2023 History Symposium Focuses on Democracy in Louisiana

Topics ranging from the drafting of the first constitution and the politics of enslavement to the women’s suffrage movement in New Orleans and how Louisiana’s environment impacts public policy.



April 1, 2023

Hotel Monteleone

Since becoming a state in 1812, Louisiana has participated in America’s bold experiment with democracy. In anticipation of American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith, a traveling exhibition from the Smithsonian Institution coming to The Historic New Orleans Collection in mid-June, the 2023 History Symposium explores how the democratic system has functioned in Louisiana and how key events have influenced our current political environment.

Moderator Dr. Pearson Cross and a vibrant slate of speakers will address topics ranging from the drafting of the first constitution and the politics of enslavement to the women’s suffrage movement in New Orleans and how Louisiana’s environment impacts public policy. The symposium also complements “Yet She Is Advancing”: New Orleans Women and the Right to Vote, 1878–1970, a companion exhibition to American Democracy opening at The Historic New Orleans Collection on April 28.

Speakers

DR. PEARSON CROSS is professor and director of the School of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, where he teaches courses in Louisiana and American politics. His most recent book is The Party Is Over: The New Louisiana Politics (LSU Press, 2022). He also hosts Bayou to Beltway, a bi-monthly radio program on Louisiana politics on Monroe’s NPR affiliate, KEDM.

JOHN BARBRY is director of development and programming for the Tunica-Biloxi Language and Culture Revitalization Program (LCRP). In 1987, Barbry assisted with cataloging of the “Tunica Treasure,” a vast collection of 18th-century Native and European trade and ceremonial goods unearthed at the former village site and cemetery of the Tunica people. In 1993, he became the first Native American to be appointed an archivist at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian. Barbry received the 2022 Champion of Culture Award from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.

DR. STEVEN PROCOPIO is the president of the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana (PAR), where he previously served as policy director, guiding the organization’s research agenda. Prior to joining PAR, Procopio was chief of staff of the Louisiana Division of Administration and served as the director of research and accountability for the Louisiana Office of the Lieutenant Governor and the Department of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism.

DR. LAURA ROSANNE ADDERLEY is associate professor of history at Tulane University. She specializes in the history of the African diaspora, the Atlantic slave trade, Black enslavement in the Americas, and Caribbean history. She is the author of “New Negroes from Africa”: Slave Trade Abolition and Free African Settlement in the Nineteenth-Century Caribbean (Indiana University Press, 2006).

DR. THEODORE R. FOSTER III is assistant professor of African American history and studies at Benedictine University. He previously taught African American history at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Dr. Foster’s research, teaching, and writing interests center on how Black freedom narratives of the Civil Rights Movement circulate in popular culture, civil rights tourism, political campaigns, immigrant-justice activism, memorials, and museums.

DR. LIBBY NEIDENBACH is the interpretive training coordinator at The Historic New Orleans Collection, where she is also the curator of “Yet She Is Advancing:” New Orleans Women and the Right to Vote, 1878-1970, which opens on April 28, 2023. She earned a PhD in history at the College of William and Mary, and she previously worked as a public historian for the National Park Service in Richmond, Virginia, and New Orleans.

DR. ALBERT L. SAMUELS is the Jewel L. Prestage-Kellogg Professor of Political Science and the chair of the department of political science and geography at Southern University and A&M College. His research interests include American, Black, and Louisiana politics; educational policy; and voting rights. He has written numerous scholarly articles and is a frequent commentator on politics at the local, state, and national level.

REBECCA MOWBRAY is the president, CEO, and Samuel Zemurray Chair in Research Leadership at the Bureau of Governmental Research (BGR). Throughout her career, she has focused on governmental reform, accountability, and transparency. Before joining BGR, she worked as a program evaluator and a journalist. She has master’s degrees in journalism and international relations. Mowbray has also worked in former Czechoslovakia and Indonesia, where she was a Luce Scholar.

LAMAR GARDERE is the executive director of the Data Center, where he is responsible for guiding the center’s mission of democratizing data into realistic action, ensuring quality standards, and overseeing the ongoing impact of the organization. Gardere previously served as the chief information officer for the City of New Orleans's Office of Information Technology and Innovation. He is nationally recognized for his work implementing and developing the open-data policy for the city.

DR. ANDY HOROWITZ is an associate professor of history at the University of Connecticut and serves as the Connecticut State Historian. A scholar of the modern US, his research focuses on disasters and the questions they raise about race, class, community, trauma, extractive industry, metropolitan development, and environmental change. He is the author of Katrina: A History, 1915–2015 (Harvard University Press, 2020), which won the 2021 Bancroft Prize in American History.