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

Acknowledgments

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I was born and raised in Louisiana. Like most people from there, my roots go back several generations—at least four in my case. In August and September 2005, I watched the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita from an upscale university town in Virginia and felt like an exile. I want to express my deepest sympathy for the people along the Gulf and my hope that the promises made to them are not forgotten. As for this book, I had essentially completed the final manuscript when Katrina came ashore, and in those weeks after it, I decided not to attempt any significant rewrite. It was too early to assess New Orleans’s past through the lens of Katrina. The “Katrina-ing” of New Orleans’s history demands an entirely new book because the storm has changed some of the fundamental questions and perspectives. In response, I chose only to revise slightly the introduction and conclusion. I do not know how many people who appear in this book were affected by Katrina, but many were. I did hear about one person who was stranded at the Morial Convention Center. Johnny Jackson Jr., the activist from Desire who became a powerful local politician, was there taking care of his elderly mother and was interviewed on public radio. I hope this book does not do disservice to people like Jackson who labored forty years earlier to make modern New Orleans or to the over one thousand people who died because of the storm or to the many others who endured. I hope that they will forgive me for any inadequacies in telling a complicated story about race, poverty, and inclusion in their city. Books begin somewhere and end somewhere, and in between, authors rely on a wide range of people and institutions. I am particularly indebted to the archivists and staff members of several research centers. Irene Wainwright and Wayne Everard of the Louisiana Division of the ix New Orleans Public Library have been extraordinarily helpful to me. They have fashioned one of the most professional and efficient enterprises I have ever seen in Louisiana government. At the Department of Special Collections at the University of New Orleans’s Earl K. Long Library, I want to thank Florence Jumonville and Marie Windell. Most of my work there was with Marie, and I want to commend her for her professionalism and dedication to the study of history. She was delightful and made my research trips enjoyable and productive ventures. At the Special Collections Division of Tulane University’s Howard-Tilton Memorial, I want to thank Kevin Fontenot, Wilbur Meneray, Lee Miller, Joan Caldwell, Carole Hampshire, Ann Case, and Robert Sherer. I also want to extend my appreciation to Donald DeVore, Brenda Square, and Rebecca Hankins at the Amistad Research Center in New Orleans; Patricia Lawrence, Alfred Lemann, and John McGill at the Historic New Orleans Collection, Art Carpenter at the Special Collections and Archives department of Loyola University’s Monroe Library, and the staff at the Hill Library at Louisiana State University. I wish these institutions the best in their recovery from Katrina and in keeping the city’s history alive. Without the rich resources preserved by them, our understanding of New Orleans would be facile and irretrievably commercialized. In addition to those local institutions, I want to note the contributions of the National Archives and Records Administration, particularly the Archives II facility in College Park, Maryland, and the LBJ Library in Austin. The LBJ Library is a model institution, and I express my deepest appreciation to Harry Middleton, Betty Sue Flowers, Tina Houston, Linda Seelke, Allen Fisher, Claudia Anderson, Regina Greenwell, Shannon Jarrett, and Laura Harmon Eggert. I also want to thank Denice Warren of the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center (www.gnocdc.org) for assistance with illustrations and Darlene Fife and Robert Head of the NOLA Express, the alternative newspaper published in New Orleans in the late 1960s and early 1970s, for research advice and for help with photographs. Research and writing for this book was supported by several sources. The Tulane University Graduate School funded my graduate studies and provided a Dissertation Year Fellowship. The Organization of American Historians provided essential research funding through a Horace Samuel x Acknowledgments and Marion Galbraith Merrill Grant in Twentieth Century Political History . The University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs provided key assistance and infrastructure...