This article originally appeared in Gulf
Coast Reconstruction Watch.
I was surprised too. But there were hints along the way.
Back in September it was hard to find an African American who had
anything good to say about New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. In early September,
New Orleans Rap artist “Juvenile” penned the song “Get
Ya Hustle On” which was released as an album and video in February
of 2006. The song castigated Nagin as someone that black people couldn’t
trust and his video featured three figures wandering the devastated
Ninth Ward wearing paper masks of George Busch, Dick Cheney, and Ray
Nagin. Three peas in a pod as far as Juvenile was concerned.
Juvenile was someone to listen to if you wanted to gauge black opinion
– at least poor dispossessed blacks. In 2002 Tulane professor Joel
Devine published a study of public opinion of the Central City neighborhood
of New Orleans, an overwhelmingly black and poor neighborhood bordering
the most affluent sections of Uptown New Orleans. Devine’s poll asked
residents in nine of the eleven census tracts who they regarded as
the most important leaders in their community for “getting things
done.” Respondents were offered choices including the then current
Mayor Marc Morial, and other black elected officials as well as home-grown
Rap entertainers, including Juvenile.
Remarkably, Juvenile trounced the opposition. While only 11% of the
respondents considered Morial “very important,” nearly three times
as many (32%) ranked Juvenile as the most effective leader. Indeed,
Juvenile emerged as the most popular leader in the community, followed
by rappers Master P and Jubilee. Based on his popularity, it would
be reasonable to conclude that Juvenile was only giving voice to the
attitudes among his supporters and fans who hesitated to express them
publicly.
Things began to change in the following months. On April 1, 2006,
I attended the rally
and march across the Mississippi River Bridge protesting the racist
Gretna police blockade
of black refugees during the Katrina flooding. As a historian of the
civil rights movement, I can say that the 5,000 people who crossed
the bridge were taking part in the largest protest in New Orleans
history.
That fact slipped past the local media but it was still a harbinger
of the growing anger and frustration that African Americans were feeling.
Something else was obvious at the rally and march. For the first time
I noticed public support for Nagin. His signs and t-shirts were everywhere
and the speakers on the dais, Al Shapton included, appeared to be
coalescing around Nagin as black New Orleans’ last hope.
Nagin’s powerful showing in the April Mayoral primary signaled a sea
change in black opinion (long before the publication of Douglas Brinkley’s
highly critical book on Nagin). Whatever misgivings they had about
the Mayor in September, African Americans found him more acceptable
then the other candidates. So what happened in the intervening months
following the controversial evacuation and rescue efforts?
I think it’s clear from the people I have been talking to, both in
the city and those still displaced, that by the primary election a
consensus had developed in the black community that white people were
deliberately attempting to take the reins of city government and remake
New Orleans into a whiter and more affluent community. This fear was
disparaged in the local media as the “so called conspiracy theory,”
but one event after another occurred that left little doubt that,
far from a conspiracy, there was an open and organized movement to
prevent poor people and their neighborhoods from returning.
The public school system had been virtually closed; thousands of poor
blacks were evicted from their homes; utility companies dragged their
feet on reconnecting black neighborhoods (Ninth Ward residents were
only allowed back into their neighborhoods this month [May]; white
“good government” groups fought to deny building permits in the flooded
areas which they hoped to bulldoze into oblivion; traditional black
occupations such as roofers and painters were given to itinerant Latino
laborers; and white neighborhoods effectively prevented FEMA from
bringing in 30,000 trailers for displaced people, mostly blacks.
Then it got worse. The uptown white elite pushed to abolish the school
board and assessors offices, both majority black, and then demanded
that the mayoral election be held while 80% of the black community
remained displaced. This campaign to change the political balance
was best represented in the New Orleans Times-Picayune’s endorsement
of a white mayoral candidate who had only 3% black support in a city
that was 70% black and then endorsed a majority white city council
ticket. No wonder that African Americans began to fear that there
was no place for them in the city envisioned by the uptown elite and
their confederates comprised of developers, urban planners, and ageing
and increasingly conservative yuppies.
Only one person with the requisite power took a stand against these
exclusion policies: Ray Nagin. The Mayor ignored the recommendations
of his own Bring New Orleans Back Commission and allowed building
permits in the flooded areas. He rejected the plans to turn the Ninth
Ward into a park and promised to bring back all neighborhoods. While
many white uptowners openly told the national media that they hoped
for a whiter city, Nagin, in his infamous Martin Luther King Day speech,
attempted in a clumsy way to assure blacks that they would return
in the same numbers as before – that the city was going to remain
a Chocolate city.
As it became obvious that Nagin was not going to do the bidding of
affluent and powerful whites, they soon abandoned him in search of
a real white hope. As the pulled their money and political support
for Nagin, the white elite ended up pushing the Mayor into the arms
of the only section of the electorate left: the African American voters.
Mitch Landrieu had solid liberal credentials, but asking blacks to
place their fates in the hands of any white man in Louisiana was asking
for blind faith. In Nagin they had a candidate they believed was beholden
to them and them alone. Whether or not their faith is misplaced we
will have to see. But the white elite ended up with the opposite of
what they dreamed for: a black mayor and a majority black city council.
We can only hope they will be more charitable and forgiving than their
erstwhile insurrectionists
The pundits will write this election off as old-fashioned racial block
voting. They’ll say Nagin won because black people always vote for
black people. They are dead wrong. New Orleans blacks have demonstrated
repeatedly that they are willing to elect white officials. For years,
black voters re-elected a white District Attorney and Civil Sheriff
in contests that included black candidates. No, people were not voting
skin color; they were voting fear. It was the deliberate efforts of
the white elite and their supporters to take control of city government
and prevent poor African Americans from returning that created the
racial fear and distrust that sent black voters into Nagin’s camp.
It was white people, not blacks, who got Ray Nagin elected.
Not all white people were part of this power grab, but their silence
in the face of injustices didn’t help inspire interracial trust. We
can restore that trust and bridge the racial divide by repudiating
those who led the palace coup and start anew by treating the poor
and the displaced as people who did not lose their citizenship when
they lost their homes and have a right to come home to a better life.
Lance Hill, Ph.D. is Executive Director of the Southern Institute for
Education and Research at Tulane University and
author of The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance
and the Civil Rights Movement. He can be contacted
at [email protected].