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110-573: The CRC coordinated nationally, with 60 chapters at its peak in 1950. These acted on local issues. Most were located on the East and West coasts, with only about 10 chapters in the states of the former Confederacy, five of them in Texas. The CRC used a two-pronged strategy of litigation and demonstrations, with extensive public communications, to call attention to racial injustice in the United States. A major tactic

220-574: A "per capita income [that] was second in the nation and the highest in the South." The city had a role as the "primary commercial gateway for the nation's booming midsection." The port was the nation's third largest in terms of tonnage of imported goods, after Boston and New York, handling 659,000 tons in 1859. As the Creole elite feared, the American Civil War changed their world. In April 1862, following

330-1078: A brief period as Republican governor of Louisiana, becoming the first governor of African descent of a U.S. state (the next African American to serve as governor of a U.S. state was Douglas Wilder , elected in Virginia in 1989). New Orleans operated a racially integrated public school system during this period. Wartime damage to levees and cities along the Mississippi River adversely affected southern crops and trade. The federal government contributed to restoring infrastructure. The nationwide financial recession and Panic of 1873 adversely affected businesses and slowed economic recovery. From 1868, elections in Louisiana were marked by violence, as white insurgents tried to suppress black voting and disrupt Republican Party gatherings. The disputed 1872 gubernatorial election resulted in conflicts that ran for years. The " White League ", an insurgent paramilitary group that supported

440-636: A complex system of levees and drainage pumps in an effort to protect the city. New Orleans was severely affected by Hurricane Katrina in late August 2005, which flooded more than 80% of the city, killed more than 1,800 people, and displaced thousands of residents, causing a population decline of over 50%. Since Katrina, major redevelopment efforts have led to a rebound in the city's population. Concerns have been expressed about gentrification , new residents buying property in formerly close-knit communities, and displacement of longtime residents. Additionally, high rates of violent crime continue to plague

550-589: A concern into the 1740s for governor Marquis de Vaudreuil . In the early 1740s traders from the Thirteen Colonies crossed into the Appalachian Mountains. The Native American tribes would now operate dependent on which of various European colonists would most benefit them. Several of these tribes and especially the Chickasaw and Choctaw would trade goods and gifts for their loyalty. The economic issue in

660-451: A hotel room. He later said he felt ashamed and suicidal for being a "stool pigeon". He testified that his pay varied from $ 25/week to $ 250/month, and that he routinely lied to FBI contacts. Pamphlets Rosa Lee Ingram Rosa Lee Ingram (July 23, 1902 – August 5, 1980) was an African-American sharecropper and widowed mother of 12 children in Georgia , who was at the center of one of

770-812: A large contingent of Tennessee state militia, Kentucky frontiersmen and local privateers (the latter led by the pirate Jean Lafitte ), to decisively defeat the British , led by Sir Edward Pakenham , in the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815. The armies had not learned of the Treaty of Ghent , which had been signed on December 24, 1814 (however, the treaty did not call for cessation of hostilities until after both governments had ratified it. The U.S. government ratified it on February 16, 1815). The fighting in Louisiana began in December 1814 and did not end until late January, after

880-511: A naturalized US citizen in 1945, the government prosecuted him for perjury for having failed to acknowledge being a member of the Communist Party in his naturalization application. The conviction was overturned due to a statute of limitations in the law. The CRC campaigned for Rosa Lee Ingram and her two teenage sons (Wallace and Sammie Lee Ingram) against a death penalty murder charge in Georgia,

990-725: A one-day trial in January 1948. The Ingrams had no access to lawyers before the trial. The Ingram appeal campaign was orchestrated by the Women's Committee for Equal Justice, a CRC subdivision led by the nationally known leader, Mary Church Terrell . As its predecessor, the ILD, had accomplished with the Scottsboro case , the CRC hoped to use the Ingram case to draw national and international attention to racial inequality in

1100-553: A series of public meetings during 1765 to keep the populace in opposition of the establishment of Spanish rule. Anti-Spanish passions in New Orleans reached their highest level after two years of Spanish administration in Louisiana. On October 27, 1768, a mob of local residents, spiked the guns guarding New Orleans and took control of the city from the Spanish . The rebellion organized a group to sail for Paris, where it met with officials of

1210-511: A wider range of issues and a larger coalition. It became involved in the defense of Rosa Lee Ingram and her sons, and Willie McGee. In 1950, while the NAACP was working on appeals of the Martinsville Seven , who had all been convicted and sentenced to death in speedy trials, the parents of one defendant, DeSales Grayson, appealed separately to the CRC to defend their son. The NAACP contended that

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1320-558: Is named after the Roman emperor Aurelian , originally being known as Aurelianum. Thus, by extension, since New Orleans is also named after Aurelian, its name in Latin would translate to Nova Aurelia. Following the defeat in the Seven Years' War , France formally transferred the possession of Louisiana to Spain , with which France had secretly signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau a year earlier, in

1430-559: The Company of the Indies , founded a convent in the city in 1727. At the end of the colonial era, the Ursuline Academy maintained a house of 70 boarding and 100 day students. Today numerous schools in New Orleans can trace their lineage from this academy. Another notable example is the street plan and architecture still distinguishing New Orleans today. French Louisiana had early architects in

1540-625: The Democratic Party , was organized in 1874 and operated in the open, violently suppressing the black vote and running off Republican officeholders. In 1874, in the Battle of Liberty Place , 5,000 members of the White League fought with city police to take over the state offices for the Democratic candidate for governor, holding them for three days. By 1876, such tactics resulted in the white Democrats ,

1650-547: The Gallic community would have become a minority of the total population as early as 1820. After the Louisiana Purchase, numerous Anglo-Americans migrated to the city. The population doubled in the 1830s and by 1840, New Orleans had become the nation's wealthiest and the third-most populous city, after New York and Baltimore . German and Irish immigrants began arriving in the 1840s, working as port laborers. In this period,

1760-605: The Haitian Revolution , both whites and free people of color ( affranchis or gens de couleur libres ), arrived in New Orleans; a number brought their slaves with them, many of whom were native Africans or of full-blood descent. While Governor Claiborne and other officials wanted to keep out additional free black people, the French Creoles wanted to increase the French-speaking population. In addition to bolstering

1870-645: The House Committee on Un-American Activities . Targeted by the U.S. government, the group was weakened in 1951, and it finally disbanded in 1956. The group was formed at a radical conference in Detroit held on April 27–28, 1946. Early goals included abolition of HUAC and protecting southern workers' right to unionize. In December 1947, the National Negro Congress merged into the group. International Labor Defense (ILD) national secretary William Patterson led

1980-603: The Louisiana Purchase of 1803. New Orleans in 1840 was the third most populous city in the United States, and it was the largest city in the American South from the Antebellum era until after World War II . The city has historically been very vulnerable to flooding , due to its high rainfall, low lying elevation, poor natural drainage, and proximity to multiple bodies of water. State and federal authorities have installed

2090-493: The Mississippi River and that the use of the same name for the settlement relates to Native American concepts of the close interaction between rivers and their surrounding land. The name of New Orleans derives from the original French name, La Nouvelle-Orléans , which was given to the city in honor of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans , who served as Louis XV 's regent from 1715 to 1723. The French city of Orléans itself

2200-551: The Mississippi River in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of Louisiana . With a population of 383,997 according to the 2020 U.S. census, it is the most populous city in Louisiana and the French Louisiana region; the third-most populous city in the Deep South ; and the twelfth-most populous city in the southeastern United States . Serving as a major port , New Orleans is considered an economic and commercial hub for

2310-458: The New Orleans streetcar strike during which serious unrest occurred. It is also credited for the creation of the distinctly Louisianan Po' boy sandwich. By the mid-20th century, New Orleanians recognized that their city was no longer the leading urban area in the South. By 1950, Houston , Dallas , and Atlanta exceeded New Orleans in size, and in 1960 Miami eclipsed New Orleans, even as

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2420-584: The Taft-Hartley Act and offered assistance to the Congress of Industrial Organizations and to the American Federation of Labor . In Louisiana, a local chapter launched a major campaign to convict the white police officer who shot Roy Cyril Brooks. The Brooks case began a larger effort against police brutality and demands to hire more Black police officers in cities such as New Orleans. In January 1949,

2530-480: The Treaty of Paris of 1763. The Spanish renamed the city Nueva Orleans ( pronounced [ˌnweβa oɾleˈans] ), which was used until 1800. The United States, which had acquired possession from France in 1803, adopted the French name and anglicized it to New Orleans . New Orleans has several nicknames, including these: La Nouvelle-Orléans (New Orleans) was founded in the spring of 1718 (May 7 has become

2640-728: The United Nations . It brought world attention to racism in the United States by presenting the U.N. with a petition titled " We Charge Genocide ," detailing the abuses of African Americans in the US, including continuing lynchings in the 1940s. The CRC was perceived as an alternative or competitor to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) because it worked on similar issues in representing African Americans in legal cases and suits. The CRC believed that it embraced

2750-420: The port remained one of the nation's largest, automation and containerization cost many jobs. The city's former role as banker to the South was supplanted by larger peer cities. New Orleans' economy had always been based more on trade and financial services than on manufacturing, but the city's relatively small manufacturing sector also shrank after World War II. Despite some economic development successes under

2860-408: The "most unique" in the United States, owing in large part to its cross-cultural and multilingual heritage. Additionally, New Orleans has increasingly been known as "Hollywood South" due to its prominent role in the film industry and in pop culture. Founded in 1718 by French colonists, New Orleans was once the territorial capital of French Louisiana before becoming part of the United States in

2970-715: The Americans held off the Royal Navy during a ten-day siege of Fort St. Philip (the Royal Navy went on to capture Fort Bowyer near Mobile , before the commanders received news of the peace treaty). As a port , New Orleans played a major role during the antebellum period in the Atlantic slave trade . The port handled commodities for export from the interior and imported goods from other countries, which were warehoused and transferred in New Orleans to smaller vessels and distributed along

3080-507: The Atlantic world. Its inhabitants traded across the French commercial system. New Orleans was a hub for this trade both physically and culturally because it served as the exit point to the rest of the globe for the interior of the North American continent. In one instance the French government established a chapter house of sisters in New Orleans. The Ursuline sisters after being sponsored by

3190-574: The CRC withdrew from direct defense of Grayson in July 1950. But, the NAACP was unable to succeed with its appeals. All seven of the men were executed in February 1951. During the years of the Red Scare , due to its Communist Party affiliations, the CRC was classified as subversive and described as a communist front organization by US Attorney General Thomas Clark under President Harry S. Truman , as well as by

3300-514: The CRC worked mostly on publicity. It raised $ 45,125 for the Ingram Defense Fund and held annual Mother's Day rallies. On 21 September 1949, Terrell led a group to the United Nations to demand that officials address the Ingram case. Little progress was made in the case, but both the NAACP and the CRC continued to support Ingram during her imprisonment. Ingram and her sons were all released on parole in 1959, cited as "model prisoners." As in

3410-684: The Civil Rights Congress served as justification for FBI surveillance of Lena Horne and Paul Robeson . One agent later described breaking into the CRC's Chicago offices, saying "Anything that had the name 'committee' or 'congress' the FBI assumed had to be subversive." David Brown, secretary and then chair of the Los Angeles chapter of the CRC, served as an FBI informant from 1950 to 1954. He disappeared in January 1955 and tried to fake his own kidnapping. Soon after, he unsuccessfully attempted suicide in

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3520-514: The Civil War, fought against Jim Crow. They organized the Comité des Citoyens (Citizens Committee) to work for civil rights. As part of their legal campaign, they recruited one of their own, Homer Plessy , to test whether Louisiana's newly enacted Separate Car Act was constitutional. Plessy boarded a commuter train departing New Orleans for Covington, Louisiana , sat in the car reserved for whites only, and

3630-610: The Confederate cause, his order warned that such future occurrences would result in his men treating such women as those "plying their avocation in the streets", implying that they would treat the women like prostitutes. Accounts of this spread widely. He also came to be called "Spoons" Butler because of the alleged looting that his troops did while occupying the city, during which time he himself supposedly pilfered silver flatware. Significantly, Butler abolished French-language instruction in city schools. Statewide measures in 1864 and, after

3740-622: The French government. This group brought with them a long memorial to summarize the abuses the colony had endured from the Spanish. King Louis XV and his ministers reaffirmed Spain's sovereignty over Louisiana. Nearly all of the surviving 18th-century architecture of the Vieux Carré ( French Quarter ) dates from the Spanish period, notably excepting the Old Ursuline Convent . During the American Revolutionary War , New Orleans

3850-406: The Ingram case, both the NAACP and the CRC rallied to the cause of the Martinsville Seven — seven black men all sentenced to death in Virginia in 1949 for the rape of a white woman. Only black men received the death sentence in Virginia in rape cases. Martin A. Martin, the chief lawyer hired by the NAACP from a major Richmond law firm, refused to work with the CRC because the government had classified

3960-496: The Mississippi River watershed. The river was filled with steamboats, flatboats and sailing ships. Despite its role in the slave trade , New Orleans at the time also had the largest and most prosperous community of free persons of color in the nation, who were often educated, middle-class property owners. Dwarfing the other cities in the Antebellum South, New Orleans had the U.S.' largest slave market. The market expanded after

4070-402: The NAACP, the group sought to raise awareness outside the courtroom with demonstrations, propaganda, and high-profile events. As these campaigns gained popular awareness, the CRC received many letters from prisoners requesting legal assistance. The CRC opposed the 1940 Smith Act and 1950 McCarran Act , both of which expanded government powers to prosecute domestic dissent. It generally came to

4180-644: The Negro People ". This document collected diverse instances of violence and mistreatment against African Americans, and argued that the United States government was a party to genocide in its own country. After William Patterson presented the document to the United Nations assembly in Paris, his passport was revoked by the State Department. Paul Robeson and W. E. B. Du Bois were blocked from traveling, and went to

4290-555: The U.N. offices in New York. Soon after it was founded, the CRC became a target of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) and the Internal Revenue Service . A 1947 report to HUAC charged: "Having adopted a line of militant skullduggery against the United States with the close of World War II, the Communist Party has set up the Civil Rights Congress for the purpose of protecting those of its members who run afoul of

4400-594: The U.S. erupted in protests against the trial and sentences, which had been conducted in haste and secrecy. In response to national protests led by Sojourners for Truth and Justice , the trio's sentences were commuted to life imprisonment in April 1948. A second wave of protests ensued after the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the Ingrams' life sentences. In 1952, despite continued protests from civil rights organizations on

4510-562: The United States ended the international trade in 1808. Two-thirds of the more than one million slaves brought to the Deep South arrived via forced migration in the domestic slave trade. The money generated by the sale of slaves in the Upper South has been estimated at 15 percent of the value of the staple crop economy. The slaves were collectively valued at half a billion dollars. The trade spawned an ancillary economy—transportation, housing and clothing, fees, etc., estimated at 13.5 percent of

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4620-403: The United States in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Thereafter, the city grew rapidly with influxes of Americans, French , Creoles and Africans . Later immigrants were Irish , Germans , Poles and Italians . Major commodity crops of sugar and cotton were cultivated with slave labor on nearby large plantations . Between 1791 and 1810, thousands of St. Dominican refugees from

4730-423: The United States. Before the arrival of European colonists, the indigenous Choctaw people called the area of present-day New Orleans Bulbancha , which translates as "land of many tongues". It appears to have been a contraction of balbáha a̱shah , which means "there are foreign speakers". In his book Histoire de la Louisiane , Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz wrote that the indigenous name referred to

4840-503: The United States. Pressure from the CRC and the NAACP led to a new hearing in March 1948. In this hearing, the judge denied requests for a new trial, but used his discretion to reduce the sentence from death to life in prison. The NAACP and CRC came into occasional conflict over the case because of differing goals and strategy. By the wishes of the Ingrams, the NAACP generally handled the legal side;

4950-404: The United States. The rate of lynchings of black men was high across the South, as other states also disfranchised blacks and sought to impose Jim Crow. Nativist prejudices also surfaced. Anti-Italian sentiment in 1891 contributed to the lynchings of 11 Italians , some of whom had been acquitted of the murder of the police chief. Some were shot and killed in the jail where they were detained. It

5060-658: The administrations of DeLesseps "Chep" Morrison (1946–1961) and Victor "Vic" Schiro (1961–1970), metropolitan New Orleans' growth rate consistently lagged behind more vigorous cities. During the later years of Morrison's administration, and for the entirety of Schiro's, the city was a center of the Civil Rights movement . The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was founded in New Orleans, and lunch counter sit-ins were held in Canal Street department stores. A prominent and violent series of confrontations occurred in 1960 when

5170-463: The antebellum period. It was the nation's fifth-largest city in 1860 (after New York, Philadelphia , Boston and Baltimore) and was significantly larger than all other southern cities. From the mid-19th century onward rapid economic growth shifted to other areas, while New Orleans' relative importance steadily declined. The growth of railways and highways decreased river traffic, diverting goods to other transportation corridors and markets. Thousands of

5280-612: The appeals failed. The US Supreme Court refused to hear the Martinsville Seven case, and all the men were executed in February 1951. McGee was executed in May 1951. In this period, the CRC was defending Communist officials known as the Top Eleven against prosecution under the Smith Act. This drew attention to their communist affiliation and people worried that the CRC endangered the outcome of

5390-408: The appeals for that reason. It withdrew from representing one of the Martinsville Seven directly. The CRC took stances on many issues related to political freedom and the rights of African Americans. It supported anti-lynching laws, and condemned the use of the Confederate flag at many government and school facilities in the South. It opposed U.S. intervention in the Korean War . The CRC opposed

5500-444: The assistance of individuals targeted by HUAC, particularly the "Top Eleven" communist leaders tried in 1949 under the Smith Act. The CRC was also active in the defense of Harry Bridges , a union organizer and leader of the California chapter of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union . The government had long sought his deportation, and Congress passed the Smith Act to provide a means to accomplish this. After Bridges became

5610-418: The authority of the " Fifth Military District " of the United States during Reconstruction. Louisiana was readmitted to the Union in 1868. Its Constitution of 1868 granted universal male suffrage and established universal public education . Both blacks and whites were elected to local and state offices. In 1872, lieutenant governor P.B.S. Pinchback , who was of mixed race , succeeded Henry Clay Warmouth for

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5720-428: The basis of the extenuating circumstances (e.g. that Stratford had sexually assaulted Ingram, and that her children were responding in self-defense), the Georgia pardon and parole board refused to free Ingram and her two sons. When Sojourners for Truth and Justice came to visit Georgia governor Herman Talmadge in January 1953 to plead for the Ingrams' release, they were turned away by the governor's wife, who told them

5830-413: The broader Gulf Coast region of the United States . New Orleans is world-renowned for its distinctive music , Creole cuisine , unique dialects , and its annual celebrations and festivals, most notably Mardi Gras . The historic heart of the city is the French Quarter , known for its French and Spanish Creole architecture and vibrant nightlife along Bourbon Street . The city has been described as

5940-475: The case galvanized black left feminists , highlighting the specific forms of oppression experienced by poor black women, as well as foregrounding the history of white men's sexual violence against black women. According to McDuffie, "Ingram's case represented in glaring terms the interlocking systems of oppression suffered by African American women: the painful memories of and the continued day-to-day sexual violence committed against black women's bodies by white men,

6050-438: The case was Judge W. M. Harper. The attorney representing Ingram (and appointed to her the morning of the trial) was S. Hawkins Dykes. The jury for the trial was an all- white, all-male jury. The sentencing of Ingram and two of her sons to die in the electric chair was handed down by an all-white, all male jury on February 7, 1948. When the defendants' executions were scheduled for February 27, 1948, less than three weeks later,

6160-448: The city attempted school desegregation, following the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). When six-year-old Ruby Bridges integrated William Frantz Elementary School in the Ninth Ward , she was the first child of color to attend a previously all-white school in the South. Much controversy preceded the 1956 Sugar Bowl at Tulane Stadium , when the Pitt Panthers , with African-American fullback Bobby Grier on

6270-416: The city volunteered for the first regiments of Black troops in the War. Led by Brigadier General Daniel Ullman (1810–1892), of the 78th Regiment of New York State Volunteers Militia, they were known as the " Corps d'Afrique ". While that name had been used by a militia before the war, that group was composed of free people of color . The new group was made up mostly of former slaves. They were supplemented in

6380-449: The city with New Orleans experiencing 280 murders in 2022, resulting in the highest per capita homicide rate in the United States. The city and Orleans Parish ( French : paroisse d'Orléans ) are coterminous . As of 2017, Orleans Parish is the third most populous parish in Louisiana, behind East Baton Rouge Parish and neighboring Jefferson Parish . The city and parish are bounded by St. Tammany Parish and Lake Pontchartrain to

6490-420: The city's occupation by the Union Navy after the Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip , Gen. Benjamin F. Butler – a respected Massachusetts lawyer serving in that state's militia – was appointed military governor. New Orleans residents supportive of the Confederacy nicknamed him "Beast" Butler, because of an order he issued. After his troops had been assaulted and harassed in the streets by women still loyal to

6600-408: The city's population. The city became 63 percent black, a greater proportion than Charleston, South Carolina 's 53 percent at that time. On January 8-11, 1811, about 500 enslaved Africans in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist parishes rose up in rebellion against their enslavers, killing two white men in the process. They proceeded to march south toward New Orleans and were eventually controlled by

6710-409: The colony, which continued under Vaudreuil, resulted in many raids by Native American tribes, taking advantage of the French weakness. In 1747 and 1748, the Chickasaw would raid along the east bank of the Mississippi all the way south to Baton Rouge . These raids would often force residents of French Louisiana to take refuge in New Orleans proper. Inability to find labor was the most pressing issue in

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6820-458: The competing interests of France, Spain, and England, as well as traditional rivals. Notably, the Natchez , whose traditional lands were along the Mississippi near the modern city of Natchez, Mississippi , had a series of wars culminating in the Natchez Revolt that began in 1729 with the Natchez overrunning Fort Rosalie . Approximately 230 French colonists were killed and the Natchez settlement destroyed, causing fear and concern in New Orleans and

6930-418: The conclusion of his trial due to insufficient evidence. According to Charles H. Martin, this "...underscored the circumstantial nature of the evidence against his mother and brothers." The trial of Rosa Lee, Wallace, and Sammie Lee, lasted just one day, held on January 26, 1948 in Ellaville, Georgia. They were each found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. National outcry against the verdict resulted in

7040-415: The early 20th century when medical and scientific advances ameliorated the situation, the city suffered repeated epidemics of yellow fever and other tropical and infectious diseases . In the first half of the 19th century, yellow fever epidemics killed over 150,000 people in New Orleans. After growing by 45 percent in the 1850s, by 1860, the city had nearly 170,000 people. It had grown in wealth, with

7150-435: The end of the 1960s, a large gap in income levels and educational attainment persisted between the city's White and African American communities. As the middle class and wealthier members of both races left the center city, its population's income level dropped, and it became proportionately more African American. From 1980, the African American majority elected primarily officials from its own community. They struggled to narrow

7260-420: The first African Americans for whom they campaigned on a national level for an appeal. The Ingrams, who were sharecroppers, were accused of murdering their white neighbor, John Ethron Stratford, in 1947 over an argument about animals on his land and his sexual harassment of the mother, Rosa Lee. They had been convicted—on the basis of circumstantial testimony, with no eyewitnesses—by a jury of twelve white men after

7370-403: The foreign trends as well. The French colony of Louisiana was ceded to the Spanish Empire in the 1763 Treaty of Paris , following France's defeat by Great Britain in the Seven Years' War . After the French relinquished West Louisiana to the Spanish, New Orleans merchants attempted to ignore Spanish rule and even re-institute French control on the colony. The citizens of New Orleans held

7480-411: The free people of color as mulatto , a term used to cover all degrees of mixed race. Mostly part of the Francophone group, they constituted the artisan, educated and professional class of African Americans. The mass of blacks were still enslaved, working at the port, in domestic service, in crafts, and mostly on the many large, surrounding sugarcane plantations. Throughout New Orleans' history, until

7590-405: The gap by creating conditions conducive to the economic uplift of the African American community. New Orleans became increasingly dependent on tourism as an economic mainstay during the administrations of Sidney Barthelemy (1986–1994) and Marc Morial (1994–2002). Relatively low levels of educational attainment, high rates of household poverty, and rising crime threatened the city's prosperity in

7700-477: The governor was out hunting. In 1955, the Ingrams were again denied parole. The State Board gave no reason for the denial. After multiple subsequent requests were denied, on August 26, 1959, Ingram and her sons were paroled and released from prison. Following Ingram's release, she lived in Atlanta, Georgia until her death. The Ingrams were defended by the Civil Rights Congress , as well as Sojourners for Truth and Justice . As historian Erik S. McDuffie notes,

7810-402: The group as subversive and as a Communist front. Again excluded from the legal process, the CRC launched a national campaign based on injustices in the cases of Martinsville Seven and Willie McGee in Mississippi. McGee was also sentenced to death for conviction of rape of a white woman. The CRC created national attention and coordinated mailing campaigns to the government in Washington, DC, but

7920-490: The group held a "Freedom Crusade" in Washington, D.C., right before the re-inauguration of President Truman . Before the demonstration, the group had a public exchange with Congressperson John S. Wood . Wood accused the group of threatening "violence and riot" in the capital; the group responded that the white supremacy of the status quo "is constantly the scene of 'violence and riot' against Negro citizens." The Freedom Crusade

8030-515: The group throughout its existence. Frank Marshall Davis served on the organization's National Executive Board. Patterson also headed the Abraham Lincoln School in Chicago , with Davis also on the faculty and Board of Directors. The group gained about 10,000 members at its peak. It was generally stronger on the coasts and weak in the South, but it did conduct several major campaigns to defend

8140-557: The group, and many of its leaders were jailed. The group's power weakened in 1951 when the federal government barred it from posting bail for communist defendants in the resulting trials. During the Second Red Scare , many Americans wary of the group because of its communist connections. In 1956, the CRC was declared a communist front by the Subversive Activities Control Board . It disbanded the same year. The CRC

8250-576: The institutionalizing of laws governing slavery within the colony. These laws required that slaves be baptized in the Roman Catholic faith, slaves be married in the church; the slave law formed in the 1720s is known as the Code Noir , which would bleed into the antebellum period of the American South as well. Louisiana slave culture had its own distinct Afro-Creole society that called on past cultures and

8360-488: The lack of protection for and the disrespect of black motherhood, the economic exploitation of black working-class women, and the disenfranchisement of black women in the Jim Crow South." Black progressive women were the leaders of the global campaign to free the Ingrams. New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a consolidated city-parish located along

8470-740: The last two years of the War by newly organized United States Colored Troops , who played an increasingly important part in the war. Violence throughout the South, especially the Memphis Riots of 1866 followed by the New Orleans Riot in the same year, led Congress to pass the Reconstruction Act and the Fourteenth Amendment , extending the protections of full citizenship to freedmen and free people of color. Louisiana and Texas were put under

8580-475: The later decades of the century. The negative effects of these socioeconomic conditions aligned poorly with the changes in the late-20th century to the economy of the United States, which reflected a post-industrial, knowledge-based paradigm in which mental skills and education were more important to advancement than manual skills. In the 20th century, New Orleans' government and business leaders believed they needed to drain and develop outlying areas to provide for

8690-459: The latter's population reached its historic peak. As with other older American cities, highway construction and suburban development drew residents from the center city to newer housing outside. The 1970 census recorded the first absolute decline in population since the city became part of the United States in 1803. The Greater New Orleans metropolitan area continued expanding in population, albeit more slowly than other major Sun Belt cities. While

8800-485: The law." The group denied these charges and provided a list of sponsors, including Representatives Adam C. Powell , Senator Glen H. Taylor , and Atlanta University President Rufus Early Clement . Patterson called the group "non-partisan" and described it as "the Red Cross of the defenders of peace, constitutional rights, justice and human rights". The 1950 McCarran Internal Security Act increased government persecution of

8910-533: The legal rights of Southern Blacks. Its largest and strongest chapters in the South were in New Orleans and Miami . Altogether, the CRC founded more than 60 local chapters which sought to combat racial discrimination, racist stereotyping, and legal injustice in their communities. The U.S. Congress and courts weakened the group with legal restrictions in 1951. In 1956, members voted to disband. The CRC took up legal causes of those they considered unjustly accused. In addition to pursuing legal campaigns, often alongside

9020-616: The legislature passed a constitutional amendment incorporating a " grandfather clause " that effectively disfranchised freedmen as well as the propertied people of color manumitted before the war. Unable to vote, African Americans could not serve on juries or in local office, and were closed out of formal politics for generations. The Southern U.S. was ruled by a white Democratic Party. Public schools were racially segregated and remained so until 1960. New Orleans' large community of well-educated, often French-speaking free persons of color ( gens de couleur libres ), who had been free prior to

9130-403: The livestock and the land were owned by their landlord, he struck her with a gun. Several of Ingram's sons came to her defense, and Stratford was killed by blows to the head. Ingram, along with four of her sons, Charles (age 17), Wallace (age 16), Sammie Lee (age 14), and James (age 12), were initially arrested, although James was later released. Charles was tried separately and was released at

9240-545: The local militia, with numerous casualties on both sides. The uprising has been called the "largest slave rebellion in US history." During the final campaign of the War of 1812 , the British sent a force of 11,000 in an attempt to capture New Orleans. Despite great challenges, General Andrew Jackson , with support from the U.S. Navy , successfully cobbled together a force of militia from Louisiana and Mississippi , U.S. Army regulars,

9350-508: The most ambitious people of color left the state in the Great Migration around World War II and after, many for West Coast destinations. From the late 1800s, most censuses recorded New Orleans slipping down the ranks in the list of largest American cities (New Orleans' population still continued to increase throughout the period, but at a slower rate than before the Civil War). In 1929

9460-479: The most explosive capital punishment cases in U.S. history. In the 1940s, she became an icon for the civil rights and social justice movement. Ingram farmed adjoining lots with white sharecropper John Ed Stratford in Schley County , Georgia, near Ellaville . On November 4, 1947, Stratford confronted Ingram, accusing her of allowing her livestock to roam freely on his land. When Ingram reminded Stratford that both

9570-419: The north, St. Bernard Parish and Lake Borgne to the east, Plaquemines Parish to the south, and Jefferson Parish to the south and west. The city anchors the larger Greater New Orleans metropolitan area , which had a population of 1,271,845 in 2020. Greater New Orleans is the most populous metropolitan statistical area (MSA) in Louisiana and, since the 2020 census, has been the 46th most populous MSA in

9680-399: The organizations had different approaches; it spent more of its funds on direct defense of clients, including appeals, whereas the CRC mounted a public campaign, complete with distribution of pamphlets and advertising on billboards. Because the CRC had attracted adverse attention from the government, with the potential to negatively affect reception of appeals in the Martinsville Seven case,

9790-514: The president and Congress. They also represented defendants in legal appeals to overturn convictions or gain lesser sentences. At that time in the South, when cases were tried by all-white juries, some of the defense team believed that gaining a life sentence instead of capital punishment was akin to acquittal, where social pressure was high for juries to find blacks guilty. The CRC also defended political dissidents, including Communists. The group conducted high-profile protests in Washington, D.C., and at

9900-490: The price per person, amounting to tens of billions of dollars (2005 dollars, adjusted for inflation) during the antebellum period, with New Orleans as a prime beneficiary. According to historian Paul Lachance, the addition of white immigrants [from Saint-Domingue] to the white creole population enabled French-speakers to remain a majority of the white population until almost 1830. If a substantial proportion of free persons of color and slaves had not also spoken French, however,

10010-624: The province who were trained as military engineers and were now assigned to design government buildings. Pierre Le Blond de Tour and Adrien de Pauger , for example, planned many early fortifications, along with the street plan for the city of New Orleans. After them in the 1740s, Ignace François Broutin, as engineer-in-chief of Louisiana, reworked the architecture of New Orleans with an extensive public works program. French policy-makers in Paris attempted to set political and economic norms for New Orleans. The city acted autonomously in much of its cultural and physical aspects, but stayed in communication with

10120-531: The request and threatened to resign. The game went on as planned. The Civil Rights movement's success in gaining federal passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 renewed constitutional rights, including voting for blacks. Together, these resulted in the most far-reaching changes in New Orleans' 20th century history. Though legal and civil equality were re-established by

10230-564: The rest of the territory. In retaliation, then-governor Étienne Perier launched a campaign to completely destroy the Natchez nation and its Native allies. By 1731, the Natchez people had been killed, enslaved, or dispersed among other tribes, but the campaign soured relations between France and the territory's Native Americans leading directly into the Chickasaw Wars of the 1730s. Relations with Louisiana's Native American population remained

10340-586: The roster, met the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets . There had been controversy over whether Grier should be allowed to play due to his race, and whether Georgia Tech should even play at all due to Georgia's Governor Marvin Griffin 's opposition to racial integration. After Griffin publicly sent a telegram to the state's Board Of Regents requesting Georgia Tech not to engage in racially integrated events, Georgia Tech's president Blake R. Van Leer rejected

10450-522: The sentences being commuted to life imprisonment. Despite the death sentence being withdrawn, public outrage against the harshness of the commuted sentences continued. Although the prosecution suggested that the confrontation between Stratford and Ingram arose from a conflict over livestock, later accounts suggested that Stratford was enraged because Ingram had repeatedly objected to his sexual harassment of her. The defense argued that Ingrams' sons killed Stratford in self-defense. The judge presiding over

10560-532: The situation for slaves in the New World . Afro-Creole was present in religious beliefs and the Louisiana Creole language. The religion most associated with this period was called Voodoo . In the city of New Orleans an inspiring mixture of foreign influences created a melting pot of culture that is still celebrated today. By the end of French colonization in Louisiana, New Orleans was recognized commercially in

10670-462: The so-called Redeemers , regaining political control of the state legislature. The federal government gave up and withdrew its troops in 1877, ending Reconstruction . In 1892 the racially integrated unions of New Orleans led a general strike in the city from November 8 to 12, shutting down the city & winning the vast majority of their demands. Dixiecrats passed Jim Crow laws, establishing racial segregation in public facilities. In 1889,

10780-577: The state legislature passed more restrictions on manumissions of slaves and virtually ended it in 1852. In the 1850s, white Francophones remained an intact and vibrant community in New Orleans. They maintained instruction in French in two of the city's four school districts (all served white students). In 1860, the city had 13,000 free people of color ( gens de couleur libres ), the class of free, mostly mixed-race people that expanded in number during French and Spanish rule. They set up some private schools for their children. The census recorded 81 percent of

10890-769: The territory's French-speaking population, these refugees had a significant impact on the culture of Louisiana, including developing its sugar industry and cultural institutions. As more refugees were allowed into the Territory of Orleans , St. Dominican refugees who had first gone to Cuba also arrived. Many of the white Francophones had been deported by officials in Cuba in 1809 as retaliation for Bonapartist schemes. Nearly 90 percent of these immigrants settled in New Orleans. The 1809 migration brought 2,731 whites, 3,102 free people of color (of mixed-race European and African descent), and 3,226 slaves of primarily African descent, doubling

11000-651: The traditional date to mark the anniversary, but the actual day is unknown) by the French Mississippi Company , under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville , on land inhabited by the Chitimacha . It was named for Philippe II, Duke of Orléans , who was regent of the Kingdom of France at the time. His title came from the French city of Orléans . As a French colony, Louisiana faced struggles with numerous Native American tribes , who were navigating

11110-527: The war, 1868 further strengthened the English-only policy imposed by federal representatives. With the predominance of English speakers, that language had already become dominant in business and government. By the end of the 19th century, French usage had faded. It was also under pressure from Irish, Italian and German immigrants. However, as late as 1902 "one-fourth of the population of the city spoke French in ordinary daily intercourse, while another two-fourths

11220-480: The war, it was spared the destruction through warfare suffered by many other cities of the American South . The Union Army eventually extended its control north along the Mississippi River and along the coastal areas. As a result, most of the southern portion of Louisiana was originally exempted from the liberating provisions of the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln . Large numbers of rural ex-slaves and some free people of color from

11330-415: The young colony. The colonists turned to sub-Saharan African slaves to make their investments in Louisiana profitable. In the late 1710s the transatlantic slave trade imported enslaved Africans into the colony. This led to the biggest shipment in 1716 where several trading ships appeared with slaves as cargo to the local residents in a one-year span. By 1724, the large number of blacks in Louisiana prompted

11440-406: Was able to understand the language perfectly," and as late as 1945, many elderly Creole women spoke no English. The last major French language newspaper, L'Abeille de la Nouvelle-Orléans (New Orleans Bee), ceased publication on December 27, 1923, after 96 years. According to some sources, Le Courrier de la Nouvelle Orleans continued until 1955. As the city was captured and occupied early in

11550-469: Was also infiltrated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation . FBI agent Matt Cvetic , who had joined the Communist Party, testified to HUAC in 1950 that the CRC was Communist-controlled and that Patterson was a Communist. He also identified a long list of politicians as Communist, as well as celebrities and community leaders. Various other agents surfaced to testify at anti-Communist trials. Association with

11660-548: Was an important port for smuggling aid to the American revolutionaries , and transporting military equipment and supplies up the Mississippi River . Beginning in the 1760s, Filipinos began to settle in and around New Orleans. Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, Count of Gálvez successfully directed a southern campaign against the British from the city in 1779. The Third Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1800 restored French control of New Orleans and Louisiana, but Napoleon sold both to

11770-429: Was arrested. The case resulting from this incident, Plessy v. Ferguson , was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896. The court ruled that " separate but equal " accommodations were constitutional, effectively upholding Jim Crow measures. In practice, African American public schools and facilities were underfunded across the South. The Supreme Court ruling contributed to this period as the nadir of race relations in

11880-624: Was publicizing cases, especially in the South, such as those of Rosa Lee Ingram and her two sons in Georgia, the Martinsville Seven in Virginia, and Willie McGee in Mississippi, in which Black people had been sentenced to death ; in the last two cases as a result of questionable rape charges. Given the disenfranchisement of blacks in the South at the turn of the century, all-white juries were standard, as only voters could serve. The CRC succeeded particularly in raising international awareness about these cases, which sometimes generated protests to

11990-426: Was the largest mass lynching in U.S. history. In July 1900 the city was swept by white mobs rioting after Robert Charles, a young African American, killed a policeman and temporarily escaped. The mob killed him and an estimated 20 other blacks; seven whites died in the days-long conflict, until a state militia suppressed it. New Orleans' economic and population zenith in relation to other American cities occurred in

12100-561: Was ultimately an orderly demonstration in which several thousand people visited elected politicians to demand action against lynching , freedom for communist leaders imprisoned for subversion (known as the Top Eleven), and implementation of the Fair Employment Practices Commission . In 1951, the Civil Rights Congress issued its petition to the United Nations entitled " We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against

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