The history of Louisiana country music reflects the cultural complexity of the state itself. The home of two important radio stations (KWKH and WWL), a two-time governor who was first and foremost a country music star (Jimmie Davis), the most indelible ethnic subgenre of country music (Cajun music), the second most significant country music radio and stage show after the Grand Ole Opry (the Louisiana Hayride), the birthplace of swamp-pop music, a proving ground for rockabilly music, an important link in the development of western swing music, a key place in the careers of Hank Williams, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash, and the birthplace or home of such country music luminaries as Ted Daffan, Mickey Gilley, Doug Kershaw, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jimmie C. Newman, Webb Pierce, and Faron Young, Louisiana has essayed a colorful and notable role in the creative and commercial development of a major area of American culture. From Leadbelly to Fats Domino to Aaron Neville and Cleve Francis, Louisiana has also been a fertile source of mutual black and white musical exchange. From Jimmie Davis in the 1930s to Joe Stampley in the 1970s to today's fast-rising star, Sammy Kershaw, Louisiana country music has impressed the nation with its talent. Louisiana country music has always been a bold and exciting expression of both cultural conflict and the artistic attempt to resolve them. Its styles and sounds echo the very history of our age / acase@tulane.edu

Regulation of economic institutions, and the role of local elites in shaping the direction of economic reform within the local community during the New Deal and World War II, provides the central theme of this work. The shifting locus of reform and regulation from the state capital to the federal capital necessarily affected the control of those institutions basic to conservative dominance within the local community: land---or more generally, property---and labor. In an effort to maintain their dominance, local elites adopted strategies that enabled them to recast core values of community, individualism, and democracy into a new economic framework, thus providing an element of continuity in a sea of change. The basis for these values in local economic institutions provides a fundamental theme of this work, for in studying the response of conservative elites to the economic transformation of the local community, we can more fully understand the continuity of conservative values from the racially-segregated, solidly Democratic South of the past to the racially integrated, increasingly Republican-dominated 'modern South' of our own era. Thus, this study of one Southern community, Caddo Parish, Louisiana, offers a unique perspective into this process of transformation, demonstrating how conservative leaders manipulated the currents of ideology and reform within both state and nation to reinforce their dominance within the local sphere. In the process, it illustrates the diversity of interests within the conservative elite and the variety of their responses to change, and on that basis projects the future course of political evolution within the state and nation / acase@tulane.edu

Daniel Clark Jr. was born in Ireland in 1766. Twenty years later the young man traveled to New Orleans, then a Spanish possession, at the behest of an uncle. Clark rapidly became a success as a merchant in the Spanish province because of his ability to speak French and Spanish as well as his connections in the Governor's office. Within a few years the Irishman had established himself as one of the wealthiest and most influential men in the city of New Orleans In addition to his mercantile activities Clark also began to represent the interests of the American community in New Orleans. By the mid-1790s he was serving as unofficial vice-consul for the United States, a position which had become official by the end of the decade. As vice-consul Clark succeeded in persuading the Spanish to lower the duty on American goods traveling through Louisiana and also in reestablishing a place of deposit for those articles When the United States began to show interest in purchasing New Orleans from its new owners, the French, Clark sent valuable information to Washington. He reported on a wide variety of topics including the economic life of the region as well as the attitude of French and Spanish officials in the Crescent City Clark believed he should have been properly rewarded by the government for his services and when William C. C. Claiborne was named governor in his stead the Irishman became his implacable foe. Clark now moved away from the Americans to side with the Creoles in the struggle for political control of Louisiana A few years later he became involved in Aaron Burr's efforts to separate the southwest from the United States. Clark was probably not deeply involved in the conspiracy, but it proved to be the most controversial period of his life. The association with Burr ruined Clark politically. By 1810 he had substantially withdrawn from public life. Clark died in August of 1813, leaving behind a daughter, Myra, who would become famous in her own right and a reputation as an enigmatic figure that has survived until the present day / acase@tulane.edu

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This work surveys Arkansas's road to secession with special emphasis upon the social and economic forces that compelled the state to abandon the Union. Arkansas's development was retarded by various factors, yet the state's economic picture brightened in the late 1850s as migrants from the Deep South brought a new cotton-slave prosperity. By 1860 Arkansas was as divided economically as it was geographically, a mountainous northwest with mostly subsistent farming, and a growing plantation-slave economy in the lowlands in the southeast. In politics, a well-organized political Dynasty dominated the state government from 1830 to 1860, a situation without parallel in the Old South Between 1859 and 1861 Arkansas experienced a series of political upheavals. In the state election of 1860 the Dynasty met defeat at the hands of the shrewd and ambitious Congressman Thomas Hindman. Once Hindman had been in the lower echelons of the Dynasty, yet this time he turned the contest into a battle of aristocracy vs. democracy. His ticket won the governor's office and Arkansas's two Congressional seats. In the presidential race of 1860, Hindman and the Dynasty formed an uneasy alliance to carry Arkansas for Breckinridge by a small majority. In voting for such a candidate the state expressed its belief in slavery that institution's expansion into the western territories Lincoln's election introduced the issue of secession to the state. Old political divisions were now rearranged as a new geopolitical alignment occurred, a mostly Unionist northwest opposed by a secessionist southeast. This new alignment was evident during the February election of 1861 and during the March assembly of the secession convention. Until Fort Sumter, Arkansas refused to secede, yet once war was inevitable the state's cultural, economic, and political ties to the Old South proved too strong to ignore. Arkansas became the ninth state to secede on May 6, 1861. Secession, however, failed to bring about total unity. Old political suspicions and divisions emerged and the mountainous sections of northern Arkansas never accepted the state's departure from the Union. This narration of Arkansas's political history until secession gives particular attention to the regional, racial and class antagonisms present within the state prior to the Civil War / acase@tulane.edu

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The dissertation is the biography of one of the leading figures in Southern Jewish history and American Reform Judaism in the early twentieth century. As a young, gymnasium-trained Bohemian immigrant, Max Heller arrived in the United States and immediately entered the second class at Hebrew Union College, the first permanent American rabbinical seminary, and the University of Cincinnati. That training prepared him for the pulpit of an assimilationist American Reform Jewish congregation In 1887, he moved to New Orleans to become the spiritual leader of Temple Sinai where he spent the next four decades as one of the community's and American Reform Judaism's outstanding personalities. 'Converting' to Zionism at the turn of the century, Heller embraced cultural pluralism and political nationalism as he challenged the attitudes he learned in Cincinnati and in the pulpit. At the same time, he became the only non-native-born Southerner to question the racial solution that blunted the aspirations of African-Americans. Heller's career provides a unique window onto the role of Jews and Jewish leadership during a critical era in the history of the South, to say nothing of the evolving European Jewish Diaspora. His tenure in New Orleans coincided with the mass Eastern European immigration that dramatically altered the future of American Judaism, as he witnessed the rise of militant white supremacy that effectively diminished civil rights in the South The dissertation argues that Heller's maturation as a significant figure in American Jewish History developed in response to his experiences in the South during an era of deepening racial antagonism. His breach of Southern silence was virtually unique in linking the Negrophobia of the South with the anti-Semitism of Western Europe. Heller's ability to survive professionally while espousing unpopular views helps illuminate the boundaries of popular dissent in New Orleans and the South. New Orleans' relatively cosmopolitan orientation served Heller well; its diversity, ethnic and racial conflicts and Jewish accommodationism together inadvertently nurtured both his 'Judaicazation' and his racial liberalism, positions that may not have been tolerated in another less complex Southern urban setting / acase@tulane.edu

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