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A seasoned City Hall reporter once speculated that DeLesseps S. Morrison studied the works of Machiavelli. Ambitious, gregarious, and astutely expedient, “Chep” Morrison was the dominant figure in New Orleans politics during the middle of the twentieth century. A strong leader who used his reform image to the fullest advantage and established an impressive national reputation for himself and New Orleans, Morrison was nonetheless an accomplished politician who created his own organization and practiced spoils politics in the traditional New Orleans style. In Louisiana, Morrison was never able to transcend the image of the big-city mayor. His greatest ambition, the governorship of Louisiana, eluded him. In a state that was predominantly rural and largely Protestant, he was urban and Catholic. In many ways, he was a man before his time. In this detailed study of the Morrison administration and New Orleans city government in the postwar years, Edward F. Haas traces the career of Morrison, who once rejected a U.S. Senate seat because “I’d just be one of a hundred there,” and gives an absorbing account of this three unsuccessful bids for the governorship, his opposition to the powerful Long faction, his handling of New Orleans school desegregation, and his role in the police scandals of the 1950s. Thirty-seven photographs provide a valuable record of a dynamic era in New Orleans history.
Edward F. Haas, a native of New Orleans, is Assistant Professor of History at Centenary College of Louisiana in Shreveport. He received his B.A. from Tulane and his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. DeLesseps S. Morrison and the Image of Reform is his first book.
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