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.