Editors' Preface 1 PART ONE: LOUISIANA'S COLONIAL CONTEXT 3 The Frontier Exchange Economy of the Lower Mississippi Valley before 1783 by Daniel J. Usner 5 The Moral Climate of French Colonial Louisiana, 1699-1763 by Carl A. Brasseaux 25 Oliver Pollock's Plantations: An Early Anglo Landowner on the Lower Mississippi, 1769-1824 by Light T. Cummins 37 PART TWO: WOMEN, RACE, AND CLASS IN EARLY LOUISIANA 49 Desiring Total Tranquility--and Not Getting It: Conflict Involving Free Black Women in Spanish New Orleans by Kimberly Hanger 52 A Female Planter from West Feliciana Parish: The Letters of Rachel O'Connor by Sara Brooks Sundberg 63 The Murder of a "Lewd and Abandoned Woman": State of Louisiana v. Abraham Parker by Judith Kelleher Schafer 78 PART THREE: TRANSFORMATION OF THE LOUISIANA "CREOLE" 93 Early New Orleans Society: A Reappraisal by Joseph G. Tregle, Jr. 95 In My Father's House: Relationships and Identity in an Interracial New Orleans Creole Family, 1845-1875 by Justin Nystrom 108 PART FOUR: VIOLENT LOUISIANA 127 "I Would Rather Be Among the Comanches": The Military Occupation of Southwest Louisiana, 1865 by Michael G. Wade 129 From the Barrel of a Gun: The Politics of Murder in Grant Parish by Joel M.
Sipress 142 Feuding Is Our Means of Societal Regulation: Elusive Stability in Southeastern Louisiana's Piney Woods, 1877-1910 by Samuel Hyde, Jr. 154 An Inhospitable Land: Anti-Italian Sentiment and Violence in Louisiana, 1891-1924 by Alan G. Gauthreaux 164 PART FIVE: PROGRESSIVES AND RACE 177 When Plessy Met Ferguson by Keith Weldon Medley 180 The Rest of the Story: Kate Gordon and the Opposition to the Nineteenth Amendment in the South by Elna C. Green 188 In Pursuit of Louisiana Progressives by Samuel C. Shepherd 197 PART SIX: MODERN LOUISIANA POLITICS 209 "What he did and what he promised to do .": Huey Long and the Horizons of Louisiana Politics by Jerry P. Sanson 212 Huey Long: A Political Contradiction by Glen Jeansonne 220 "When I Took the Oath of Office, I Took No Vow of Poverty": Race, Corruption, and Democracy in Louisiana, 1928-2000 by Anthony J. Badger 232 The Politics of Poverty and History: Racial Inequality and the Long Prelude to Katrina by Kent B.
Germany 248 PART SEVEN: TRANSITIONS IN RACE RELATIONS 257 Racial Repression in World War Two: The New Iberia Incident by Adam Fairclough 259 Transitional Generations: African American Workers, Industrialization, and Education in the Northern Louisiana Lumber and Paper Industries, 1930-1950 by Lesley-Anne Reed 270 PART EIGHT: CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT IN MODERN LOUISIANA 289 Making the "Birthplace of Jazz": Tourism and Musical Heritage Marketing in New Orleans by J. Mark Souther 291 Commercialization of Cajun Cuisine by Marcelle Bienvenu, Carl A. Brasseaux, and Ryan A. Brasseaux 314 Who Destroyed the Marsh?: Oil Field Canals, Coastal Ecology, and the Debate over Louisiana's Shrinking Wetlands by Tyler Priest and Jason P. Theriot 331.