In the first presidential election after the Civil War, violence and voter suppression prevented Black voters from exercising their right.
What do we mean when we talk about Cajun Country? The answers are tied up in race, class, language, and, of course, history.
Amid the American Civil War, a new civil rights movement was forming in New Orleans—in French.
October 2, 2020, marks the 100th wedding anniversary of General L. Kemper and Leila Moore Williams, founders of The Historic New Orleans Collection. To celebrate this milestone, we look back at their biographies to see how their personal histories set forth the impetus to collect, preserve, and share the history of Louisiana.
To help us celebrate one of the triumphs of recent Hollywood South creativity, Benh Zeitlin—who directed, co-wrote, and co-scored Beasts of the Southern Wild—answered a few of our questions.
For years, cinephiles have lamented a lack of originality coming out of Hollywood studios. However, there’s no shortage of stories waiting to be told onscreen, and that’s where we can be of use to studio bosses.
Over the course of the two years after Hurricane Katrina, Rolland Golden roamed the city’s flooded areas, sketching and painting a series of 26 scenes representing the turmoil and devastation of the city during the flood and the stark desolation after the waters receded.
The wide range of materials features objects such as the typewriter Williams used to write the play, early manuscript drafts, original playscripts, playbills, and photographs (including Vivien Leigh’s photograph collection from the shooting of the 1951 film version), as well as posters, lobby cards, first editions of published volumes, and foreign translations.
The 1951 film of Tennessee Williams’s New Orleans-set A Streetcar Named Desire won multiple Academy Awards and is considered a landmark of American cinema. To prepare for the August 24, 2020, #NolaMovieNight group re-watch of the film, First Draft returned to local dialect coach and acting teacher Francine Segal for insight into the film’s accents (always of interest to New Orleanians) and acting styles.
To set the stage (as it were) for the August 24 #NolaMovieNight group screening of the 1951 film version of A Streetcar Named Desire, First Draft reached out to two Tennessee Williams Annual Review principals for insight into the publication and some thoughts on the film’s cultural impact.
