Bibliography: Segregation

Formal segregation in Louisiana dates to 1890 with the first legislation requiring segregation of railroad cars, a law that eventually led to the famous Plessy v Ferguson case. In some respects, then, the history of segregation in New Orleans would run from 1890 to the 1960s. In widening the scope from formal to de facto segregation, racial segregation dates back to laws and norms governing the city’s free people of color in the years before the war, and forward to residential segregation today. The city’s history of segregation includes customs based on racial classifications that were legally enforced, socially flaunted, and politically challenged. Titles in this bibliography address how issues of gender, sexuality, and respectability play out across and within segregated spaces. In addition, New Orleans history is characterized not only by battles to desegregate housing and schools, but also by the sometimes-conflicting “black-and-tan” political priorities of New Orleans Afro-Creole and Anglo-American descended ministers, politicians and organizers.

Bennett, James B. Religion and the Rise of Jim Crow in New Orleans. Princeton University Press, 2005.

Blue Book. Seventh. Blue Book. New Orleans, 1906.

Blue Book. Ninth. Blue Book. New Orleans, 1908.

Blue Book. Tenth Edition. Blue Book. New Orleans, 1909.

Blue Book. Blue Book. New Orleans, 1910.

Regarding the Blue Books: The official guide to Storyville, a legalized area for prostitution in New Orleans between 1897 and 1917. The guide lists residents and landladies of all houses of prostitution, with divisions by race, which, over the run of the serial, range from identifications including “white,” “colored,” “octoroon,” “Jewess” and “French.” The guide was published every year; each listing here is a new edition. It is notable as well for its ads, making explicit both the famous local characters of the district, and the specific offerings – of women, art, luxury, and drink – of each house.

Cable, George Washington. The Negro Question. C. Scribner’s Sons, 1898.

Fischer, Roger A. “Racial Segregation in Ante Bellum New Orleans.” The American Historical Review 74, no. 3 (February 1969): 926-937.

Hair, William Ivy. Carnival of Fury: Robert Charles and the New Orleans Race Riot of 1900. Updated. Louisiana State University Press, 2008.

Johnson, Jerah. “Jim Crow Laws of the 1890s and the Origins of New Orleans Jazz: Correction of an Error.” Popular Music 19, no. 2 (April 2000): 243-251.

Lofgren, Charles A. The Plessy Case: A Legal-Historical Interpretation. Oxford University Press, USA, 1988.

Medley, Keith Weldon. We As Freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson. Pelican Publishing Company, 2003.

Reed, Germaine A. “Race Legislation in Louisiana, 1864-1920.” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 6, no. 4 (Autumn 1965): 379-392.

Rudwick, Elliott. “Carnival of Fury: Robert Charles and the New Orleans Race Riot of 1900..” Journal of Urban History 4, no. 2 (1978): 239-246.

 

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