A Brief History of New Orleans

By Jeff Crouere, Political Analyst

In its colorful history, many flags have flown over the City of New Orleans, such as the French, the Spanish, the Confederate States of America and the United States of America. Although originally, the land we now call New Orleans was inhabited by Indians, the Houma tribe. Some historians speculate that Indians lived in what is now the New Orleans area for thousands of years.

Modern history for New Orleans begins with the French explorers of the late seventeenth century motivated by King Louis XIV to bring home treasures and triumph for France. At that time, the city was almost completely unfit for human habitation. It lies about 107 miles from the Gulf of Mexico on a stretch of land between the mighty Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain. In 1682, the area we now know to be New Orleans was crowded with mosquitoes, alligators and Indians when first the French explorer La Salle discovered it. He did not stay and moved on to what is now Texas before being killed by his own men. Later, in 1718, the French explorers Iberville and Bienville founded the city. The explorers named the city Nouvelle Orleans, after the Duke of Orleans. Iberville and Bienville discovered a city on a parcel of land that actually sits below sea level. This saucer topography has caused New Orleans to be adversely affected by floods, hurricanes and epidemics like yellow fever. Luckily for today’s residents, the surging waters of the Mississippi has been somewhat mitigated by a vast system of levees and the construction of spillways.

After the war, the city again served as the state capital for a period (1865 to 1882), but the Reconstruction years were not kind ones for New Orleans. In fact, it was an awful time for New Orleans. During Reconstruction, New Orleans went from being a very prosperous city to a poor one. Banks in the city failed, many plantations in Louisiana were destroyed in the war. By 1874, the state had a debt of $53 million and was bankrupt. The elections that were held during Reconstruction were generally corrupt with fraud and voter intimidation running rampant. In fact, after the 1872 Louisiana gubernatorial election, there was so much confusion that two different governors were named by two different election boards. Again in 1876, two separate governors were named, this time both were separately inaugurated. In the U.S. presidential election of 1876, several states, including Louisiana sent two separate sets of electors to the Electoral College. This led to a compromise in which the Republican President, Rutherford B. Hayes, was elected in exchange for the federal troops leaving Louisiana and several other Southern states. On April 24, 1877 federal troops officially left New Orleans, almost 15 years after they arrived.

"Louisiana Hayride” ruled New Orleans in the days of Huey Long and his cronies. For decades, politicians profited from political deals at the expense of the public. This corrupt practice only intensified after Huey Long was shot dead in 1935. In fact, the Governor who followed Long, Richard Leche, was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison for a variety of offenses including mail fraud and tax evasion. Leche and the Long cronies perfected a variety of schemes to siphon funds from the public. According to author Mel Leavitt, “They systematically tapped Levee Board funds, diverting them to private investments. They used LSU and state materials, vehicles and personnel to build homes, buildings, garages, driveways. Double-dipping, phantom payrolls, even phantom buildings were among the many refinements developed by the governor and his statehouse gang.” In New Orleans, Long regular, Robert Maestri served as mayor for 10 years. He was an awful speaker, but he knew where the votes could be found and that made him a trusted ally.

All of that changed in 1946 when WWII veteran and political reformer, de Lesseps Story “Chep” Morrison defeated Maestri in a stunning upset. Morrison served as Mayor of New Orleans for 16 years. He made many infrastructure improvements such as new government complexes like City Hall and bridges such as the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway and the Greater New Orleans Bridge. He presided over the final desegregation of New Orleans public schools in 1960, which was not marked by the racial strife found in other Southern cities. Morrison also gave New Orleans a home-rule charter in an effort to break the control from upstate political forces. Throughout his career, Morrison fought Earl Long, brother of Huey Long. Morrison failed in three races for Governor, never able to overcome anti-New Orleans sentiment from other parts of the state. Another part of Morrison’s problem was religion. Louisiana is split in half with a mostly Protestant North and Central section and a mostly Catholic south and west. At that time, Catholic New Orleans candidates almost never won statewide office and Morrison was no exception.