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New Orleans After the Promises...
Poverty, Citizenship, and the Search for The Great Society
In the 1960s and 1970s, New Orleans experienced one of the greatest
transformations in its history. Its people replaced Jim Crow, fought
a War on Poverty, and emerged with glittering skyscrapers,
professional football, and a building so large it had to be called
the Superdome. New Orleans after the Promises looks back at that era
to explore how a few thousand locals tried to bring the Great
Society to Dixie. With faith in God and American progress, they
believed that they could conquer poverty, confront racism, establish
civic order, and expand the economy. At a time when liberalism
seemed to be on the wane nationally, black and white citizens in New
Orleans cautiously partnered with each other and with the federal
government to expand liberalism in the South.
As Kent Germany examines how the civil rights, antipoverty, and
therapeutic initiatives of the Great Society dovetailed with the
struggles of black New Orleanians for full citizenship, he defines
an emerging public/private governing apparatus that he calls the
"Soft State": a delicate arrangement involving constituencies as
varied as old-money civic leaders and Black Power proponents who
came together to sort out the meanings of such new federal programs
as Community Action, Head Start, and Model Cities. While those
diverse groups struggled-violently on occasion-to influence the
process of racial inclusion and the direction of economic growth,
they dramatically transformed public life in one of America's oldest
cities. While many wonder now what kind of city will emerge after
Katrina, New Orleans after the Promises offers a detailed portrait
of the complex city that developed after its last epic
reconstruction.
About the Author
Kent Germany, a Louisiana native and former resident of New Orleans,
is an assistant professor and deputy director of the Presidential
Recordings Program at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of
Public Affairs. He is coeditor of two books about Lyndon Johnson and
the 1960s: The Kennedy Assassination and the Transfer of Power and
Toward the Great Society.
To order online from Amazon.com
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