I don't know if I am really competent to comment on the period prior to
1960, which was the date that I became actively engaged in politics. In
any event, with that disclaimer I would then go back, you see, I don't
think you can quite measure it from '48, you may be able to do so. But
you have to put it in the perspective of what New Orleans was before
1946, which was sort of a turning point for this city.
Page 2 Prior to 1946, there was a very strong tie between the city
administration and the state administration. They had sort of dominated
the state-city politics. Then, in 1946, Chep Morrison, a
thiry-six-year-old reform governor, returning war colonel, ran for mayor
and was elected, which began sixteen years of what you might say was
progressive government. I don't mean reform in the sense of . . . in the
general sense that it is usually accepted. But nonetheless he was a
bright, intelligent, aggressive, good politician. I think it was about
that time that the racial attitudes began to change a little bit. I
don't suggest that it was anywhere approaching equality, but I think
that a definite shift began to take place.
It was at that point too, I think, roughly about 1948, if my memory
serves correctly, and I was quite young at the time, that blacks began
to get registered in any numbers at all in the city of New Orleans.
Prior to that time, while they always had significant numbers of blacks
living in the city, there were very few registered to vote in the city
of New Orleans. As that registration began to build, they became, if not
a significant force, they nonetheless became a voting group that
certainly had exended. So the politics from a racial standpoint became
more liberal.
Morrison in 1948 also, while he was
Page 3 a progressive
reform-minded mayor, nonetheless, was an excellent politician. He
believed very strongly in the ward-precinct system which he had come up
through. Not because he came up as a member of that system, but
nonetheless he had watched it work and he believed in it. He aligned
himself with incumbent officeholders; ward leaders traditionally had
department head jobs, clerks of court, some of the parochial officers.
He had an organization known as the CCDA, which was his city-based
organization. He actively participated in every election, with
candidates across the board, that kind of machine politics. I would say
that that system lasted until Mayor Schiro came into office.
The first big change, I think, really came in 1962, when Adrian
Duplantier, who is now a state senator, and was at that time a state
senator, ran for mayor. I ran on that ticket also as a
councilman-at-large. We lost the election in the runoff with the racial
issue being the predominant issue. Heretofore you have to bear in mind
that although race had been raised as an issue, Morrison had won four
straight elections with people saying, that were advocates for the
blacks. But he hadn't gotten elected on the black vote. Chep first got
elected when there were virtually no black votes in the city. He got
elected by white votes and the black registration began to build up
and
Page 4 because he was moderate on the subject in
terms of those days, in terms of perspective of that era, the black vote
always was with Chep Morrison. So, he was the incumbent and that is the
way it lasted for sixteen years.
Two years . . . a year prior to the end of his terms, which would have
been the fifteenth year of this administration, he became Ambassador for
the American States, and the city council then had to select the mayor
from one of the two councilmen at large and they selected Vic Schiro,
and he had to run the following year. But he was running then as an
incumbent, not having been elected now. When Adrian and I ran, Vic
Schiro was one of the principal opponents and we got to the second
primary with him and we had gotten all of the black vote or at least a
significant portion of the black vote, and he proceeded to say, you
know, "Go against the old southern bloc voting." That issue was raised
in that campaign and we lost. So, we went through the next eight years
of the Schiro administration. It was sort of a conservative regime. Then
I ran and won with maybe ninety-five percent of the black vote.