First Draft - Politics and War

February 12, 2020
By Jenny Schwartzberg, curator of education

The Freedmen's Bureau was established, in part, to provide for the education of African American children. Records show that demand for that service was often too much for the system to handle.




February 6, 2020
By Aimee Everett, curator

During Reconstruction, Williams became actively involved in the fight for equity in education and the rights of African American women.




February 4, 2020
By Eric Seiferth, curator/historian

In 1950's and '60s New Orleans, the Congress of Racial Equality used nonviolent tactics to press for racial equality guaranteed under federal law.




November 22, 2019
By Nick Weldon, associate editor

Already a fixture in the South, Reverend Benjamin Palmer gained national fame—he went viral, in an 1860 sense—just as Southern states were deciding how to respond to Lincoln’s election. 




June 4, 2019
By Eli A. Haddow, marketing associate

It was a hot June day in 1969, when for the first time, black and white kids dove into the Audubon Park swimming pool together, marking a symbolic victory for the civil rights movement in New Orleans.




April 12, 2019
By Jason Wiese, associate director, Williams Research Center

Late on April 12, 1803, American diplomat Robert R. Livingston hurried home to his Paris lodgings, sat down at his desk, and began writing one of the most extraordinary letters in American history.




March 8, 2019
By Nick Weldon, associate editor

Before its ruins provided scenery for portions of Beyoncé’s visual album “Lemonade,” HBO’s series “True Detective,” or AMC’s “Into the Badlands,” Fort Macomb was considered a crucial line of defense for New Orleans and the country at large.




November 2, 2018
By Eli A. Haddow and Eric Seiferth

From the elimination of the city’s red-light district to unprecedented displays of patriotism, WWI brought significant changes to local ways of life.




August 14, 2018
By Eli A. Haddow, marketing associate

On a sweltering July day, 19-year-old New Orleans native Chasity Hunter admits that she’s considered leaving her hometown. When asked where she’d go, she says, with a laugh, Massachusetts, “because it’s cold.”  New Orleans’s tumultuous relationship with Mother Nature has certainly shaped Hunter’s feelings about her city—but it also set her on a path of discovery that changed her life. 






 

First Draft Navigation
All Articles