaving the city. The Desire Shootouts By 1970, the Desire area seemed to be developing into one of the great successes of the War on Poverty. As a federal target area, Desire had received an infusion of several million dollars over the previous five years, and community action had produced a number of vibrant community 272 Dixie’s Democratic Moment groups and improvement associations. The New Orleans Legal Assistance Corporation (NOLAC) had a thriving office there, and the War on Poverty–funded attorneys for the poor were actively involved in welfare rights issues and housing issues. They would become the attorneys for members of the Black Panthers in the aftermath of the two shootouts . Designated as a Model Neighborhood Area under the Model Cities program, Desire was set to receive another significant federal boost. Politically , the area was becoming a key bailiwick of the SOUL organization. Two of the most prominent black leaders were Sam Bell, the controversial gubernatorial candidate who would lose SOUL’s backing in 1971, and Johnny Jackson Jr., the community activist and director of the Desire Community Center who had grown up in the area. Theodore Marchand, another...