This paper explores fugitive slave advertisements from the pages of the New Orleans Argus in 1828. As the main repository for runaway slave advertisements in New Orleans at the time, the Argus played a critical role in policing and surveillance of the city’s enslaved population just as New Orleans was becoming the largest slave market in the South. Using the Argus as well as historians’ accounts of the city, this thesis argues that as the market in enslaved people grew, slave owners depended upon local jailers in tandem with papers like the Argus, to police the enslaved population. The large volume of these advertisements, however, also testifies to enslaved people’s frequent rejection of bondage. This thesis is designed primarily as an index of the existing ads for 1828 with the aim of assisting further research into these sources.

My objective with this thesis is to understand how racist stereotypes and myths compounded the sale of fair-skinned black women during and after the slave trade in New Orleans, Louisiana. This commodification of black women's bodies continued well into the twentieth century, notably in New Orleans' vice district of Storyville. Called "quadroons" (a person with ¼ African ancestry) and "octoroons" (1/8 African ancestry), these women were known for their "sexual prowess" and drew in a large number of patrons. The existence of "white passing" black women complicated ideas about race and racial purity in the South. Race as a myth and social construct, or as Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham explains in her essay, African-American Women's History and the Metalanguage of Race, a "metalanguage" exposes race not as a genetic fact, but rather a physical appearance through which power relations and status were to be conferred. My methodology uses race and gender theory to analyze primary and secondary sources to understand and contextualize how population demographics, myths, and liberal 18th century colonial laws contributed to the sale of black women's bodies. The works of Emily Clark, Walter Johnson, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall and other historians who utilize Atlantic history have been paramount in my research. Emily Clark has transformed the "white-black" women from a tragic, sexualized trope into a fully actualized human being, while Hall has tackled the racist underpinnings inherent in the neglect of black women's history. The writings of bell hooks, particularly her essay Eating the Other, establishes the modern day commodification of black women vis-à -vis their representation in media, as well as through the fetishism of their bodies by a white patriarchal system. During slavery plantation owners could do virtually anything they wanted with their property, including engaging in sexual intercourse. By depicting black women as hypersexual jezebels, they could justify their rape, while establishing their dominance and place in the white male hegemony of that time period. For the right price a white male of a lesser class could achieve the same thing at a brothel down in Storyville at the turn of the twentieth century, for as Emily Clark argues in her book, The Strange History of the American Quadroon, these brothels were a great equalizer, allowing all white men to experience "…sexual mastery enjoyed only by elite planters before the Civil War." By democratizing white supremacy, the quadroon and others like her forged solidarity that bridge across all classes, while upholding whiteness and oppressing people of color at the same time.

In this paper, I examine E.J. Bellocq's "Storyville Portraits" within art historical and feminist historiographies. One of the most infamously alluring parts of New Orleans at the turn of the century, the Storyville red light district is hardly part of contemporary American consciousness today. Part of my work involves an evaluation of what a lack of archival resources does to perceptions of Storyville and more broadly, the stereotypical late Victorian “fallen women” that has been read into history - both by historians and popular culture. However, my focal point is indeed the portraits and how they might be re-read and fruitfully explored when considering a variety of pertinent factors that influenced representations of sex work in late 19th century New Orleans.

Using the literary device of a fictional interview between the artist and a sympathetic intellectual, I explore concepts relating to subjectivity, pedagogy, memory, “Southernness,” whiteness, the deceptive nature of images, social justice, and 20th century art as they relate to a contemporary artistic practice.

This thesis deals with the life and career and intimate life of Francis Carroll Grevemberg, an antiaircraft World War II officer from New Orleans, Louisiana. Grevemberg joined the Louisiana National Guard in 1932 and began his military career in the midst of the Great Depression. In the reorganization of the U.S. Army before World War II, the War Department transformed Grevemberg's cavalry regiment into a coastal artillery battalion with antiaircraft capability. During World War II, Grevemberg saw continuous action in the North Africa, Italy and Southern France. He regularly wrote letters from battlefields to his wife Dorothy. These letters provide a important window into a young officer's feelings, thoughts and affection in the unfolding of World War II. They are documents of a soldier's emotional release during times of crises. Lt. Col. Grevemberg is a rare, World War II antiaircraft artillery officer who took part and survived five amphibious landings in the Mediterranean.

This study investigates the first Woman's Department at a World's Fair in the Deep South. It documents conflicts and reconciliations and the reassessments that post-bellum women made during the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in New Orleans, the region's foremost but atypical city. It traces local women's resistance to the appointment of northern abolitionist and suffragist, Julia Ward Howe, for this “New South” event of 1884-1885. It also notes their increasing receptivity to national causes that Susan B. Anthony, Frances E. Willard, and others brought to the South, sometimes for the first time. This dissertation assesses the historical forces that goaded New Orleans women, from the comfort of their familiar city, to consider radical notions that would later strengthen them in civic roles. It asserts that, although these women were skilled and capable, they had previously lacked cohesive force and public strategies. It concludes that as local women competed and interacted with women from across the country, including those from pioneering western territories, they began to embrace progressive ideas and actions that, without the Woman's Department at the Exposition, might have taken years to drift southward. This is a chronological tale of the journey late-nineteenth-century women made together in New Orleans. It attempts to capture their look, sound, and language from their own writings and from journalists' interpretations of their ideals, values, and emotions. In the potent forum for exchange that the Woman's Department provided, participants and visitors questioned and revised false notions and stereotypes. They influenced each other and formed alliances. Although individuals spoke mainly for themselves, common themes emerged regarding education, jobs, benevolence, and even suffrage. Most women were aware that they were in a defining moment, and this study chronicles how New Orleans women seized the opportunity and created a legacy for themselves and their city. As the Exposition sought to (re)assert agrarian and industrial prowess after turbulent times, a shift occurred in the trajectory of women's public and political lives in New Orleans and, perhaps, the South more broadly. By 1885, southerners were ready to insinuate their voices into the national debate on women's issues.

This thesis explains the acting method used by Caleigh Keith while portraying the role of Nancy Shedman in Romulus Linney’s Holy Ghosts. Included are chapters of historical research, character analysis, and a production report, which includes a scored script, rehearsal and performance journal, and a self-evaluation of the actor’s work. Holy Ghosts was produced by Theater UNO at the University of New Orleans in the Robert E. Nims Thrust Theater of the Performing Arts Center. It opened Tuesday, February seventh, and ran through Sunday, February twelfth, two thousand and twelve. Evening performances were at seven-thirty and Sunday’s matinee was at two o’clock in the afternoon.

On July 4th, 2007, a small group of housing activists set up a tent city encampment in a plaza adjacent to New Orleans City Hall. The action resulted in the creation of Homeless Pride, a small group of politicized Plaza residents. Six months later, hundreds of homeless people were moved from the park, and it was fenced off. Using archival videos, interviews, and news media, this thesis analyzes the opportunities and constraints that activists, service providers, and local officials faced in light of two intersecting and overlapping contexts. The first context is the immediate crisis of the levee failures after Hurricane Katrina, and the second is the longer-term national political-economic context of “neoliberal urbanism”. Because of dire short-term circumstances, Homeless Pride articulated a message of homelessness as a “crisis” even though they had larger structural goals and vision. In light of recent “Occupy” movements, this case study addresses crucial questions for organizers and policymakers attempting to combat poverty and wealth inequality.

The study of African American Reconstruction leadership has presented a variety of unique challenges for modern historians who struggle to piece together the lives of men, who prior to the Civil War, had little political identity. The scant amounts of primary source data in regard to these leaders’ lives before the war, the destruction of many documents in regard to their leadership following the Reconstruction Era, and the treatment of these figures by historians prior to the Revisionist movement have left this body of extremely important political figures largely unexplored. This dissertation will examine the life of one of Louisiana’s foremost leaders, Lt. Governor Oscar James Dunn, the United States’ first African American executive officeholder. Using previously overlooked papers, Masonic records, Senate journals, newspaper articles and government documents, the dissertation explores Dunn’s role in Louisiana politics and chronicles the factionalization of the Republican Party in Reconstruction New Orleans. Born a slave and released from bondage at an early age, Oscar J. Dunn was able to transcend the stigma which was often attached to those who had been held in slavery. A native of New Orleans, born to Anglo-African parents, he was also able to transcend the language barrier that often excluded Anglo-Africans from social acceptability in Afro-Creole society. Although illiterate, Dunn’s parents made critical strides in securing his social mobility by providing him with both a formal education and a trade apprenticeship. Those skills propelled Dunn forward within his Anglo-African community wherein he became a key figure in the community’s two most important institutions, the York Rite Masonic Lodge and the African Methodist Episcopal church. This dissertation argues that Dunn’s political ascent was linked to the political enfranchisement of antebellum Anglo-Africans in Louisiana, Dunn’s involvement in Anglo-African institutions (particularly the York Rite Masonic Lodge and the African Methodist Episcopal church) and Dunn’s ability to find middle ground in the racially charged arguments that engulfed Reconstruction New Orleans’s political arena. Keywords: Oscar Dunn, Reconstruction, New Orleans, Republican, Louisiana, African American, Politics

In the hospitality industry, women with children are in a unique position. Government deregulation of corporate labor practices, the exit of manufacturing overseas, and the rise of the service sector economy in the United States has contributed to the development of a surplus, low-wage labor force. Tourism is one subset of this labor force that deserves further attention. Although there is substantial literature on the structure of low-wage labor in tourism economies (Herod and Aguiar, 2006), as well as the impacts on work-family balance (Liladrie, 2009), a less explored topic is the impacts hospitality labor has on mothering. The purpose of this study is to explore the experiences of women with children who 1) work in the hospitality industry and 2) whose work is located in the tourism districts of Seattle, Washington and New Orleans, Louisiana. The investigator used semi-structured, qualitative interviews that asked women about the decisions they make for their children, how their work in hospitality influences their parenting decisions, and how they assign meaning to their roles as mothers. The investigator found that women in the hospitality industry do not separate work and motherhood as two separate spheres. Work is a mothering strategy. The decisions they make for their children are characterized by mobility, particularly through relocation. Finally, this study found that women who work in the hospitality industry navigate various “markers” that stigmatize them in the workplace. The investigator calls this “motherhood markers;” forms of stigma that intensify emotional labor in their workplaces, can create tension with employers and co-workers and, in some cases, termination of their employment.