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For nearly 200 years, there has been a neighborhood in New Orleans, Louisiana named Milneburg, which has been constantly reimagined by its inhabitants and others. From its inception as a port of entry in 1832 until the 2011, it has been called a world-class resort, the poor-man's Riviera, a seedy red-light district, a cradle of jazz, a village, a swath of suburbia and a neighborhood. It has been destroyed eight times due to storms, fires, and civic or governmental neglect. Each time its residents have rebuilt it. In its last iteration as a post-Katrina neighborhood, the residents reestablished the Milneburg Neighborhood Association in order to define its boundaries, gain control of its redevelopment and restrict who lived there as well as what activities were permitted. This is a case study of the trajectory of Milneburg and the cultural adaptations of its residents to keep it distinct, vital and respectable.

Public space in New Orleans became increasingly segregated following the 1896 U. S. Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. This trend applied to sites of recreation, as nearly all public parks in the city became segregated. African Americans turned, instead, to private parks. This work examines four private parks open to African Americans in order to understand the external forces that affected these spaces, leading to their success or closure, and their significance for black city residents. While scholars have argued public space in New Orleans was segregated during Jim Crow, little attention has been paid to African American parks as alternative spaces for black New Orleanians. Whites were able to control the location of the parks and the parks’ reliance on profit to survive resulted in short spans of existence for most. However, this thesis argues that these parks were crucial sites of identity and community formation and of resistance to segregation.

This research addresses a significant gap in previous work on the formation of urban and suburban black skateboarding subcultures. By using data generated through oral histories, photographs, mapping, and literature review, this study explores why black youth initially began skateboarding in New Orleans in the mid-2000s. In contrast to the scholarly literature and local popular perception, this visual anthropological study aims to provide an alternative origin story of black skateboarding in Post-Katrina New Orleans, and to examine the continuing popularity of the sport within the young black community.

This review is an academic report used to provide recommendation and an in-depth look into The NOCCA Institute. The report includes an analysis of the organization’s structure, programs, finances, and my internship activities; Spring - Summer 2015. Additionally the report includes a SWOT Analysis and my recommendations based on the analysis and best practices of similar organizations.

In 2009, the Archdiocese of New Orleans went through a reorganization that resulted in the closure of numerous parishes under its direction. This thesis will look at how one of the parishes closed during this reorganization, St. Henry’s, had already faced, and survived, numerous attempts at closure. A study of these previous attempts reveals that internal church politics were often on display and the driving force behind the decisions. Using documents from the Archdiocesan Archives of New Orleans, this thesis looks at the history and leadership of St. Henry’s parish, and examines how the survival of a church often has more to do with the personalities of those in leadership positions and less to do with the propagation of faith.

In New Orleans during the 1830s, Irish immigration became a source of tension between newly settled Anglo-American elites and the long-established Creole hegemony. Out of this tension, in 1835 Anglo-American elites established the Louisiana Native American Association (LNAA) to block Irish immigrants from gaining citizenship and, ultimately, the right to vote. The Whig Party, whom most Louisiana Anglo-Americans supported, promoted nativism to prevent naturalized Irish from voting Democrat, the preferred party of the Creoles. This study will argue that the LNAA, under the leadership of William H. Christy, was not merely a reaction to increased Irish immigration, but was also a strategy used by the Louisiana Whig Party to gain dominion over state politics. In the end, this strategy did more harm than good to the Whigs as the nativist movement led to a fatal split within the party.

La carence des recherches académiques portant sur la problématique de l'insécurité urbaine dans le contexte particulier d'une ville affectée par une catastrophe majeure, nous a mené à investir cette problématique à travers le cas de la Nouvelle-Orléans et de la catastrophe Katrina. L'analyse de données criminelles inédites, complétée par un travail de terrain approfondi, a permis de « reconstituer » les évolutions spatiales et temporelles de la criminalité en lien avec la catastrophe Katrina. A court terme, Katrina a conduit à de nombreux « transferts » d'insécurité à l'échelle de la ville et des sites d'évacuation qui ont subi des « effets reportés » de la catastrophe. Néanmoins, l'analyse des données tant quantitatives et qualitatives permet de fortement nuancer certains discours qui ont orienté les réponses des gestionnaires. L'insécurité, notamment dans sa dimension subjective, a ainsi constitué une sérieuse entrave à la gestion de la crise, notamment à l'évacuation des victimes prises au piège par les inondations. A plus long terme, le retour progressif des populations évacuées s'est accompagné d'une criminalité violente qui avait connu une forte réduction au cours des premiers mois post Katrina. L'analyse des données criminelles menée à différentes échelles spatiales, permet d'envisager la criminalité comme une « grille de lecture » des transformations urbaines post catastrophe. D'autre part, les mutations urbaines rapides après Katrina ont affecté les représentations du danger qui ne se sont pas toujours ajustées à la nouvelle « réalité criminelle » des différents quartiers de la ville. L'approche systémique de l'insécurité urbaine post catastrophe permet de mettre en évidence une aggravation du risque criminel après Katrina à l'échelle de la ville en raison d'un affaiblissement prolongé des territoires en marge de la reconstruction où les activités criminelles ont pu proliférer. Dans la mesure où les catastrophes telles que Katrina peuvent conduire à un renforcement de l'insécurité urbaine, notamment à l'échelle des territoires les plus vulnérables, une plus grande considération de cette problématique par les chercheurs semble dès lors nécessaire. L'anticipation des conséquences qu'une catastrophe majeure peut avoir sur la sécurité d'une ville permettrait d'intégrer la question de l'insécurité urbaine dans les plans de gestion de crise et de reconstruction post catastrophe et ainsi de faciliter le processus de résilience urbaine. / The lack of academic research on “urban insecurity” in the context of a city affected by a major disaster led us to investigate this issue through the case of New Orleans and the Katrina disaster. The analysis of crime data, complemented by an intensive field work, allowed us to “recreate” the spatial and temporal evolution of crime related to Katrina. In the short term, Katrina let to numerous crime displacements in New Orleans and in the cities affected by indirect impacts from the disaster. Nonetheless, the analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data allows to seriously play down the discourses which oriented the official responses to the disaster. Crime, in particular fear of crime, has represented a serious obstacle to the crisis management, especially to the evacuation of the residents trapped by the floods. In the longer term, the return of the inhabitants came along with the return of violent crime after a lull of several months after hurricane Katrina. The analysis of crime data at different spatial scales allows us to consider crime as a frame to “read” post disaster changes in urban dynamics. Besides, brutal changes in those dynamics and in the urban landscape have affected the perceptions of danger which didn't always adjust to the new “criminal trends” of the city's different neighborhoods. The holistic approach of post disaster “urban insecurity” allows us to highlight an increase of crime risk at the city scale after Katrina because of a long lasting weakening of territories that struggle to recover and where criminal activities have proliferated. Since disasters like Katrina can lead to an increase in urban insecurity, in particular in the most vulnerable territories, a better consideration of this issue by researchers seems therefore necessary. The anticipation of the consequences that a major disaster can have on urban security would allow to integrate the issue of crime and its prevention into disaster management and recovery plans and therefore to facilitate the process of urban resilience.

Hurricane Katrina made landfall 60 miles east of New Orleans, Louisiana, on August 29, 2005. The storm revealed the reality of the socio-economic state of tens of thousands of African Americans living in the city of New Orleans, especially African-American women. This study examines the state of development of African-American women who lived in the Lower 9th Ward area of New Orleans prior to, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. This study was based on the premise that African-American women who lived in the Lower 9th Ward were significantly more affected by Hurricane Katrina than any other group in the area because of their race, class, gender, and state of development. A narrative analysis was chosen as the method for this study. The data were collected from interviews was analyzed to explore how Hurricane Katrina impacted these women’s state of development, or the lack thereof. The researcher found that Lower 9th Ward African-American women were impacted by Hurricane Katrina more than any other group because of their underdeveloped state. The conclusions drawn from the findings suggest that the African-American women from the Lower 9th Ward area lived a life comparable to that of women in developing countries, while living in a First World country. The reality of their underdeveloped state allowed for Hurricane Katrina to impact them more negatively than any other group by leaving them unable to regain normalcy in some areas of their lives, especially those areas influenced by their race, class, and gender.

This narrative study explores the transition from high school to college for low-income students of color who participated in a college access mentoring program, the College Admissions Project (CAP) while in twelfth-grade. A community cultural wealth (CCW) lens guides this research and is used to examine student experiences. CAP alumni who enrolled in an institution of higher education in the fall semester immediately following their high school graduation are the participants in this study. A narrative approach to inquiry is used because the author is interested in the particular experiences of a few individuals. Specifically, the experiences of low-income students of color from New Orleans as they made the transition from high school to college either in 2015 or 2016. This study has implications for practice in the area of college access programs as well as theoretical applications which extend a CCW framework to additional communities of color beyond Latina/o communities. In the area of practice, supporting positive peer relationships could make college access programs more effective. Student voice is also important to the participants in this study. Students should be part program development and evaluation processes so that programs are designed to best meet their needs as they exist, rather than as adults see them. There is some evidence that a CCW framework is applicable to the experiences of these students. Informational and social capital were most commonly referenced by participants, and efforts to help students further develop these assets would help to support their college transition processes.