In the last twenty years, recent scholarship has opened up fresh inquiry into several aspects of New Orleans society during the late nineteenth century. Much work has been done to reassess the political and cultural involvement, as well as perspective of, the black Creoles of the city; the successful reordering of society under the direction of the Anglo-Protestant elite; and the evolution of New Orleans's social conditions and cultural institutions during the period initiating Jim Crow segregation. Further exploration, however, is necessary to make connections between each of these avenues of study. This thesis relies on a variety of secondary sources, primary legal documents, and contemporary newspaper articles and publications, to provide connections between the above topics, giving each greater context and allowing for the exploration of several themes. These include the direction of black Creole public ambition after the end of that community's last civil rights crusade, the effects of Democratic Party strategy and the Lost Cause of the Confederacy movement on younger generations of white residents, and the effects of changing social expectations and increasing segregation on the city's diverse ethnic immigrant community. In doing so, this thesis will contribute to enhancing the current understanding of New Orleans's complex and changing social order, as well as provide future researchers with a broad based work which will effectively introduce the exploration of a variety of key topics and serve as a bridge to connect them with specific lines of inquiry while highlighting the above themes in order to make new connections between various facets of the city's troubled racial history.

The purpose of this thesis document is to explain the process of making the documentary film, No Quarter: The Story of the New Orleans Greys. The document is organized by having the prospectus and the film proposal at the beginning, with the body describing how the film was made based on the prospectus. The purpose of the film is to tell the history of a unit of volunteers in the Texas Revolution, the New Orleans Greys. The document describes the methods used to make the film and how it will be distributed to the intended audience. As the thesis explains, the film changed slightly from the prospectus, however the resulting film was successful in telling the history of the little-known New Orleans Greys.

Visitors to Antebellum New Orleans rarely failed to comment on the highly visible population of free persons of color, particularly the women. Light, but not white, the women who collectively became known as Quadroons enjoyed a degree of affluence and liberty largely unknown outside of Southeastern Louisiana. The Quadroons of New Orleans, however, suffered from neglect and misrepresentation in nineteenth and twentieth-century accounts. Historians of slavery and southern black women, for example, have written at length on the sexual experiences of black women and white men. Most of the research, however, centers on the institutionalized rape, victimization, and exploitation of black women at the hands of white males. Even late into the twentieth century, scholars largely failed to distinguish the experiences of free women of color from those of enslaved women with little nuance in regard to economic, educational, and cultural differences. All women of color -- whether free or enslaved -- continued to be viewed through the lens of slavery. Studies that examine free women of color were rare and those focusing exclusively on them alone were virtually nonexistent. As a result, the actual experiences of free women of color in the Gulf States passed unnoticed for generations. In the event that the Quadroons of New Orleans were mentioned at all, it was normally within the context of the mythologized balls or in scandalous tales where they played the role of mistress to white men, subsequently resulting in a one dimensional character that lived expressly for the enjoyment of white males. Due to the relative silence of their own voices, approaching the topic of New Orleans’ Quadroons at length is difficult at best. But by placing these women within a wider pan-Atlantic framework and using extant legal records, the various African, Caribbean, French, and Spanish cultural threads emerge that contributed to the colorful cultural tapestry of Antebellum New Orleans. These influences enabled such practices as placage and by extension, the development of an intellectual, wealthy, vibrant Creole community of color headed by women.

Crescent City Tableaux is an original omposition in three movements for wind ensemble that portrays aspects of the city of New Orleans. The fifteen-­‐minute composition uses musical quotation and jazz-­‐influenced styles within an essentially tonal idiom to create a musical tribute to that city. The first movement, “Jackson Square,” introduces melodic and rhythmic motives and sets the tone for the rest of the piece. The second movement, “‘I understand that somewhere it has rained,’” addresses the sadness and anger caused by Hurricane Katrina. The thirdmovement, “Second Line,” celebrates the brass band and Mardi Gras Indian traditions of New Orleans. The accompanying document provides a review of relevant literature for the wind ensemble and symphony band, an analysis of Donald Grantham’s J’ai été au bal and the third movement of Michael Daugherty’s Lost Vegas, and a discussion of the music that is quoted in the work. Analytical essays on each of the three movements discuss structural features, motivic processes, and compositional techniques. / School of Music

Mama D's 2 Blocks tells the story of a neighborhood home in New Orleans that was transformed into a distribution center and used to assist residents impacted by Hurricane Katrina's devastation in 2005. Mama D stayed at her home throughout the storm and remained there until the floodwaters had subsided. After the water had drained, socially minded youth from all over the country were drawn to Mama D's home and stayed there while supporting local renewal efforts. The film documents their joining together, without electricity or running water, and assisting in the rebuilding process undertaken by Mama D and other neighborhood residents. This film captures a community in action, how it survived, and the first steps taken towards the rebuilding of New Orleans.

During the past century, lawyers in New Orleans created a number of organizations to provide legal services for the poor, as lawyers did throughout the country. Most of those organizations provided routine service directly to individual clients and received quiet acceptance within the city and the state. However, more aggressive lawyers in other legal services offices engaged in law reform or challenged politically powerful interests. These offices found themselves embroiled in controversy and facing impediments that were placed in the way of their work. This dissertation introduces nonprofit legal services in New Orleans, but focuses on and investigates the experiences of four organizations – the New Orleans Legal Assistance Corporation, the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center, and the Advocacy Center – that were involved in controversies. This investigation differs from most prior studies of legal assistance in several ways. First, it discusses a variety of local legal service organizations rather than concentrating on the legal aid movement of the first half of the twentieth century, or the later Legal Services Program and its successor Legal Services Corporation. Secondly, it provides detailed discussion of several New Orleans legal services, which had previously been limited to scrutiny of the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic. Most importantly, it goes beyond description to provide causal explanation for the controversies by reference to social structure, and the social mechanisms and social processes at work. The dissertation presents access to law by the poor as being a form of "largesse" or charity or gift, which is granted when it is convenient for the powerful, but withheld when it is inconvenient for the powerful. From this perspective, the controversies resulted from the opposing interests of the two major social classes in modern capitalist society, with the politically powerful objecting to certain legal victories or gains achieved by the poor. In addition to the New Orleans cases, the dissertation refers to other legal services offices throughout the country that experienced similar problems. This demonstrates that the underlying issues are not limited to the city of New Orleans or the state of Louisiana, but are national in scope.

This academic report was composed at the conclusion of a 480 hour internship with the National Performance Network/Visual Artists Network (NPN/VAN), summarized in Chapter Two. This report includes NPN/VAN’s mission, history, and organizational structure within Chapter One. Chapter Three is a SWOT analysis, and Chapter Four includes a summary of best practices, highlighting NPN/VAN’s intermediary and network structure. In conclusion, a series of suggestions are offered for further consideration.

On Monday August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Southeast Louisiana bringing with it destruction to much of the Gulf Coast. While New Orleans, one of America's most culturally and artistically significant cities, was spared a direct hit, the subsequent flood devastated much of the city, home to many musicians. The devastation and stress from the storm established a situation and a motivator for creative response, and this dissertation illustrates that the music these musicians produce is a manifestation and continuation of New Orleans' cultural atmosphere. The city's historical allowance and celebration of freedom of expression permits New Orleans' current musicians to be innovative and responsive to the events surrounding the disaster. This project, designed as a qualitative research study, identifies four professional musicians who are established in the musical environment of New Orleans. To illustrate the depth of tradition and experimentation that their music evokes, the music of post- Katrina New Orleans is given historical contextualization and set in comparison to music that was inspired by a past catastrophe, the 1927 flood. Through the holistic exploration of the present circumstances of these four musicians, it becomes clear that New Orleans remains a place that is extremely open to change and that experimental music flourishes at the same time that traditional jazz lives on through new performers, who walk in the footsteps of legends. From interviews conducted with these four individuals, as well as other on-site observations, the emotional, physical, and financial effects of Hurricane Katrina are identified and recorded. / Central to this study is the author's own knowledge of music and experience in musical dialogue - it is through the interaction of the author and the subjects that important events and characteristics, which could be documented, actually emerged.This project reveals the influence that the storm has had on the individual musician and it demonstrates that while all four musicians are caught up in the whirlwind of recovery in New Orleans, their music remains rooted in the fundamental characteristic that is associated historically with New Orleans' music, improvisation. By the same token, it also shows that while each person may have had to suffer the same conditions, the musical response from each musician was unique. / by David Bethea. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Im Jahre 2005 verzeichnete New Orleans mit dem Wirbelsturm Katrina eine der folgenreichsten Naturkatastrophen seiner Geschichte, bei der sich auch die Unzulänglichkeit einiger Hochwasserschutzvorkehrungen gezeigt hat. Es waren zahlreiche Tote zu beklagen und die materiellen Schäden waren unübersehbar. Nach dem Ereignis wurde der Hochwasserschutz weiträumig und aufwändig verbessert. Der nachfolgende Beitrag gibt eine Übersicht über den derzeitigen Stand.

How does it feel to be creative? Such a question, when approached from a phenomenological perspective, reveals new understandings about the embodied experience of creativity, and how it feels as it is being lived. This investigation begins with a provocative contrast of two environments where creativity is thought to manifest itself: school art classrooms, where creativity is often legislated from an authority figure, and New Orleans Second Line parades, where creativity is organically and kinetically expressed. A thorough review of the literature on creativity focuses on education, arts education, creative economies, psychology, and critical theorists, collectively revealing a cognitive bias and striking lack of consideration for community, freedom, and the lived experience of being creative. Further discussions in the literature also neglect sites of creativity, and the impact that place (such as a school classroom) can have upon creativity. The phenomenological perspectives of Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Bachelard, and Trigg support a methodological lens to grasp embodied knowledge, perceptions of placedness on creativity, and the interdependent frictions between freedom, authenticity, movement and belonging. The research method includes investigations in New Orleans in archives, examination of visual and material culture, participation in cultural practice, and formal and informal interviews. Further, the phenomena of walking and wandering became a methodology for embodied data collection that clarified the emerging rich experiences and descriptions of how it feels to be creative, especially how it feels to be creative in a creative place. What is also revealed are intense frictions, such as the tension between perceptions of personal freedom and a high demand for authenticity in terms of New Orleans traditions, that opens the space and fuels the inspiration for the abundance of creativity found in New Orleans culture.