Louisiana Legacies : Readings in the History of the Pelican State

Showcasing the colorful, even raucous, political, social, and unique cultural qualities of Louisiana history, this new collection of essays features the finest and latest scholarship. Includes readings featuring recent scholarship that expand on traditional historical accounts Includes material on every region of Louisiana Covers a wide range of fields, including social, environmental, and economic history Detailed, focused material on different areas in Louisiana history, including women’s history as well as the state’s diverse ethnic populations Louisiana Legacies: Readings in the History of the Pelican State 5 CONTENTS 7 Editors’ Preface 11 PART ONE: LOUISIANA’S COLONIAL CONTEXT 13 The Frontier Exchange Economy of the Lower Mississippi Valley before 1783 15 The Moral Climate of French Colonial Louisiana, 1699–1763 35 Oliver Pollock’s Plantations: An Early Anglo Landowner on the Lower Mississippi, 1769–1824 47 PART TWO: WOMEN, RACE, AND CLASS IN EARLY LOUISIANA 59 Desiring Total Tranquility—and Not Getting It: Conflict Involving Free Black Women in Spanish New Orleans 62 A Female Planter from West Feliciana Parish: The Letters of Rachel O’Connor 73 The Murder of a “Lewd and Abandoned Woman”: State of Louisiana v. Abraham Parker 88 PART THREE: TRANSFORMATION OF THE LOUISIANA “CREOLE” 103 Early New Orleans Society: A Reappraisal 105 In My Father’s House: Relationships and Identity in an Interracial New Orleans Creole Family, 1845–1875 118 PART FOUR: VIOLENT LOUISIANA 137 “I Would Rather Be Among the Comanches”: The Military Occupation of Southwest Louisiana, 1865 139 From the Barrel of a Gun: The Politics of Murder in Grant Parish 152 Feuding Is Our Means of Societal Regulation: Elusive Stability in Southeastern Louisiana’s Piney Woods, 1877–1910 164 An Inhospitable Land: Anti-Italian Sentiment and Violence in Louisiana, 1891–1924 174 PART FIVE: PROGRESSIVES AND RACE 187 When Plessy Met Ferguson 190 The Rest of the Story: Kate Gordon and the Opposition to the Nineteenth Amendment in the South 198 In Pursuit of Louisiana Progressives 207 PART SIX: MODERN LOUISIANA POLITICS 219 “What he did and what he promised to do . . .”: Huey Long and the Horizons of Louisiana Politics 222 Huey Long: A Political Contradiction 230 “When I Took the Oath of Office, I Took No Vow of Poverty”: Race, Corruption, and Democracy in Louisiana, 1928–2000 242 The Politics of Poverty and History: Racial Inequality and the Long Prelude to Katrina 258 PART SEVEN: TRANSITIONS IN RACE RELATIONS 267 Racial Repression in World War Two: The New Iberia Incident 269 Transitional Generations: African American Workers, Industrialization, and Education in the Northern Louisiana Lumber and Paper Industries, 1930–1950 280 PART EIGHT: CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT IN MODERN LOUISIANA 299 Making the “Birthplace of Jazz”: Tourism and Musical Heritage Marketing in New Orleans 301 Commercialization of Cajun Cuisine 324 Who Destroyed the Marsh?: Oil Field Canals, Coastal Ecology, and the Debate over Louisiana’s Shrinking Wetlands 341 Showcasing the colorful, even raucous, political, social, and unique cultural qualities of Louisiana history, this new collection of essays features the finest and latest scholarship. Louisiana Legacies is an ideal documentary reader to supplement courses in Louisiana state history.