Shortly after New Orleans became a US city (via the Louisiana Purchase), the municipal council established one of the country’s first professional salaried police forces and began operation of Police Jail, both efforts aimed at the capture and control of enslaved people who had run away from or otherwise disobeyed their enslavers. The history of New Orleans and Louisiana is an intertwined history of slavery and incarceration, the effects of which can still be felt today.
Joining me in this episode is Dr. John Bardes, Assistant Professor of History at Louisiana State University and author of The Carceral City: Slavery and the Making of Mass Incarceration in New Orleans, 1803-1930.
Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “The Best Jazz Club In New Orleans,” by PaoloArgento, available for use via the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is “Slave prison (Calabozo), New Orleans,” by photographer A. Genthe, taken between 1920 and 1926; the photograph is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress.
Additional sources:
The Reconstruction Era & its Aftermath
The Southern Plantation System
The Jazz Maestros of Jim Crow America
Negro League Baseball
Log Cabin Republicans and the Gay Right
American Posture Panic
The History of DARE
Alice Roosevelt Longworth
Eleanor Roosevelt's Visit to the Pacific Theatre during World War II
Eliza Scidmore
Foreign Missionaries & American Diplomacy in the 19th Century
Tammany Hall, FDR & the Murder of Vivian Gordon
The Combahee River Raid of 1863
The History of Ice in the United States
The History of Blue Jeans
The History of Pinball
The History of US Foreign Disaster Relief
LSD, the CIA & the History of Psychedelic Science
Clotilda: The Last U.S. Slave Ship
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