Saints, Race, and Moon

One of the hardest things to do when going through history is coming up with a complete, accurate portrayal of relatively recent history. History that's too old to easily get newspaper articles, TV reports, and your own memory, but not old enough for good history books to be published. James Lowen referred to this as the "disappearance of the recent past."

During the Rachael "Madeaux" Show, she interviewed Dr. Norman Francis.

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Dr. Francis talking about the founding of the Saints, which he was a party to.

Throughout the 50's and 60's, many in the New Orleans business community desperately wanted an NFL franchise to prove that New Orleans was a big city that could rank beside Houston and Atlanta. Momentum slowly built, but there were constant threats to derail the efforts.

One of the worst incidents happened after New Orleans hosted a Pro-Bowl. There's a brief mention at the end of this Google Timeline article from the St. Petersburg Times.

"The American League would love to have New Orleans, but the city does not want A.F.L. resentment over the walkout staged by some of the league's Negro players prior to the All Star Game held here last January. Their grievances were slight, but the league moved the game to Houston, causing a furor in the rejected city.

I've never heard a really thorough explanation of what happened, but it's something along the lines of what happened when Louis Armstrong was king of Zulu. Out of town black football players, used to at least some level of equal service and integrated facilities, were horribly offended by segregated public spaces, especially the hotels and bars. If anyone knows of a good account of what happened, I'd love to read it.

Keep in mind, other cities were struggling with what to do with the "Integration Question." New Orleans was way behind the curve. Atlanta was selling itself as "The City too Busy to Hate" (aside- if you weren't so greedy, you'd love to hate? Is that it?). New Orleans businesses were being hit due to the city's "racist" reputation.

It took some locals sticking their neck out to placate the players union enough for the league to give the OK for a New Orleans franchise. For example, Moon Landrieu battled as one of the only members of the Louisiana Legislature to vote against the infamous "hate laws" of the early 60's. During the LEH lecture series, one person said that Moon, at the time, "looked into his political grave every time he voted against those measures."* He was reviled by whites at the time for being a traitor to his race. As a city councilman, he fought to remove the Confederate flag from Council Chambers (put there as a symbol against integration, not any Grandiose delusions of history). He also passed the "Public Accommodations Act" in 1965, referred to by Dr. Francis in the interview as one of the keys to bringing the franchise to the city.

Finally, New Orleans got the nod. Here's the Google Timeline article of New Orleans being awarded the franchise that would soon be known as the Saints on Halloween.

New Orleanians have every right to enjoy this game without intrusion of politics, but before the game, let's recognize the political history of franchise. Without integration and the heroes that championed it (like Moon Landrieu, but he was only one of many), there would be no New Orleans Saints. Thank God for them and thank God for our New Orleans Saints.


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* Video here. I highly recommend all of the LEH lectures. All are biased towards the mayors, but do a good job of filling in the "memory hole" of the recent past.

Katrina's Hidden Race War? Not Exactly

Katrina's Hidden Race War. From The Nation.

Their thesis is white vigilante's used Katrina as an excuse to gun down whatever black people they saw.

Hands down the best local reaction: "I can't believe Nossiter didn't write this." Worth a read. Lots of horrifying shit happened after Katrina. It was a breakdown in civilization. One of the more interesting stories Dambala recounts: "I've got interviews with people on Dumaine Street who told me of a band of men (African-American) with guns, a police officer included, who were systematically hunting down drug dealers and thugs in their neighborhood and killing them."

Unbelievable attrocities happened in the aftermath of Katrina that will never fully be explored.

For more, here's NOLA Slate's firsthand account of riding out Katrina's aftermath in Algiers Point.

More local reactions: Allowed to Live: "if Alexander and Collins left Algiers Point and told their friends not to set foot in the area, they'd be allowed to live."

Jackass could have stayed in Chicago and learned the real "meaning" of the N-word just fine. The sentiments expressed in this story could have been expressed by any one of a hundred people I've talked to in my years living here. This isn't about the South. This is about America, as it always has been, as we keep saying here: Our fate is your fate, and it was, and it is. Our own."

Mark Folse put it best: "I Hate Illinois Nazis.

My 2 cents: if you want to know what a race war looks like, look up the past or look up what's going on in your own neighborhood before looking down your nose at New Orleans.

UPDATE- Reserve 5 minutes of your time to read Varg's comments.

Spam Email of the Day - 23 Oct 2008

On the bright side, there's only a few more days until election day. On the other hand, it could be a long 4-8 years.

Plot To Kidnap Obama Exposed!

Thanks to our top notch US Secret Service protection, a brazen new plot to kidnap Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has been exposed! These kidnappers are not only getting brave (maybe desperate), they’re also getting more inventive


I think someone originally got the joke from Tiger Droppings.

My response:

1 Local Scandal, 1 National Scandal

"Sterilization Plan Fights Poverty" Wow, the commenters at Nola.com have finally put StormFront (no way I'm providing a link there) to shame. The Nola.com administrators aided and abetted this racist shit, too. They placed that article at the top with direct links to the comments to fuel the fire.

I'll get past the obvious horror of the proposal to point out two things: this is a pre-planned ploy to get reelected and it will work.

LaBruzzo has been a dick for a while. He was recently famous for pushing hard for the legislative pay raise and then denying it. The pay raise issue would have killed his chance of getting reelected, but now District 81 will probably reelect him. He was a waste of oxygen, even without the eugenics, but now he'll get reelected. Far more people agree with him than people are comfortable to admit. He can claim he's being 'persecuted by the liberal media,' the 81st district will fall for the ploy, and they'll forgive a good ole boy. And then they'll have a few more years to put up with his sorry ass.

McCain Abruptly Cuts and Runs from First Debate. VERY shocking. He might have just shot his chances with the election on this one. His speechwriter should reserve some time to start the first draft of his November concession speech at this rate. It's been a HORRIBLE week for him. Reporters revolted, Freddie Mac has been paying his campaign manager all the way through August, the Edwards team at the National Enquirer is now going after Palin's past infidelity, ... (the list is rather long). Suffice to say, McCain has not been a happy camper recently.

I think the real reason is McCain is laying awake at night with what will happen when Palin gets asked actual questions. She's going to have a "Macaca" moment that will be the new buzzword for "Macaca" moments. They now realize what a fuckup they made with not vetting her. What they wanted all along was to delay/cancel the VP debates. They'll let McCain take the criticism for the presidential debates and hope nobody notices Palin is still being kept in a box. McCain has handled lots of devastating news. It's taken a toll, but he's still standing and he's kept the race close.

I feel so sorry for Ole Miss and Oxford, MS, though. They are the true victims in this mess. They've done a lot to clean up for the big date and they're shocked. Those that aren't shocked are furious. Ole Miss is getting incredible press (see this fantastic article from today's NY Times). They were looking forward to accommodating scores of national and foreign reporters to the first debate to show off how far Mississippi has come. McCain's decision to screw them over will have a price, though: the MS Senate race to replace Trent Lott. I predict the next polls will show Ronnie Wicker taking the heat for McCain in MS. Musgrove, the popular (and surprisingly liberal) former governor, will win big. Once a Mississippi politician wins a senate race, they pretty much have the seat for life. Lott/Stennis and Chochran/Eastland held most of the 20th century for Mississippi.

On a personal note, Ole Miss was my evacuation school. Katrina happened during my senior year of college and I had to fill in enough classes to graduate on time. Ole Miss took me in and, while I'm not going to lie and say I enjoyed it (it was Katrina, not the school), it was as good as it could have been under the circumstances. Everyone there was so understanding, especially the Dean of Students and the head of the engineering school. Thank you so much Ole Miss. Without them, I wouldn't have graduated on time or even worse. Thanks again. You have my sincere condolences and I hope McCain shows up.

UPDATE- Celecus has more on LaBruzzo with a nice roundup of the local blogosphere reaction.

Also, my dad grew up in north Mississippi. He knew the Mississippi McCains and my dad was a freshman at Ole Miss during the Meredith riots. He remembers every redneck in Mississippi converging on Oxford to turn federal agents into swiss cheese and the agents responding by shooting tear gas grenades into every window on campus, including his freshman dormitory. Curtis Wilkie, a friend and classmate of my dad wrote a wonderful book about his experiences growing up in Mississippi and coming back as an adult named Dixie: A Personal Odyssey Through Events That Shaped the Modern South. I've read it and I recommend it.

Racism and Obama

Salon Article on Racism and Obama.

Here are the articles' most important points, in my opinion:

* Most people are familiar with 2 kinds of blacks: the type they see locally going to church and the type they see on the evening news carrying a stereo out the window. Obama doesn't fit into either of these categories. He's an urban, middle-class, cosmopolitan black, which just doesn't compute to some.

* Despite being bitter political rivals, so many people's thoughts of Obama are colored by Jesse Jackson.

* The assassination angle shouldn't be discounted. I'm not entirely sure why, but it's important and will pops up in lots of conversations about Obama.

* Even people that fancy themselves as progressive might not vote that way. I wonder what would happen if you polled everyone walking into Whole Foods on their voting choice and then tracked those people's actual votes once the curtain closed and they were all alone in the voting booth.

The reason I'm writing about this is a couple of incidents at work. I work in a very conservative office and normally it doesn't bug me. I end up eating venison sausage fairly often.

In recent conversations, some have discussed the assassination of Obama more frequently. I'm still trying to figure out exactly why.

But what really disturbed me was a conversation with a lifelong Democrat who was a union leader earlier in life. He told me he's voting for Nader, but I was curious why not Obama. He's said Obama's policies are probably going to be along the lines of Clinton's, he loved Bill Clinton, and he knows the Republicans are out to screw over everyone but upper crust stockholders. He's never voted for a Republican because of how he saw the unions treated in South Louisiana. He also believes that the only reason Palin was selected was because she was a pretty face and will distract people from McCain's policies and how McCain is now beholden to hard-right wing of the GOP.

Yesterday, he told me, "I'm not voting for a nigger. I know how that sounds, but I don't care anymore." Coming from someone else, I could have just brushed it off, but given his background and my respect for the man, it was like a punch to the gut. I asked him a little more, just so I could learn why and it revolved around the failings of earlier black leaders (Jesse Jackson, of course being mentioned prominently) and how blacks control the politics of most urban areas.

Here's someone who knows the political scene, but just can't bring himself to vote Obama because of the candidate's skin color.

I think Dr. King's hopes might have to wait a few more years.