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Friday, June 4, 2021 *********************** For Immediate Release
“An Absolute Massacre” – The New Orleans Slaughter of July 30, 1866
by Park Ranger Rich Condon, Reconstruction Era National Historical Park
The Confederate military and government collapsed in the Spring and Summer of 1865, effectively ending the Civil War with the United States preserved and slavery destroyed. But the violence was far from over. White resistance to Black citizenship during Reconstruction often turned violent – as it did in New Orleans on July 30, 1866.

During the war, President Abraham Lincoln had hoped that Louisiana, with a strong US military presence in Louisiana would serve as the model for readmitting states back to the United States. In 1864, the state ratified a new constitution that abolished slavery, but did not grant Black Louisianans the right to vote – something that President Lincoln began to consider as the war ended the next year. In his last speech, delivered on April 11, 1865, Lincoln openly expressed his desire to enfranchise select freed people and emphasized that “…voters in the heretofore slave-state of Louisiana have sworn allegiance to the Union… held elections, organized a State government, adopted a free-state constitution, giving the benefit of public schools equally to black and white, and empowering the Legislature to confer the elective franchise upon the colored man. Their Legislature has already voted to ratify the constitutional (Thirteenth) amendment recently passed by Congress, abolishing slavery throughout the nation.”1 In the crowd was John Wilkes Booth. Incensed at the thought of Black citizenship and voting, Booth assassinated President Lincoln a few days later. The violence did not stop at Ford’s Theatre.
Absolute Massacre - 1_Memphis_Riots_in_Tenn
Within a year of Lincoln’s death, many Southern states – with former Confederates in power and backed by President Andrew Johnson, began to enact Black Codes to stifle Black political life. Tensions rose throughout the South. The first three days of May 1866 were marked with racial violence in Memphis, Tennessee when local police officers, supported by a white mob, clashed with recently discharged African American troops and in turn attacked the Black population of the city, ultimately killing 46 men, women, and children and burning 89 homes, as well as twelve Black churches.2

A little over a week following the Memphis Massacre, tensions continued to rise in New Orleans as the city’s former Mayor, and Confederate sympathizer, John T. Monroe entered the office he had been expelled from just four years prior. Monroe’s return to power embodied the ideals which Radical Republicans had long despised, and thus decided that action needed to be taken. This effort came in the form of reconvening the 1864 Constitutional Convention, with the goal of extending suffrage toward freedmen, eliminating Black Codes, and pursuing the disenfranchisement of ex-Confederates. Louisiana Supreme Court Judge R.K. Howell was to preside over the reconvened convention and declared the date of gathering to be July 30.3 Mayor Monroe declared the meeting an “unlawful assemblage,” and reached out to General Absalom Baird for Federal support in arresting the convention delegates. Baird, however, maintained that the purpose of his command was “the maintenance of perfect order and the suppression of violence.”
Absolute Massacre - 3_Harry_T_Hays
Friction between the Radical Republicans and Conservative Democrats only heightened as convention delegates held a political rally in the city on July 27, and New Orleans Sheriff Harry T. Hays, a former Confederate General, deputized a posse of white officers, many of whom were ex-Confederates, with the purpose of disrupting the coming gathering. The reconvened convention met as planned at 12:00pm on July 30 at the New Orleans Mechanics Institute, with 25 delegates who filed into the building. A growing crowd of opposition waited outside, while approximately 200 unarmed freedmen, mostly veterans, approached the Institute in parade form to display their support. As the Black assembly neared their destination, several bystanders harassed and assaulted them, which ignited several isolated scuffles.

The situation quickly escalated as Sheriff Hays and his recently deputized police force arrived on the scene and began to fire into the crowd, forcing many of the freedmen to seek shelter in the Mechanics Institute, while others were wantonly massacred in the street. General Baird, whose troops had not become involved in the affair, wired to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton that afternoon, “Immediately after this riot assumed a serious character, the police, aided by the citizens, became the assailants, and from the evidence I am forced to believe, exercised great brutality in making their arrests. Finally, they attacked the Convention hall and a protracted struggle ensued. The people inside the hall gave up some who surrendered, and were attacked afterward and brutally treated.” The swelling mob fired into the Institute with the intent to kill, and they infiltrated the meeting hall several times during the altercation to pull the inhabitants outside. Many of those who tried to surrender were struck down or shot. When reporting his findings to Ulysses S. Grant at the War Department, General Phil Sheridan noted that the peaceful delegates and supporters were attacked “with fire-arms, clubs, and knives, in a manner so unnecessary and atrocious as to compel me to say that it was murder… It was no riot. It was an absolute massacre by the police, which was not excelled in murderous cruelty by that of Fort Pillow. It was a murder which the Mayor and police of the city perpetrated without the shadow of a necessity.”4
Absolute Massacre - 4_Harpers_Weekly
In a matter of approximately two hours, 34 African American supporters were killed, while the wounded numbered 119. Three of the delegates who had assembled in the Mechanics Institute were killed, while 17 were wounded, and approximately 200 others arrested. When the streets around the Mechanics Institute fell quiet, General Baird ordered martial law, which remained in effect into early August. On August 1, the Cleveland Daily Leader published sentiments that were shared by many other papers across the North: “Remember that this work was done by the constituted authorities of the city of New Orleans, rebels in record and in heart, but placed in power over loyal men by the policy of a renegade President. Remember that these scenes are but a prelude of what is to be… if Mr. Johnson’s policy shall be carried out.”5

Paired with news of the tragedy that occurred in Memphis months before, the New Orleans massacre contributed to major changes in Reconstruction policy. The 1866 elections saw to it that a Radical Republican majority ruled in both the House of Representatives and Senate, and ultimately contributed to the passing of the 14th and 15th Amendments. It could even be said that the violence which transpired on July 30, 1866, in a twist of irony, gave rise to several policies that would be enacted in following years, including Federal military presence in the South, temporary disenfranchisement of former Confederates, and for a population of more than four million freed people - the right to vote.


1 Lincoln, Abraham, and Scott Yenor. “Document 5: Last Public Address.” Reconstruction: Core Documents, Ashbrook Center, Ashland University, 2018, pp. 13–17.

2 O'Donovan, Susan, and Beverly Bond. “‘A History They Can Use’: The Memphis Massacre and Reconstruction's Public History Terrain.” The Journal of the Civil War Era, 10 Jan. 2018, www.journalofthecivilwarera.org/2016/08/history-can-use-memphis-massacre-reconstructions-public-history-terrain/.

3Reynolds, Donald E. “The New Orleans Riot of 1866, Reconsidered.” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, vol. 5, no. 1, 1964, pp. 5–27. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4230742. Accessed 30 July 2020.

4 The New-Orleans Riot. Its Official History. New York Tribune, 1866.

5 The Louisiana Convention. Cleveland Daily Leader, 1 August, 1866, p. 1.


The Deadliest Massacre in Reconstruction-Era Louisiana Happened 150 (3) Years Ago
In September 1868, Southern white Democrats hunted down around 200 African-Americans in an effort to suppress voter turnout
By Lorraine Boissoneault
Original Published Date: SEPTEMBER 28, 2018
(Republished JUNE 3, 2021)

"E.B. Beware! K.K.K."

So read the note found on the schoolhouse door by its intended recipient: Emerson Bentley, a white school teacher. He found the message in early September 1868, illustrated with a coffin, a skull and bones, and a dagger dripping with blood. The straightforward message represented a menacing threat to Bentley, who was teaching African-American children in Louisiana at the time. Little could the Ohio-born Republican have predicted just how soon that violence would come about.

Bentley, an 18-year-old who also worked as one of the editors of the Republican paper The St. Landry Progress, was one of the few white Republicans in the Louisiana parish of St. Landry. He and others came to the region to assist recently emancipated African-Americans find jobs, access education and become politically active. With Louisiana passing a new state constitution in April 1868 that included male enfranchisement and access to state schools regardless of color, Bentley had reason to feel optimistic about the state’s future.

But southern, white Democrats were nowhere near willing to concede the power they’d held for decades before the Civil War. And in St. Landry, one of the largest and most populous parishes in the state, thousands of white men were eager to take up arms to defend their political power.

The summer of 1868 was a tumultuous one. With the help of tens of thousands of black citizens who finally had the right to vote, Republicans handily won local and state elections that spring. Henry Clay Warmoth, a Republican, won the race for state governor, but the votes African-Americans cast for those elections cost them. Over the summer, armed white men harassed black families, shot at them outside of Opelousas (the largest city in St. Landry Parish), and killed men, women and children with impunity. Editors of Democratic newspapers repeatedly warned of dire consequences if the Republican party continued winning victories at the polls.

Those editorials spurred Democrats to action and instigated violence everywhere, wrote Warmoth in his book War, Politics, and Reconstruction: Stormy Days in Louisiana. “Secret Democratic organizations were formed, and all armed. We had ‘The Knights of the White Camellia,’ ‘The Ku-Klux Klan,’ and an Italian organization called ‘The Innocents,’ who nightly paraded the streets of New Orleans and the roads in the country parishes, producing terror among the Republicans.”

The vigilante groups were so widespread that they often included nearly every white man in the region. One Democratic newspaper editor estimated that more than 3,000 men belonged to the Knights of the White Camellia of St. Landry Parish—an area that included only 13,776 white people in total, including women and children.

With the approach of the presidential elections in November, the tension only increased. On September 13, the Republicans held a meeting in the town of Washington, not far from Opelousas, and found streets lined with armed Seymour Knights. A misfired rifle nearly caused a riot to break out, but in the end, everyone departed peacefully—though the Democrats threatened Bentley if he failed to publish an “honest” account of the event in the St. Landry Progress. Sure enough, they used Bentley’s account, in which he wrote the men had been intimidating the Republicans, to instigate a wave of violence on September 28, 1868.

Displeased with the way Bentley had portrayed the Democrats, Democrats John Williams, James R. Dickson (who later became a local judge), and constable Sebastian May visited Bentley’s schoolhouse to make good on the anonymous threats of the earlier September note. They forced him to sign a retraction of the article, and then Dickson savagely beat Bentley, sending the children who were sitting for lessons scattering in terror. Rumors spread, and soon many Republicans were convinced Bentley had been killed, though he managed to escape with his life. As a small number of African-Americans prepared to rescue Bentley, word spread around the parish that a black rebellion was imminent. Thousands of white men began arming themselves and raiding houses around the area.

“St. Landrians reacted to armed Negroes and rumors of an uprising in the same manner that Southerners had reacted for generations,” wrote historian Carolyn deLatte in 1976. “If anything, the vengeance visited upon the Negro population was greater, as blacks were no longer protected by any consideration of their monetary value.”

On the first night, only one small group of armed African-Americans assembled to deal with the report they’d heard about Bentley. They were met by an armed group of white men, mounted on horses, outside Opelousas. Of those men, 29 were taken to the local prison, and 27 of them were summarily executed. The bloodshed continued for two weeks, with African-American families killed in their homes, shot in public, and chased down by vigilante groups. C.E. Durand, the other editor of the St. Landry Progress, was murdered in the early days of the massacre and his body displayed outside the Opelousas drug store. By the end of the two weeks, estimates of the number killed were around 250 people, the vast majority of them African-American.

When the Bureau of Freedmen (a governmental organization created to provide emancipated African-Americans with legal, health and educational assistance and help them settle abandoned lands) sent Lieutenant Jesse Lee to investigate, he called it “a quiet reign of terror so far as the freed people were concerned.” Influential Republican Beverly Wilson, an African-American blacksmith in Opelousas, believed black citizens were “in a worse condition now than in slavery.” Another observer was led outside the town of Opelousas and shown the half-buried bodies of more than a dozen African-Americans.

But Democratic papers—the only remaining sources of news in the region, as all Republican presses had been burned—downplayed the horrific violence. “The people generally are well satisfied with the result of the St. Landry riot, only they regret that the Carpet-Baggers escaped,” wrote Daniel Dennet, editor of the Democratic Franklin Planter’s Banner. “The editor escaped; and a hundred dead negroes, and perhaps a hundred more wounded and crippled, a dead white Radical, a dead Democrat, and three or four wounded Democrats are the upshot of the business.”
The groups managed to achieve their ultimate purpose, as was borne out by the results of the November presidential elections. Even though Republican nominee Ulysses Grant won, not a single Republican vote was counted in St. Landry Parish. Those who oversaw the election felt “fully convinced that no man on that day could have voted any other than the democratic ticket and not been killed inside of 24 hours thereafter.”

“St. Landry Parish illustrates the local shift of power after 1868, where an instance of conservative boss rule occurred and the parish Republican Party was unable to fully recover for the remainder of Reconstruction,” writes historian Matthew Christensen. There would be no Republican organization in the parish for the next four years, and no Republican paper until 1876.

The Opelousas massacre also set the stage for future acts of violence and intimidation. “Lynching became routinized in Louisiana, a systematic way by which whites sought to assert white supremacy in response to African-American resistance,” said historian Michael Pfeifer, the author of The Roots of Rough Justice: Origins of American Lynching, by email. “This would be an important precedent for the subsequent wave of lynchings that occurred in Louisiana from the 1890s through the early decades of the twentieth century, in which lynch mobs killed more than 400 persons, most of them African American.”

Yet for all that it was the deadliest instance of racial violence during the Reconstruction period, the Opleousas massacre is little remembered today. Only slightly better known is the 1873 Colfax massacre in which an estimated 60 to 150 people were killed—a massacre largely following the pattern set by Opelousas.
The Thibodaux Massacre Left 60 African-Americans Dead and Spelled the End of Unionized Farm Labor in the South for Decades
In 1887, African-American cane workers in Louisiana attempted to organize-and many paid with their lives
Laurel Valley in Thibodaux, Lafourche Parish, became a refuge for displaced workers.
(Stephen Saks Photography / Alamy Stock Photo)
Calvin Schermerhorn, Smithsonian.com

Tuesday, June 1, 2021 - On November 23, 1887, a mass shooting of African-American farm workers in Louisiana left some 60 dead. Bodies were dumped in unmarked graves while the white press cheered a victory against a fledgling black union. It was one of the bloodiest days in United States labor history, and while statues went up and public places were named for some of those involved, there is no marker of the Thibodaux Massacre.

Days after, a local planter widow Mary Pugh wrote, "I think this will settle the question of who is to rule the nigger or the white man for the next fifty years." It was a far-sighted comment- black farm workers in the South wouldn't have the opportunity to unionize for generations.

Years after the Thirteenth Amendment brought freedom, cane cutters' working lives were already "barely distinguishable" from slavery, argues journalist and author John DeSantis. (His book, The Thibodaux Massacre: Racial Violence and the 1887 Sugar Cane Labor Strike, is an excellent and compelling account of the massacre.) With no land to own or rent, workers and their families lived in old slave cabins. They toiled in gangs, just like their ancestors had for nearly a century. Growers gave workers meals but paid famine wages of as little as 42 cents a day (91 cents per hour in today's money, for a 12-hour shift).

Instead of cash, workers got scrip that bought basics at high prices at plantation stores.

But they had advantages that their counterparts in cotton areas lacked. Planters needed their labor, and growers living on thin margins failed to attract migrant laborers to replace local workers, especially in the crucial rolling season when the sugarcane needed to be cut and pressed in short order.

In the sugar parishes arcing through the southern part of the state from Berwick Bay to the Mississippi River, African-American men voted. The Republican Party, which supported black civil rights, was stronger in sugar country than anywhere else in the state. By the late 1860s, African-Americans became legislators or sheriffs, and black volunteer militias drilled, despite living and working conditions still bearing the marks of slavery.

In 1874, nine years after slavery ended in the United States, cane cutters demanded a second emancipation. They wanted a living wage, or at least the chance to rent on shares. Planters wanted to cut wages after the lean harvest of 1873-74 coincided with an economic recession, and while Louisiana growers produced 95 percent of the nation's domestic sugar and molasses, they were losing market share to cheaper foreign sugars.

Sensing they were in a strong bargaining position, workers banded together in several sugar parishes, including St. Mary, Iberia, Terrebonne, and Lafourche, demanding cash wages of $1.25 per day, or $1.00 if meals were included.

But the growers refused, upset that African-American workers were demanding an end to their paternalistic work regime. So African-American leaders like Hamp Keys, a former Terrebonne Parish legislator, called a strike.

Keys led a march from Houma to Southdown Plantation in Terrebonne, rallying workers with a fiery speech. The sight of black protesters riled growers, and acting with their interests in mind, the parish's African-American sheriff formed a posse of whites to face down strikers. Surprised at the opposition, Keys's marchers retreated.

In the state capital of New Orleans (relocated to Baton Rouge in 1882), Republican Governor William Pitt Kellogg also backed growers. But he was under siege from the Louisiana White League, a paramilitary white supremacist group formed in 1874 to intimidate Republicans and keep African-Americans from voting. Despite Kellogg's being a pro-growth moderate who favored low taxes, White Leaguers tried to oust him in a violent coup. The Battle of Liberty Place, as it was called, pitted white militiamen against federal troops and metropolitan police. Governor Kellogg was temporarily forced out of New Orleans. He returned under guard but would be Louisiana's last Republican governor for more than 100 years.

America was retreating from Republican-led Reconstruction and abandoning civil rights. African-Americans in sugar regions kept the right to vote, but their influence in state elections was waning. As W. E. B. Du Bois put it in Black Reconstruction in America, "The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again into slavery."

Sugar workers attempted another strike in 1880, and both growers and workers resorted to sporadic violence. But time was on the growers' side. African-Americans were being disarmed and thrown out of office, and some were leased out to hard labor for petty and trumped-up crimes. With few options available by 1887, Terrebonne sugar workers reached out to the Knights of Labor.

The Knights was the biggest and most powerful union in America. It began organizing African-American workers in 1883 in separate locals (a local is a bargaining unit of a broader union). Despite segregation, the Knights organized women and farm workers. And it made strides against Jim Crow. At the Knights' 1886 national convention in Richmond, Virginia, leaders risked violence by insisting that a black delegate introduce Virginia's segregationist governor.

Across the states of the former Confederacy, whites viewed organized labor as agitation that threatened the emerging Jim Crow order. Even in the North and Midwest, the Knights fought an uphill battle against authorities who sided with railroad and mine owners. Several states called out militias to break strikes during the late nineteenth century, but the Knights was at its peak of popularity in the 1880s.

In Louisiana, the Knights organized sugar workers into seven locals of 100 to 150 members each. Hamp Keys joined former black leaders like ex-sheriff William Kennedy and Jack Conrad, a Union Civil War veteran. In August of 1887, the Knights met with the St. Mary branch of the Louisiana Sugar Planters Association asking for improved wages. And again the growers refused.

So the Knights raised the stakes in October of 1887 as the rolling season approached. Junius Bailey, a 29-year-old schoolteacher, served as local president in Terrebonne. His office sent a communique all over the region asking for $1.25 a day cash wages, and local workers' committees followed up, going directly to growers with the same demand.

But instead of bargaining, growers fired union members. Planters like future Supreme Court Chief Justice Edward Douglass White kicked workers off the land, ordering any who stayed arrested. Siding with growers, Democratic newspapers circulated false reports of black-on-white violence. "The most vicious and unruly set of negroes," were at the Rienzi Plantation near Thibodaux, the New Orleans Daily Picayune reported. "The leader of them said to-day that no power on earth could remove them unless they were moved as corpses."

As the cane ripened, growers called on the governor to use muscle against the strikers. And Samuel D. McEnery, Democratic governor and former planter, obliged, calling for the assistance of several all-white Louisiana militias under the command of ex-Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard. One group toted a .45 caliber Gatling gun--a hand-cranked machine gun--around two parishes before parking it in front of the Thibodaux courthouse. An army cannon was set up in front of the jail.

Then the killings started. In St. Mary, the Attakapas Rangers joined a sheriff's posse facing down a group of black strikers. When one of the workers reached into a pocket, posse members opened fire on the crowd, "and four men were shot dead where they stood," a newspaper reported. Terror broke the strike in St. Mary Parish.

In neighboring Terrebonne, some small growers came to the bargaining table, but larger planters hired strike-breakers from Vicksburg, Mississippi, 200 miles to the north, promising high wages and bringing them down on trains. The replacement workers were also African Americans, but they lacked experience in the canebrakes. As they arrived, militiamen evicted strikers.

And Thibodaux, in Lafourche Parish, was becoming a refuge for displaced workers. Some moved into vacant houses in town, while others camped along bayous and roadsides. Reports circulated of African-American women gossiping about a planned riot. Violence broke out in nearby Lockport on Bayou Lafourche when Moses Pugh, a black worker, shot and wounded Richard Foret, a planter, in self-defense. A militia unit arrived and mounted a bayonet charge on gathered workers, firing a volley in the air.

But the strike was gaining national attention. "Do the workingmen of the country understand the significance of this movement?" asked Washington D.C.'s National Republican, pointing out that sugar workers were "forced to work at starvation wages, in the richest spot under the American flag." If forced back to the fields at gun point, no wage worker was safe from employer intimidation.

In Thibodaux, Lafourche Parish District Judge Taylor Beattie declared martial law. Despite being a Republican, Beattie was an ex-Confederate and White League member. He authorized local white vigilantes to barricade the town, identifying strikers and demanding passes from any African-American coming or going. And before dawn on Wednesday, the 23rd of November, pistol shots coming from a cornfield injured two white guards.

The response was a massacre. "There were several companies of white men and they went around night and day shooting colored men who took part in the strike," testified Reverend T. Jefferson Rhodes of the Moses Baptist Church in Thibodaux. Going from house to house, gunmen ordered Jack Conrad, his son Grant, and his brother-in-law Marcelin out of their house. Marcelin protested he was not a striker but was shot and killed anyway. Clarisse Conrad watched as her brother Grant "got behind a barrel and the white men got behind the house and shot him dead." Jack Conrad was shot several times in the arms and chest. He lived and later identified one of the attackers as his employer.

One strike leader found in an attic was taken to the town common, told to run, and shot to pieces by a firing squad. An eyewitness told a newspaper that "no less than thirty-five negroes were killed outright," including old and young, men and women. "The negroes offered no resistance; they could not, as the killing was unexpected." Survivors took to the woods and swamps. Killings continued on plantations, and bodies were dumped in a site that became a landfill.

Workers returned to the fields on growers' terms while whites cheered a Jim Crow victory. The Daily Picayune blamed black unionizers for the violence, saying that they provoked white citizens, suggesting the strikers "would burn the town and end the lives of the white women and children with their cane knives." Flipping the narrative, the paper argued, "It was no longer a question of against labor, but one of law-abiding citizens against assassins."

The union died with the strikers, and the assassins went unpunished. There was no federal inquiry, and even the coroner's inquest refused to point a finger at the murderers. Sugar planter Andrew Price was among the attackers that morning. He won a seat in Congress the next year.

The massacre helped keep unions out of the South at just the moment it was industrializing. Textile manufacturers were moving out of New England, chasing low wages. And after textile factories closed in the 20th century, auto, manufacturing, and energy companies opened in southern states in part for the non-union workforce.

Southern black farm workers would not attempt to unionize again, until the 1930s when the Southern Tenant Farmers Union attracted both white and African American members. But it too was met by a violent racist backlash. The struggle for southern unions continued into the Civil Rights era. On the night before he was assassinated in Memphis, Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech supporting striking sanitation workers. He urged his audience "to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. ...You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together."

Editor's Note, December 4, 2017: This story has been updated to further highlight the exceptional research conducted by author John DeSantis in his book. It has also been edited to remove the reference to Jack Conrad being a labor organizer. Due to an editing error, the photo caption incorrectly listed Laurel Valley as a place of refuge for African-American planters.

Originally published November 21, 2017
The Massacre of Black Sharecroppers That Led the Supreme Court to Curb the Racial Disparities of the Justice System
White Arkansans, fearful of what would happen if African-Americans organized, took violent action, but it was the victims who ended up standing trial
Elaine Defendants, Helena, Phillips County, Ark., ca. 1910, (Butler Center for
Arkansas Studies, Bobby L. Roberts Library of Arkansas History and Art,
Central Arkansas Library System)
By Francine Uenuma, SMITHSONIAN.COM

ELAINE, AK (6/1/2021) - The sharecroppers who gathered at a small church in Elaine, Arkansas, in the late hours of September 30, 1919, knew the risk they were taking. Upset about unfair low wages, they enlisted the help of a prominent white attorney from Little Rock, Ulysses Bratton, to come to Elaine to press for a fairer share in the profits of their labor. Each season, landowners came around demanding obscene percentages of the profits, without ever presenting the sharecroppers detailed accounting and trapping them with supposed debts.

"There was very little recourse for African-American tenant farmers against this exploitation; instead there was an unwritten law that no African-American could leave until his or her debt was paid off," writes Megan Ming Francis in Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State. Organizers hoped Bratton's presence would bring more pressure to bear through the courts. Aware of the dangers - the atmosphere was tense after racially motivated violence in the area - some of the farmers were armed with rifles.

At around 11 p.m. that night, a group of local white men, some of whom may have been affiliated with local law enforcement, fired shots into the church. The shots were returned, and in the chaos, one white man was killed. Word spread rapidly about the death. Rumors arose that the sharecroppers, who had formally joined a union known as the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America (PFHUA) were leading an organized "insurrection" against the white residents of Phillips County.

Governor Charles Brough called for 500 soldiers from nearby Camp Pike to, as the Arkansas Democrat reported on Oct 2, "round up" the "heavily armed negroes." The troops were "under order to shoot to kill any negro who refused to surrender immediately." They went well beyond that, banding together with local vigilantes and killing at least 200 African-Americans (estimates run much higher but there was never a full accounting). And the killing was indiscriminate-men, women and children unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity were slaughtered. Amidst the violence, five whites died, but for those deaths, someone would have to be held accountable.

Out of this tragedy, known as the Elaine massacre, and its subsequent prosecution, would come a Supreme Court decision that would upend years of court-sanctioned injustice against African-Americans and would secure the right of due process for defendants placed in impossible circumstances.

Despite its impact, little about the carnage in Elaine was unique during the summer of 1919. It was part of a period of vicious reprisals against African-American veterans returning home from World War I. Many whites believed that these veterans (including Robert Hill, who co-founded PFHUA) posed a threat as they claimed greater recognition for their rights at home. Even though they served in large numbers, black soldiers "realized over the course of the war and in the immediate aftermath that their achievement and their success actually provoked more rage and more vitriol than if they had utterly failed," says Adriane Lentz-Smith, associate professor of history at Duke University and author of Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I.

During the massacre, Arkansan Leroy Johnston, who had had spent nine months recovering in a hospital from injuries he suffered in the trenches of France - was pulled from a train shortly after returning home and was shot to death alongside his three brothers. In places like Phillips County, where the economy directly depended on the predatory system of sharecropping, white residents were inclined to view the activities of Hill and others as the latest in a series of dangerous agitations.

In the days after the bloodshed in Elaine, local media coverage continued to fan the flames daily, reporting sensational stories of an organized plot against whites. A seven-man committee formed to investigate the killings. Their conclusions all too predictable: the following week they issued a statement in the Arkansas Democrat declaring the gathering in Elaine a "deliberately planned insurrection if the negroes against the whites" led by the PFHUA, whose founders used "ignorance and superstition of a race of children for monetary gains."

The paper claimed every individual who joined was under the understanding that "ultimately he would be called upon to kill white people." A week later, they would congratulate themselves on the whole episode and their ability to restore order confidently claiming that not one slain African-American was innocent. "The real secret of Phillips county's success..." the newspaper boasted, is that "the Southerner knows the negro through several generations of experience."

To counter this accepted narrative, Walter White, a member of the NAACP whose appearance enabled him to blend in with white residents, snuck into Phillips County by posing as a reporter. In subsequent articles, he claimed that "careful examination...does not reveal the 'dastardly' plot which has been charged" and that indeed the PFHUA had no designs on an uprising. He pointed out that the disparity in death toll alone belied the accepted version of events. With African-Americans making up a significant majority of local residents, "it appears that the fatalities would have been differently proportioned if a well-planned murder plot had existed among the Negroes," he wrote in The Nation. The NAACP also pointed out in their publication The Crisis that in the prevailing climate of unchecked lynchings and mob violence against African-Americans, "none would be fool enough" to do so. The black press picked up the story and other papers began to integrate White's counter-narrative into their accounts, galvanizing support for the defendants.

The courts were another matter altogether. Dozens of African-Americans became defendants in hastily convened murder trials that used incriminating testimony coerced through torture, and 12 men were sentenced to death. Jury deliberations lasted just moments. The verdicts were a foregone conclusion - it was clear that had they not been slated for execution by the court, they mob would have done so even sooner.

"You had 12 black men who were clearly charged with murder in a system that was absolutely corrupt at the time - you had mob influence, you had witness tampering, you had a jury that was all-white, you had almost certainly judicial bias, you had the pressure of knowing that if you were a juror in this case that you would almost certainly not be able to live in that town...if you decided anything other than a conviction," says Michael Curry, an attorney and chair of the NAACP Advocacy and Policy Committee. No white residents were tried for any crime.

The outcome, at least initially, echoed an unyielding trend demonstrated by many a mob lynching: for African-American defendants, accusation and conviction were interchangeable.

Nonetheless, the NAACP launched a series of appeals and challenges that would inch their way through Arkansas state courts and then federal courts for the next three years, an arduous series of hard-fought victories and discouraging setbacks that echoed previous attempts at legal redress for black citizens. "It's a learning process for the NAACP," says Lentz-Smith. "[There is] a sense of how to do it and who to draw on and what sort of arguments to make." The cases of six of the men would be sent for retrial over a technicality, while the other six defendants - including named plaintiff Frank Moore - had their cases argued before the United States Supreme Court. The NAACP's legal strategy hinged on the claim that the defendants' 14th Amendment right to due process had been violated.

In February 1923, by a 6-2 margin, the Court agreed. Citing the all-white jury, lack of opportunity to testify, confessions under torture, denial of change of venue and the pressure of the mob, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote for the majority that "if the case is that the whole proceeding is a mask - that counsel, jury and judge were swept to the fatal end by an irresistible wave of public passion," then it was the duty of the Supreme Court to intervene as guarantor of the petitioners' constitutional rights where the state of Arkansas had failed.

The verdict marked a drastic departure from the Court's longstanding hands-off approach to the injustices happening in places like Elaine. "This was a seismic shift in how our Supreme Court was recognizing the rights of African-Americans," says Curry. After a long history of having little recourse in courts, Moore vs. Dempsey (the defendant was the keeper of the Arkansas State Penitentiary) preceded further legal gains where federal courts would weigh in on high-profile due process cases involving black defendants, including Powell vs. Alabama in 1932, which addressed all-white juries, and Brown vs. Mississippi in 1936, which ruled on confessions extracted under torture.

Moore vs. Dempsey provided momentum for early civil rights lawyers and paved the way for later victories in the '50s and '60s. According to Lentz, "when we narrate the black freedom struggle in the 20th century, we actually need to shift our timeline and the pins we put on the timeline for the moments of significant breakthrough and accomplishments." Despite Moore vs. Dempsey being relatively obscure, "if the U.S. civil rights movement is understood as an effort to secure the full social, political, and legal rights of citizenship, then 1923 marks a significant event," writes Francis.
Elaine Defendants_ii
Elaine Defendants, S. A. Jones, Ed Hicks, Frank Hicks, Frank Moore, J. C. Knox,
Ed Coleman and Paul Hall with Scipio Jones, State Penitentiary, Little Rock, Pulaski County, Ark. ca. 1925, (Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Bobby L. Roberts Library of Arkansas History and Art,
Central Arkansas Library System)
The ruling also carried broad-ranging implications for all citizens in terms of federal intervention in contested criminal cases. "The recognition that the state had violated the procedural due process, and the federal courts actually weighing in on that was huge," says Curry. "There was a deference that was being paid to state criminal proceedings, then this sort of broke that protection that existed for states."

The sharecroppers that had gathered in Elaine had a simple goal: to secure a share in the profits gained from their work. But the series of injustices the events of that night unleashed would - through several years of tenacious effort - end up before the nation's highest court and show that the longstanding tradition of declaring African-Americans guilty absent constitutional guarantees would no longer go unchallenged.

Originally published August 2, 2018

Job Opening: Regional Admin Assistant, Southern Region – New Orleans, LA
Job Description

Responsible for providing direct assistance to the Vice President of the Southern Division. Must be proficient in Microsoft Office products and able to multi-task. Schedules appointments, gives information to callers, takes dictation, and otherwise relieves officials of clerical work and minor administrative and business detail by performing the following duties.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

  • Receives, opens, dates, processes and distributes incoming correspondence to department staff; coordinates outgoing mailings, receives and processes responses as needed.
  • Organizes and maintains file system, and files correspondence and other records. Maintains and updates Rolodex files.
  • Composes and types routine correspondence.
  • Obtains necessary signatures/approvals for outgoing communications, and assures the transmittal of accurate data and information both internally and externally.
  • Checks records, forms and reports for completeness, accuracy of content, proper endorsement and conformance to policy/procedures; corrects minor discrepancies and errors independently.
  • Processes and records contributions by donor and by size of contribution.
  • Answers and screens telephone calls, and arranges conference calls.
  • Coordinates manager’s schedule and makes appointments.
  • Greets scheduled visitors and conducts to appropriate area or person.
  • Coordinates and arranges meetings, prepares agendas and materials. Reserves and prepares facilities, and records and transcribes minutes of meetings.
  • Makes copies of correspondence or other printed materials.
  • Prepares outgoing mail and correspondence, including e-mail and faxes.
  • Orders and maintains supplies, and arranges for equipment maintenance.
  • Other duties may be assigned.

Qualifications, Education and/or Experience

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

  • Associate’s degree (A. A.) or equivalent from two-year college or secretarial school diploma with stenography courses is desirable and a minimum of 3-5 years administrative assistant experience.
  • Language Skills – Ability to read and comprehend simple instructions, short correspondence, and memos. Ability to write simple correspondence. Ability to effectively present information in one-on-one and small group situations to customers, clients, and other employees of the organization.
  • Mathematical Skills – Ability to add, subtract, multiply, and divide in all units of measure, using whole numbers, common fractions, and decimals. Ability to compute rate, ratio, and percent.
  • Reasoning Ability – Ability to apply common sense understanding to carry out instructions furnished in written, oral, or diagram form. Ability to deal with problems involving several concrete variables in standardized situations.
  • Other Skills and Abilities – Excellent phone etiquette and professional demeanor; strong organizational, interpersonal and listening skills; proficient use in Microsoft Word and Internet; and ability to type 50 words per minute.
  • Physical Demands – The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to sit; use hands to finger, handle, or feel; and reach with hands and arms. The employee frequently is required to talk or hear. The employee is occasionally required to stand and walk. The employee must occasionally lift and/or move up to 10 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, and distance vision.

Work Environment

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate.

Bob Tucker and Iam C. Tucker
Father Daughter Conversation on Civil Rights
A 3rd generation activist daughter interviews her father about his Civil Rights efforts during the 50s and 60s...
The New Orleans Agenda, Staff Report

NEW ORLEANS (5/25/2021) - The instruction from the class professor was to identify and interview a person who participated as a civil rights activist during the turbulent 50s and 60s.

For Iam C. Tucker, that guidance was not a difficult assignment.

As a 3rd generation activist daughter of an African American family steeped in a tradition of struggle for Black empowerment, Iam was in her comfort zone.

Her paternal great grandfather, Thomas Tucker Jr., was an African Methodist Episcopal circuit rider and presiding elder in the Greensburg, LA. region. In fact, Thomas Tucker Jr. was ordained by AME Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, the outspoken member of the Georgia State Legislature. And Iam’s grandfather, Robert H, Tucker Sr., was both a respected civil rights leader, AME minister, and independent business owner.

Family tradition aside, Iam chose her father, Robert H. Tucker, Jr., as the Civil Rights leader that she best identified with. More specifically, she knew in a strongly personal context, among other facts, the following about her dad:

➢ As a Black man, he grew up in the completely segregated solid South during the 50’s and 60’s.

➢ That as a student attending an HBCU educational institution, her dad had been arrested with 110 other students for attempting to eat at a lunch counter in Atlanta, GA.

➢ That he was the first African American assistant to the mayor of New Orleans in 1970, leading the way for Blacks to serve in positions of authority in a previously all white environment.

➢ That he, along with other Black leaders had been instrumental in mediating a peaceful settlement to the NOPD efforts to evict the Black Panther Party from the Desire Housing Project.

Iam’s incisive questions cover a broad expanse of what an inside view of the movement looks like.

More importantly, the obvious working chemistry between dad and daughter offers comfort to those working to build similar relationships.
Editing & Video Production by JR Thomason
Iam_Christian_Tucker
Iam Christian Tucker, is the President/CEO of ILSI Engineering. ILSI Engineering is a seasoned government contractor that provides cost efficient, highly effective services to large scale primes and government agencies. The company specialize in civil engineering, structural engineering, construction management and program management services on large scale public sector and private industrial projects.

We are a full service Civil & Structural Engineering, Construction Management, & Civil Survey company headquartered in New Orleans, Louisiana, and serving select government & private industrial clients throughout the United States, and abroad. We are committed to efficient, cost-effective professional services that deliver solutions for every client’s specific scope and vision.
Robert-Bob-H-Tucker
Robert H. "Bob" Tucker, Jr., is President /CEO of GreenPastures Unlimited, a New Orleans based Consultancy, providing business and political advisory services to local and national clients.







Editor's Note: Permission to republished is granted.


What’s Going On at 50: Marvin Gaye’s Masterpiece is Still So True To Life
The unresolved, discordant elements make this album truly timeless – that, and the fact that too few of its concerns have been addressed since 1971.
Emily Lordi, The Guardian
Marvin Gaye’s classic 1971 record What’s Going On turns 50 this month, which means more people than ever will have occasion to note how timely it is. “He could have written What’s Going On yesterday,” poet Nikki Giovanni noted in an interview last autumn, explaining that the cover portrait of her 2020 collection, Make Me Rain, pays homage to Gaye’s album cover, picturing Giovanni in a raincoat, her collar upturned. The record’s endurance – most movingly displayed by Nelson Mandela, who, shortly after his release from prison in 1990, recited lines from the album at Tiger Stadium in Detroit – has practically become a cliche.

No one is wrong, of course, to say that Gaye’s album cuts as deeply today as it did in 1971. A divinely inspired work driven by social rage – one that braided doo-wop harmonies, jazz and the hymns Gaye had loved as a child – What’s Going On was also Gaye’s declaration of creative independence from Berry Gordy’s Motown machine. After a decade of polished pop hits, Gaye, now in his early 30s, revealed there was a lot on his mind: the outrage of the war in Vietnam (What’s Happening Brother?); the strangulation of the natural world (Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)); the strategic enforcement of urban poverty and police violence (Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)). The insurgent subject matter was accompanied by a change in Gaye’s personal style: he stopped wearing ties and grew a beard. “Black men weren’t supposed to look overtly masculine,” he told his biographer David Ritz: “I’d spent my entire career looking harmless, and the look no longer fit. I wasn’t harmless. I was pissed at America.”
Marvin Gaye - Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)
What’s Going On remains vital, above all, for how it turns away from that “America” and instead addresses the title question to a closer-knit group – those people gathered at the house party Gaye stages in the album’s opening moments; the “mother, mother” and “father father” he calls out to (and that the party setting might embolden him to candidly address). “Are things getting better like the newspapers say?” the speaker asks in What’s Happening Brother?, checking the claims of those in power against the authority of everyday Black people.

It is one thing to celebrate Gaye’s enduring and prescient mode of creation; another to applaud the continued resonance of his album’s concerns. We should not be sanguine, for instance, that Gaye’s understated blues critique of “trigger-happy policing” has stayed so relevant; or that anti-Black violence has so persisted over the last 50 years that it remains necessary for Black artists and everyday people to approach the task of surviving and thriving in America with the energy, elegance and grace that Gaye modelled in this landmark work. He might have hoped it would be more occasional, that his efforts might by now appear more dated. This, in any case, is the impression I get when watching Gaye introduce the title track at the Montreux jazz festival in the summer of 1980. Maybe he was tired – it was the last song of a long set – but the 40-year-old Gaye, in his frilled white shirt and sequinned red suit jacket, appears to not just work the crowd but pander to it with some contempt: “This was our very first No 1 record ever in the world, ladies and gentlemen. We were so proud. Thanks to you – you made it so. Hope you still enjoy it!”

He would be dead just four years later, shot by his own father in his parents’ house in Los Angeles. In the decades since, Black artists have continued to treat the lasting relevance of What’s Going On as both problem and promise. “I’m tired of Marvin askin’ me what’s going on,” Janelle Monáe sings in her 2013 track QUEEN.

This is precisely the kind of galvanising work that Gaye was doing with What’s Going On, for his own people in his own time – a historical point that is often obscured when we fixate on the record’s timelessness. Gaye’s critique of the Vietnam war, for example, which was informed by his brother Frankie’s experiences of the conflict, was disarmingly distinctive. So, too, was Gaye’s growing maturity, in which Black fans heard both his commitment to Black life and their own potential. “Beyond the brilliance of the string arrangements and the improvised basslines by James Jamerson, he was making power moves to give us what we needed,” music historian Rickey Vincent recently told me. “It was motivation music. Because we could tell Marvin was motivated.”

Vincent sees Gaye’s actions as “the driving force” behind Stevie Wonder’s political turn at Motown, as well as the rigorous funk of Sly and the Family Stone and the righteous soul of Aretha Franklin’s 1972 album Young, Gifted and Black. These stars, along with countless session musicians, were “doing their best work ever at this crucial moment in time” – setting the standard, in the case of Gaye and his collaborator David Van De Pitte’s meticulous string, conga, bass and vocal arrangements – for what Vincent calls “soul music as high art”.

To be sure, What’s Going On is an impeccably composed suite. Sonic recurrences are choreographed across the course of the LP: “What’s happening, brother?” one man asks another in the opening moments – a query that becomes the title of the next track, where the first song’s background harmony emerges as the foreground melody. But there is also a sense in which the sounds remain jarring and strange. So-called “timely” music often arrives before you know you need it, and is in that sense quite untimely: outrageous, out of joint, ill-fitting. Listen to how Gaye cranks the volume back up just as the title track starts to fade out – a sign of resilience as well as a petty refusal to let a track that Gordy hated end without a fight. Or how one man in the opening party scene greets another and then asks, “What’s your name?” Here is a conviviality you make just by showing up, where you don’t have to know someone to be glad they came.

What I listen for now are moments like these, which, despite repeated plays, cover versions and samples of Gaye’s songs, still sound discordant and unresolved. There are the searching chromatics of Save the Children: “Live life for the children! (oh, for the children),” Gaye sings, making his way up a haunting and halting musical scale, as if toward a future just out of reach. In this portion of the record, timing and melody come unmoored, as Gaye makes room for hard, even despairing questions: is it possible to “save a world that is destined to die”?

Things snap into place with the up-tempo Right On, but I still don’t know what that song is about. If at first Gaye seems concerned with parsing good from bad actors, “those of us who simply like to socialise” v “those of us who tend the sick and heed the people’s cries,” he also gathers them all into an affirmative, right-on roll call that mellows out into an oblique paean to sex: “And my darling, one more thing / If you let me, I will take you to live where love is king.” The song seems to gather all of “us” into a broad sonic space (marked by cosmopolitan instruments ranging from guiro to flute), and to make everyone’s existence holy via the sanctification of sex.

But then there are the screams. The squawking tenor saxophone solo with which Wild Bill Moore tears through Mercy Mercy Me might be the most dramatic performance of the “holler” Gaye sings about in Inner City Blues – but which Gaye himself delivers, at the end of that song, as a stylised cry: “Owwww!” It often seems to me that that holler, the culmination of the growling tones Gaye sings on the track, should be fiercer, more unhinged. What Gaye performs instead is the virtuosic, militant control required, in the midst of panic, of Black people in America, no less than in that other war overseas.

These elements are not easily absorbed or conscripted into narratives about Gaye’s moment or our own; precisely because they are the record’s jagged edges, they keep reaching out to grab listeners through time. It’s not that they speak so clearly to this moment or what it requires, so much as they remind us of the unruly ways of grief, love, and revival. How those parts of yourself you thought you had processed can come roaring back; how the people you’d given up on might suddenly come through. The record bristles, for all its impossible beauty, with unmanageable, going-on life.

Emily Lordi is a professor at Vanderbilt University and the author of The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience Since the 1960s.
Virgin Hotels New Orleans Now Accepting Reservations
Brand offers first look at latest lifestyle hotel, featuring local design,
multiple drinking and dining outlets and a rooftop pool
MIAMI, FL (5/23/21) – Virgin Hotels, the lifestyle hotel brand by Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson, announces today that reservations are live for the brand's latest property: Virgin Hotels New Orleans. Reservations are currently being accepted for stays starting Labor Day weekend and can be made directly on the hotel's website virginhotels.com/new-orleans or by calling (833) 859-0044.

Situated in the city's Warehouse District, Virgin Hotels New Orleans will join the growing number of new restaurants, galleries and shops in the prospering area. Located at 550 Baronne Street near the Central Business District, the new-build hotel will feature 238 Chambers (guestrooms), including Grand Chamber Suites and two Penthouses. The 1,097-square foot, over-the-top Richard’s Flat Penthouse features floor-to-ceiling windows, one master bedroom, a kitchenette and stunning views of downtown New Orleans. The property will offer multiple dining and drinking outlets, including Commons Club, the brand's centerpiece restaurant, bar and lounge, a rooftop pool and lounge atop the 13th floor and Funny Library Coffee Shop.

"With Virgin Group's rich history in the music industry and our passion for food and culture, New Orleans is a natural fit for the expansion of the Virgin Hotels brand," said James Bermingham, CEO of Virgin Hotels. “Each of our hotels are rooted in the communities we serve, and Virgin Hotels New Orleans is no exception. We’re inspired by the city’s vibrant culture and have created a hotel that celebrates the local art, design and music in a uniquely Virgin way. We can't wait to open our doors this Labor Day and invite both locals and visitors to join us for a truly personalized experience in the special city of New Orleans."
Through neighborhood-centric influences, Virgin Hotels New Orleans tells the story of its locale. To spearhead the property’s interior design, Virgin Hotels tapped leading local design firm, Logan Killen Interiors, to bring an authentic New Orleans flair to the project. The property will incorporate a Southern residential feel while combining colorful, tropical architectural motifs with Virgin's signature style of fun and smart design.

Ranging from 294 to 592-square feet, the Chambers, including Grand Chamber Suites, a Penthouse Suite and Richard's Flat Penthouse, will be fresh and bright with local art, historical detailing and Art Deco-inspired elements woven throughout, evoking a sense of old-world meets modern luxury. The Chambers will feature Virgin Hotels' signature layout with two distinct spaces. The Dressing Room includes a full vanity, makeup desk with a well-lit mirror, an extra-large shower with a bench completed with Red Flower toiletries and a closet for two. The Lounge features the brand's patented ergonomically
designed lounge bed, complete with a bullion fringe trim, a red SMEG® mini-fridge stocked with street-priced comforts, a High-Definition TV, yoga mat, and a cafe worktable with rattan base and tempered glass placed in front of a cozy built-in window seating offering city views. Designed to make the best use of space and promote privacy for guests, each chamber is separated by a pair of paneled doors, a nod to French doors as commonly seen in New Orleans design and offering a more residential look and feel.

Ample outlets for smartphones, laptops, or other electronic devices are found in various areas of the Chambers. All feature custom lighting on sensors that automatically illuminate when guests move. Additional amenities for pets will be available in the Chambers. The Chambers have integrated tech capabilities, including controlling lighting, thermostats, TVs, and order room services directly via the mobile app, Lucy.
Commons Club will anchor the hotel's main entrance and is designed to feel like a "members only" experience that's open to all. Specially curated entertainment and music programming will add to the overall experience, which evokes the feeling of a modern social club where both travelers and locals can enjoy. Situated on the 13th floor, the rooftop pool and lounge will offer a haven overlooking the New Orleans skyline where guests can dine, drink and dance.

In addition, Virgin Hotels New Orleans will feature a Funny Library Coffee Shop located on the hotel's first level. The coffee shop is a communal workspace that will house an assortment of whimsical and funny books and games. The hotel will also feature a state-of-the-art fitness center, open 24 hours a day, and over 10,000-square feet of flexible meeting and event space. Guests can sign up for the brand-wide guest preferences and loyalty program, The Know, to unlock a personalized stay, member rate discounts, room
upgrades, exclusive dining and event offers, and a complimentary cocktail hour dubbed "The Spirit Hour."

The hotel is developed by Buccini/Pollin Group, who selected Mathes Brierre Architects, CallisonRTKL Architects and Broadmoor Construction to complete the hotel.

Virgin Hotels New Orleans joins Virgin Hotels’ rapidly expanding roster, including Virgin Hotels Chicago, Virgin Hotels Dallas, Virgin Hotels Nashville, and Virgin Hotels Las Vegas. It will be followed by Virgin Hotels New York later this year and Virgin Hotels Miami and two overseas projects in development in Edinburgh and Glasgow in 2022 and beyond. To learn more about Virgin Hotels, visit www.virginhotels.com. To learn more about future hotels, please visit https://development.virginhotels.com/.
Emergency Broadband Benefit
Apply beginning May 12th for discounted broadband access and computer equipment
NEW ORLEANS (5/11/2021) - The Federal Communications Commission has launched a temporary program to help families and households struggling to afford Internet service during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Emergency Broadband Benefit provides a discount of up to $50 per month toward broadband service for eligible households and up to $75 per month for households on qualifying Tribal lands. Eligible households can also receive a one-time discount of up to $100 to purchase a laptop, desktop computer, or tablet from participating providers.

Eligible households can enroll through a participating broadband provider or directly with the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) using an online or mail in application.

You can learn more about the benefit, including eligibility and enrollment information, by visiting www.fcc.gov/broadbandbenefit, or by calling 833-511-0311
HousingNOLA Releases Semi-Annual Report on the State of Affordable Housing
HousingNOLA
NEW ORLEANS (Wednesday, May 5, 2021) – The HousingNOLA Semi-Annual Report, which tracks how many affordable housing opportunities are being created in New Orleans, shows city and state leaders are not delivering on their commitments to provide affordable housing. The report confirms city and state housing agencies are failing to abide by the HousingNOLA 10-Year Plan, which calls for 33,600 additional affordable units in the city by the year 2025.

The Semi-Annual Report is put together from data gathered from city and state housing agencies and is released mid-way through the HousingNOLA reporting cycle. This year, the Office of Community Development refused to comply with HousingNOLA’s public records request for “the number of housing opportunities created by the City of New Orleans.”

“We weren’t asking for anything new,” states Andreanecia Morris, HousingNOLA Executive Director. “We requested information we have been given in the past. However, this time, we were told that the City isn’t required to create a report in response to a public records request – which can only mean they are not tracking this information. Why isn’t this information readily available? How can the City not know how many new housing opportunities they’ve created? This tells us they’re not only not tracking it, they’re not trying, either.”

A few key takeaways from the Semi-Annual Report include:

  • New Orleans is not stabilizing people through housing, despite the fact that we have enough housing inventory to do so.
  • The number of affordable housing units has barely changed, while the need in New Orleans has grown. However, there have been no meaningful gains made in the number affordable housing units being created. 
  • COVID-19 rental assistance is not getting into the hands of renters fast enough and homeowners impacted by COVID-19 are still waiting on any kind of assistance. 

ABOUT HOUSING NOLA:

HousingNOLA is a 10-year partnership between the community, leaders, and dozens of public, private, and nonprofit organizations working to solve New Orleans’ affordable housing crisis by implementing the 10-Year Strategy and Implementation Plan. Rather than just being a written document, HousingNOLA is an ongoing initiative to collectively remind New Orleans and its elected officials of the issues we face and our pledge to maintain a plan of action. Data indicates the need for 33,600 additional affordable units in the city by 2025 and the data clearly shows that wages have not come close to mirroring the dramatic rise in housing costs. It’s our job to hold our leaders accountable to the recommendations we make in HousingNOLA.

Learn more at www.HousingNOLA.org
Liberty Bank - Gentilly_crop
Apply for an account online

At Liberty Bank, we're passionate about helping more people achieve more freedom. 

There's real freedom here-the freedom you have as an individual to attain your goals, as a business to achieve your idea of success or even as a community that is gathering strength to reach its full potential.

By investing in the development of personal goals, business objectives and communities, we're making a difference by making the word "bank" a verb rather than a noun, using our resources to get things done. 

We work hard. Play hard. Invest where our heart lives. And pursue freedom for all. 

Trust Liberty Bank. There's freedom here.

The National Urban League 

The mission of the National Urban League movement is to enable African Americans to secure economic self-reliance, parity, power and civil rights.
Marc H. Morial, President & CEO

EXCELLENCE     INNOVATION     RESPONSIVENESS 

Metro Service Group, located in New Orleans, Louisiana is a multi-faceted corporation with specific expertise and certifications in the areas of Environmental Services, Construction/Demolition and Disaster Response and Recovery. Metro Service Group is a licensed Contractor, certified in Building Construction; Heavy Construction; Highway, Street and Bridge Construction; Municipal and Public Works Construction and Solid Waste Management.
Stephanie Jordan 
"Lady Jazz!" 

"Every so often a new voice stands up and proclaims itself, but few do so
with such supreme depth and understated soul." 
- Ted Panken, Jazz at Lincoln Center Playbill
Jazz Vocalist Stephanie Jordan is a proud user of Audix Microphones!

 Available for Bookings:
Vincent Sylvain
504-232-3499
Vincent@SylvainSolutions.com



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