The search for the Great Society helped to make a new Louisiana by reconstructing public life in its largest and most important city. It proved pivotal to the complicated process of integration in New Orleans. Forces from the bottom-up fundamentally transformed those from the top-down. Local leaders and activists structured the impact of the Civil Rights Act (1964), the Economic Opportunity Act (1964), the Food Stamp Act (1964), the Voting Rights Act (1965), the Demonstration Cities Act (1966), and Urban Renewal. Those locals recast the fragmented and often experimental Great Society into their own image and used it to bargain for greater public influence and to expand the local welfare state. Invoking arguments rooted in inclusion, individualism, liberation, and growth, they translated American liberalism into the region's political vernacular. Programs involving community action, social services, job training, early childhood education, remedial education, legal services for the poor, Food Stamps, Model Cities, and Urban Renewal became tools of a much broader movement to open access to the city's racially divided political economy The complicated result suggests that 1960s era American liberalism was in no way a centralized phenomenon, but grew from enormously variant regional and local influences. In the South, the Great Society played a vital role in confronting the region's racial and economic inequality and its economic limitations. It produced the first politically legitimate, biracial southern liberalism, and it empowered a formidable new set of interest groups in the post-Jim Crow world An important part of that search for the Great Society was its forcing Americans to grapple with the public implications of their stands on race, inequality, and economic opportunity. By encouraging a state-based reconsideration of the African-American individual's role in society, it engendered a deep dialogue about civic belonging and the dilemmas of American individualism. Locally, its programs evolved into political expressions of psychoanalytical technique, cultural discomfort about equal opportunity, and racial uncertainties in defining full citizenship. The history of the search serves as a primer for understanding why Americans have seemingly deemed some citizens more deserving of America's abundance / acase@tulane.edu

This dissertation explores the relationship between a women's religious order and the growth of colonial culture and society in New Orleans between 1727 and 1803. The experience of the Ursulines traces a common arc of colonial development from the frontier struggle to survive, to stabilization, and maturation. At the same time, it reveals a distinctive pattern of cultural continuity and adaptation at work. A traditional French institutional form was transplanted to a new environment, leaving its imprint on the society that emerged in the process. The Ursulines influenced slavery and race relations, shaped gender roles and expectations; and played a critical part in establishing and defining Catholicism in New Orleans The Ursulines promoted an aggressively inclusive form of Catholicism that deputized laywomen of all racial and social backgrounds to carry out an active campaign of catechesis among the young and unconverted of the colony. The results of their apostolate were striking. Enslaved Africans were drawn into the fold of Catholicism and women of diverse backgrounds enjoyed a formal educational experience unavailable to the colony's men The spirituality and practices of vowed and lay women in colonial New Orleans invite comparison among English, French, and Spanish experiences, and suggest how different cultural legacies inflected the developmental course of these three colonial societies. The Ursulines' active educational mission contrasts with the contemplative mode of Spanish and Spanish colonial female religious, who were excluded from the process of native and slave conversion. The New Orleans nuns enjoyed economic autonomy and wealth in land and slaves, providing a counterpoint to trends in the English colonies and post-Revolutionary America which reinscribed women within a confining realm of domesticity The history of the Ursulines in New Orleans demonstrates that while the institutions of colonizing nations shared a common developmental trajectory, distinct cultural endowments persisted in the New World. It testifies to the profound impact of religious ideology and institutional forms on colonial development, and offers new perspective on the origins of nineteenth-century conflict over the nature of American identity / acase@tulane.edu

Historians have had much to say about the slave family of the nineteenth century South; it has been the focus of a lively debate for nearly three decades, much of it over the relative stability or instability of the black family under slavery and the degree to which it was matrifocal. They have not, however, utilized to a large degree in reference to the United States slave community and its household and family development the kinds of analytical procedures popularized by the Cambridge Group in England and employed internationally by demographic historians This dissertation presents a study of household composition among rural slaves of Louisiana. The first chapter approximates slave organizational structure through the construction of a model to which other slave populations can be contrasted. This model is based on a sample of 155 slave communities form 1810-1865, representing 10,329 slaves residing in major slaveholding parishes. The records, generally inventories, were gathered from archives, parish records, and private collections. The primary criterion in the selection of communities for the sample was that a firm indication of family and household divisions was provided. The lists were transcribed, computerized, and analyzed according to standard definitions of family household types and the various subcategories within those types. The results of the experiment were further described according to variations existing among the sampled communities according to time, place, and size The major objective of this study was to determine the structure of a large number of Louisianans in bondage, but statistical analysis alone could not provide information on the dynamics of change within these communities except in broad outline. Only an intensive study of several slave communities over time could assess the developmental patterns which are inevitably reflected in domestic arrangements. The latter section of the dissertation is composed of three in-depth case studies of Louisiana slave communities and analyzes how their household structures developed and changed according to internal and external factors. The conclusion summarizes the findings emanating from the larger statistical study and the case studies / acase@tulane.edu

This study explores the 'pre-academic' phase of jazz historiography in the United States, reviewing the development of the field prior to the appearance of Marshall Stearns' The Story of Jazz in 1956. The men and women who participated in the awakening of American jazz scholarship were partisans of a community of 'hot' record collectors, whose interest in the origins of jazz was a foregone conclusion. An international network of collectors took shape between the 1920s and 1934, providing a mechanism for the circulation of historical information on jazz, which then became the basis for the emergence of a jazz literati writing for a magazines such as Down Beat, Esquire, The New Republic, and Jazz Information. These writers shared a vision of jazz derived from their experiences as 'hot' collectors, including the beliefs that jazz was an 'art form' and should be 'non-commercial.' Inspired by their love for the music and emphasizing 'New Orleans style,' writers like Charles Edward Smith and William Russell explained that jazz was 'born in New Orleans' in works such as Jazzmen (1939) and The Jazz Record Book (1942) During the 1940s the consensus established by the 'hot' collectors and apparent in the early histories began to come under fire as a new wave of 'jazz intellectuals' entered the field. 'Traditionalist' revisionists like Rudi Blesh challenged the prevailing notions of chronology and terminology, while 'modernists' such as Leonard Feather sought to divert attention away from the past in favor of contemporary developments. A war of words ensued within the jazz press which led to a division of the jazz community into antagonistic factions, each with its own view of jazz history and terminology. In addition, the proliferation of vintage jazz reissues by major record companies and the shift away from 78s with the appearance of new technology after 1948 ended the predominance of the old guard of 'hot' collectors on the jazz scene Ultimately, the conceptualization of jazz history deriving from Jazzmen found refuge in New Orleans and became an important part of the culture which it celebrated. Beginning with the establishment of the National Jazz Foundation in the mid-1940s, New Orleanians adopted the 'born in New Orleans' thesis and integrated it into their tourist economy / acase@tulane.edu

This dissertation traces the history of the Caddo Indian confederacies--the Hasinai, Kadohadacho, and Natchitoches--who lived in the pine forests along the present-day border between Louisiana and Texas. When first contacted by the Spanish in 1542 there were perhaps as many as eight thousand Caddo in all three confederacies Unfortunately for the Caddo, there was a heavy price to pay for accepting the Europeans into their world. The introduction of firearms intensified Indian warfare and made it much more destructive than before The situation became particularly grim for the Caddo following the epidemic of 1778-79, which reduced the population of the tribe by nearly two-thirds. By this time the French had withdrawn from Louisiana, and the fate of the tribe was completely in the hands of the Spanish. Spain, however, proved to be too weak and too unconcerned to afford the Caddo protection from the powerful Osage or even able to provide the tribe with arms to oppose the onslaught The Caddo were given temporary reprieve in 1803, when the United States obtained Louisiana. Once again the tribe found itself in a position to profit from being on the border of an international boundary. The young, aggressive United States supplied the tribe, especially the Kadohadacho, with the necessary trade goods, and until the end of the War of 1812, the fortunes of the Caddo were on the rise However, after the border dispute was settled between Spain and the United States, the Caddo once again became relatively unimportant to the whites. Neither the United States nor the newly-found republic of Mexico did much to protect the tribe from the numerous white settlers and emigrant Indians who flooded the area after 1815. Once it became obvious that the Kadohadacho only represented an obstacle to white expansion, the administration of Andrew Jackson sought to remove the tribe from its homeland. The Kadohadacho, realizing that they had no choice, agreed to sell their land to the United States in 1835, and join their kinsmen, the Hasinai, in Texas. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.) / acase@tulane.edu

More than any Justice in the 20th century, William Orville Douglas involved himself deeply in the presidential politics of his day. In his thirty-six and a half years on the Court, Douglas advised presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Lyndon B. Johnson, was four times himself seriously considered for the presidency or vice-presidency as well as numerous government and cabinet posts, and was four times threatened with impeachment. From his childhood admiration of the Western Progressives through his opposition to the Vietnam War and attempted impeachments, Douglas maintained close connections to the world of presidential politics, especially so during the thirteen years from his appointment to the Court in 1939 to the last year he was seriously considered a presidential contender, 1952. This is a study of Douglas's political maturation and his political activities as they relate to the presidency, including his involvement in the great political issues of his day, his role as potential presidential candidate, his views on presidential power, and his role as presidential advisor Scholars previously have presented Douglas as a behind-the-scenes schemer, a great puppeteer pulling the strings of political marionettes who promote him for political office. Douglas has been portrayed as a restless, dissatisfied jurist, a misplaced politician who, while perhaps not actively seeking office, hungered for the opportunity to serve as either president or vice president. Historians, biographers, and analysts of the Supreme Court all have attributed presidential ambitions to William O. Douglas. Never, though, has the extent and ramifications of that involvement been the subject of extended study This work offers a dramatic reinterpretation of Douglas's political ambitions. Research suggests that Douglas, though an intense and deeply-involved behind-the-scenes political player who freely, admittedly, and heavily imbibed in presidential politics throughout his Supreme Court career, wanted for himself neither the presidency nor the vice-presidency. There is no doubt that William O. Douglas played politics from the high court bench; it seems he did not, contrary to present historical consensus, pine for the Oval Office. This study offers a new, different, and hopefully more accurate appraisal of the presidential ambitions of William O. Douglas / acase@tulane.edu

This dissertation describes the genesis of a new labor movement. In the 1930s, radical workers created industrial unions because the craft unions did not respond to their needs. A grass roots phenomenon that eventually had systemic implications, working class militancy caused the break between AFL and CIO that opened the councils of organized labor to the unskilled. The 1930s history of CIO locals in New Orleans provides a backdrop, but the focus of the study is on the rank and file. Archival material contributed the viewpoint of contemporary CIO organizers who wrote from New Orleans. Labor newspapers and the African-American Louisiana Weekly gave further detail. The National Archives yielded the records of investigators from the Departments of Labor and Justice. The writings of Charles Logan, South West Regional Chair of the NLRB, furnished further insight The dissertation analyzes the political environment of 1930s labor conflict in New Orleans: the New Deal and its implications, the popular front and the conservative red-baiters, the political machine and its alliance with the AFL. Real representative unions promised worker control, but the employers fought hard to protect their power. Craft leaders and petty officials also defended their stake in the system. Solidarity across the lines of race and skill gave the workers their strength, but the new unions caused intense factional competition in the upper echelons of labor's own institutions The narrative begins in the 1880s with interracial cooperation on the Crescent City waterfront and continues through the radical strikes of the late 1920s, the rise of company unions in 1933 and the effect of consent elections after the Wagner Act. Grass roots activism took center stage in the labor movement after 1935. This study describes the challenge the workers themselves posed to several AFL maritime unions in 1936 and the new unions they created, particularly the CIO locals that emerged in several fields in New Orleans. A study of class, race and human relations, the work also presents the experience of the individuals, the violence CIO organizers endured and the contracts they signed in six industries / acase@tulane.edu

In nineteenth century New Orleans Afro-Creole leaders, like their free black counterparts in other regions of the Americas, emerged from the age of democratic revolution with mounting expectations of social and political equality. Given the democratic ideals embodied in the founding principles of the new American republic, they anticipated the extinction of racial oppression after the Louisiana Purchase Contrary to their expectations, however, the process of Americanization negated the ideals of the revolutionary era. Instead of moving toward freedom and racial equality, the new government promoted the evolution of an increasingly harsh slave regime which, in the end, prohibited emancipation and threatened free blacks with enslavement. During the repression of the antebellum decades, a government policy of relegating all blacks to a single and subservient caste counteracted class divisions within the Afro-Creole community. Sustained by a keen sense of ethnic solidarity, slaveholding as well as nonslaveholding Creoles developed an intense antagonism toward the new regime Joined by disaffected whites who resented the increasing dominance of Louisiana's planter oligarchy, the highly politicized black Creole intelligentsia nurtured the idealism of the revolutionary age. They tapped the ongoing current of political radicalism in nineteenth century Europe and the Americas After federal troops occupied the city in 1862, they demanded the abolition of slavery and equal rights. With the war's end, they proposed to transform state government. Together with their white allies, they devised a blueprint for the reorganization of the state. The plan, drawn up by the biracial, radical Republican platform committee during the summer of 1867, assured black Louisianians, whether born slave or free, of an equal share of elective and appointive political offices as well as equal access to public accommodations Before their political enemies derailed their attempts to revolutionize their society and government, black Creole radicals succeeded in transforming the symbolic ideals of Liberte, Eqalite, Fraternite into an aggressive campaign for meaningful change. Though their dream of a utopian millennia of racial justice and harmony far exceeded what their state and their nation were willing to concede, they assured, by their actions, the survival of their protest tradition / acase@tulane.edu

New Orleans women took little part in politics after passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. The advent of Huey Long as a political force changed this. Long's personal behavior and policies enraged the upper class, the former offending them and the latter threatening to affect their economic wellbeing. Women of the upper class mobilized into a movement to unseat Long from the U.S. Senate Though unsuccessful in efforts to remove Long from government, the women gained experience through their work. When, in 1939, revelations of graft and corruption among Long's inheritors came, these women formed the nucleus of a women's movement in New Orleans to unseat Earl Long and put an anti-Long candidate in as governor. Though their movement broadened to include middle-class women, upper-class women retained the leadership. Six years later, the same coterie of women united to work for the election of a reformer as mayor of their city and, in an upset of stunning proportions, saw him elected Upper-class women worked hard to expand the electorate in New Orleans. Though genteel, privileged reformers are traditionally associated in U.S. history with efforts to restrict the suffrage, these women went about the task of increasing the numbers of registered voters and of getting out the vote on election days. Their work helped upset a powerful machine which had relied on a small, easily controlled electorate for its successes Socially and economically comfortable, the elite women failed to understand the lure of patronage and bossism to citizens whose needs were greater than their scruples. This failing prevented their leading a movement with great appeal to the masses. While they promised 'good government,' they declined to address issues of social and economic justice. Their efforts did nevertheless render New Orleans elections much cleaner and New Orleans polls much less volatile, threatening, and unsavory than in times past. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.) / acase@tulane.edu

Abstract not available / acase@tulane.edu