It started with slavery. Originally not a slave hub, New Orleans was not a big slave importer, at first. The second wave of American slavery started in 1800. The cotton and sugar cane plantations of the Deep South created a demand that could be met by slaves. The United States had banned slave imports from Africa, but New Orleans became the major marketplace for slaves being "sold south" from the tobacco plantations of Maryland and Virginia.

Most of the slaves passing through the New Orleans market were sold to the plantations. The slaves were too expensive to be domestic servants. The $1,000-$2,500 price for a slave in 1805 was equivalent $40,000-$100,000 in 2006 dollars. By 1860 only 14% of New Orleans population was African American. Nearly half of the African Americans were free and slavery was fading away as it had become an economic dinosaur.

The Civil War did little to the physical infrastructure of the city but its aftermath upset the social order. Many slaves moved in from the plantations to the city. Fighting for some continuity as Reconstruction ended, the white majority created the Jim Crow laws across the south. The federal government hoping for reconciliation with the states did not resist these heinously discriminatory and divisive laws. While the American "Melting Pot" encouraged assimilation of immigrants of many backgrounds, blacks were held apart by law. Public education remained segregated and decidedly inferior for black children. Although no longer property, blacks were marginalized in government, business and society. The 1896 Plessy v Ferguson ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court upheld segregation and created the doctrine of "Separate but Equal." Subtle, and not so subtle, devices at every turn reminded people of the difference between the races.

Legal racial discrimination continued for a century until Jim Crow began to unravel in the 1950's and was eliminated in the 1960's.  The Brown v Board of Education ruling by the US Supreme Court in 1954. the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 ended the legal basis for racial discrimination. "Affirmative Action," was created  in 1965 by executive order 11246 under Lyndon Johnson. It tilted the legal playing field slightly in favor of African Americans but kept the government in the business of discriminating due to race.