Oral History Interview with Alfred Marshall (Part 2)

Alfred Marshall was born in New Orleans on March 12, 1959, and grew up in the Calliope housing projects (later B.W. Cooper, now Marrero Commons) in Central City. His mother was a cook and his father was a businessman who ran a fruit truck and a barbershop. As a young man, he was an athlete. His life was profoundly shaped by early and repeated encounters with the criminal justice system, experiences with systemic racism, the impact of the War on Drugs on his community, and the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Through his post-Katrina activism with organizations like STAND and the Worker\u27s Center for Racial Justice, he developed expertise in community organizing, labor rights, and building Black-Brown solidarity.https://scholarworks.uno.edu/ejrloh/1032/thumbnail.jp

Oral History Interview with Alfred Marshall (Part 1)

Alfred Marshall was born in New Orleans on March 12, 1959, and grew up in the Calliope housing projects (later B.W. Cooper, now Marrero Commons) in Central City. His mother was a cook and his father was a businessman who ran a fruit truck and a barbershop. As a young man, he was an athlete. His life was profoundly shaped by early and repeated encounters with the criminal justice system, experiences with systemic racism, the impact of the War on Drugs on his community, and the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Through his post-Katrina activism with organizations like STAND and the Worker\u27s Center for Racial Justice, he developed expertise in community organizing, labor rights, and building Black-Brown solidarity.https://scholarworks.uno.edu/ejrloh/1031/thumbnail.jp

Oral History Interview with Britain Forsyth (Part 1)

Britain Forsyth is the policy and research coordinator at Step Up. She was also the C4 board chair for Forum for Equality, a statewide LGBT rights organization, and a member of the Louisiana Democratic State Central Committee. Born in 1995 in Lafayette, Louisiana, to educator parents, she grew up in what she described as a liberal but deeply segregated environment. Her personal journey included moving to New Orleans as a teenager, pursuing a bachelor\u27s degree in counseling, and later earning a Master of Public Administration (MPA) from the University of New Orleans after leaving a counseling master\u27s program to pursue political activism. Her expertise was in community organizing, legislative strategy, and economic and social justice advocacy.https://scholarworks.uno.edu/ejrloh/1033/thumbnail.jp

Oral History Interview with Willie Woods (Part 1)

Willie Woods Jr. is a lifelong resident of New Orleans, born in 1959 and raised in the Treme neighborhood. His father was a Teamster truck driver, and his mother worked in the hospitality industry. Mr. Woods spent his entire career as a banquet server in New Orleans, working at the Convention Center, the Fairmont Hotel, the Monteleone, and the Hilton. Through his decades of work, he gained extensive first-hand experience in both union and non-union environments, which culminated in his role as a worker-organizer in the campaign to unionize the Hilton.https://scholarworks.uno.edu/ejrloh/1035/thumbnail.jp

Oral History Interview with Britain Forsyth (Part 2)

Britain Forsyth is the policy and research coordinator at Step Up. She was also the C4 board chair for Forum for Equality, a statewide LGBT rights organization, and a member of the Louisiana Democratic State Central Committee. Born in 1995 in Lafayette, Louisiana, to educator parents, she grew up in what she described as a liberal but deeply segregated environment. Her personal journey included moving to New Orleans as a teenager, pursuing a bachelor\u27s degree in counseling, and later earning a Master of Public Administration (MPA) from the University of New Orleans after leaving a counseling master\u27s program to pursue political activism. Her expertise was in community organizing, legislative strategy, and economic and social justice advocacy.https://scholarworks.uno.edu/ejrloh/1034/thumbnail.jp

Oral History Interview with Valerie Jefferson

Valerie Jefferson was born in Chicago in 1965 and raised in Magnolia, Mississippi. She earned a degree in elementary education from Alcorn University. After finding that teaching did not pay enough, she moved to New Orleans and was hired as a bus operator for the RTA in 1993. Her experience being fired and subsequently reinstated with the union\u27s help spurred her deep involvement in ATU Local 1560. She held various roles, including shop steward and vice president, before being elected as the local\u27s first female president in 2019. Beyond her union work, Ms. Jefferson served as the labor chair for the New Orleans branch and the Louisiana State Conference of the NAACP. She was also an active member of the ATU International Black Caucus, the ATU International Women\u27s Caucus, and community organizations like Step Up Louisiana.https://scholarworks.uno.edu/ejrloh/1037/thumbnail.jp

Oral History Interview with Willie Woods (Part 2)

Willie Woods Jr. is a lifelong resident of New Orleans, born in 1959 and raised in the Treme neighborhood. His father was a Teamster truck driver, and his mother worked in the hospitality industry. Mr. Woods spent his entire career as a banquet server in New Orleans, working at the Convention Center, the Fairmont Hotel, the Monteleone, and the Hilton. Through his decades of work, he gained extensive first-hand experience in both union and non-union environments, which culminated in his role as a worker-organizer in the campaign to unionize the Hilton.https://scholarworks.uno.edu/ejrloh/1036/thumbnail.jp

The Ways of Water

The Ways of Water tells the story of recent college graduate Lindsay Cady, who heads to Alabama with his best friend in the hopes that he will find a way to put his new journalism degree to use. After scouring the news for days, a story that seems tailor-made for him appears on television. A child has gone missing in a nearby county, and the police are doing nothing to find him, according to the child’s distressed stepmother. Cady insists that this story demands to be told by him, though it\u27s unclear if his motivation is really about finding this missing child, or his intense captivation with the boy’s stepmother

Foodways as Agentive Response to Disaster in Colonial New Orleans: The French Quarter Fires of 1788 and 1794

Disasters have plagued the City of New Orleans since its foundation in 1718. This year marks the twentieth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Most locals have personal memories of Hurricane Katrina or have friends and family who experienced the storm. The effects of Hurricane Katrina were far-reaching and often life-changing. However, Hurricane Katrina is not the only major disaster to have left an indelible mark on the landscape and culture of New Orleans. Two fires in the eighteenth century destroyed significant portions of the colony and left approximately seventy percent of the population homeless. And yet, we know very little about these transformative fires outside of the anecdotal stories repeated by tour guides and historians alike and a recognition that the fires shifted the architectural signature of the colony from French to Spanish design. These well-known but poorly understood events in the history of New Orleans likely had a greater influence on the people and culture of the burgeoning colony than has previously been acknowledged. The purpose of this research is to expand our understanding of the two eighteenth-century fires through an archaeological examination of foodways. New Orleans is well known for its local cuisine, which blends the cultural traditions of the myriad individuals and groups who have inhabited the city since its founding. Foodways are a practical arena in which to examine how disasters affect culture because foodways are literally the embodiment of culture as well as being reflective of the personal choices of individuals and groups. The goal of this research is to elucidate what changes in foodways can tell us about how people responded to two historic disasters in New Orleans. The results of this research are interpreted through the lens of agency theory with particular emphasis on the concepts of daily practice, cultural embodiment, and individual experimentation. Ingenuity and innovation were crucial to survival in colonial environments, especially when disasters were a regular part of colonial life. I argue that New Orleans’ long history of disasters has created a culture of adaptation and creative improvisation that has persisted from its colonial foundations to the present era