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

CHAPTER 6 Old New Orleans: Race and Tourism

C H A P T E R 6 i= 8] OLD NEW ORLEANS Race and Tourism As Fat Tuesday dawned in 1930, a rowdy bunch of Tulane University athletes crowded into a rented truck to sing, drink, and make merry havoc in the New Orleans streets. Groups of revelers commonly meandered in wagons or trucks or on foot to celebrate Mardi Gras. They started innocently, but after sipping some bootleg alcohol, the college boys quickly took to another tradition of Jim Crow New Orleans, the harassment of blacks. The white Tulane students threw eggs at black bystanders. Several black pedestrians retaliated by cursing at the students as they drove down St. Philip Street in the French Quarter. Eager to teach their victims a lesson in respecting white privilege, the athletes got out of their vehicle but faced more resistance than expected. A loud pop sounded above the melee. Joseph Lawrence, a white medical student , lay bleeding to death on the street, shot by black French Quarter resident Son Robertson.1 The incident revealed the racial tension underlying tourism and tourist sites, which, in the years after the First World War, were constructed by and for whites. New Orleans tourism reflected whites’ acceptance of white supremacy. Blacks were expected to give whites leeway and to swallow their pride even in the face of insults. A black man who transgressed the white world of touristic New Orleans—whether on Canal Street, in the French Quarter, or along a parade route—risked 195 his life if he did not show deference. White authority was not limited to policemen or prominent citizens but also included unruly adolescents and drunken college students. Although violence against blacks was common in Jim Crow New Orleans as well as across the country, whites expected blacks quietly to accept the assaults. Just a few days prior to the violent confrontation in the French Quarter, an incident occurred that revealed the complicity of even white officials in such racist actions. Ten white boys had accosted a black bystander while he awaited the arrival of the Momus parade. An eyewitness recalled them making the “usual request, ‘move on nigger,’ ” only to turn to “combative force” when the man refused to comply. A disinterested white policeman feebly asked the youths “to leave the ‘nigger’ alone,” but the boys paid no heed and chased their victim several blocks before they beat him unconscious with a “blunt instrument.” Although racial violence was commonplace, forceful retaliation against white supremacy, such as the shooting of Lawrence, was rare. Whites usually denied that offenses to the black community had taken place. One of the college students, Edward Hebert, claimed that his friends had just picked up five sailors and were “going on happily enough” when a “crowd of negroes began following the truck and pulling at us, shouting insults to such an extent that eventually we clambered off and began fighting them.” To Hebert, tossing eggs at black revelers—a practice that whites enjoyed—seemed a natural part of Mardi Gras revelry. The local press quickly exonerated Lawrence and his cohorts of any wrongdoing. According to white popular opinion, unruly blacks had attacked without provocation, taking the life of a promising young white man.2 In Jim Crow New Orleans, tourism sites and guides were developed to either erase traces of black culture or present blacks as subservient to whites. Blacks, with only a small middle class located primarily in large urban centers, lacked economic power during the interwar years. In New Orleans, they also lacked numbers, forming less than a third of the city’s population.3 Segregation laws and racial customs restricted black travel to and within New Orleans. The relationship of black culture , particularly jazz and Creole history, to the urban image forged 196 Chapter Six by politicians, businessmen, and social activists reveals the extent to which leading white New Orleanians structured tourism in accordance with their belief in white supremacy. Jazz, a musical style created by black musicians, was suppressed in the 1920s. The wild wailing, the improvisational style, and the musicians’ ties to vice encouraged what many whites, especially those of the upper classes, deemed lewd, sexually suggestive behavior. Jazz remained popular with the youth of both races despite the criticisms, and the fresh sound slowly entered mainstream American culture. In time, New Orleans tourism boosters seized on the city’s role in birthing the musical form. The...