Creating the Big Easy: New Orleans, American culture, and the emergence of modern tourism, 1915--1950 (Louisiana)

Between the First and Second World Wars, New Orleans shared in cultural changes affecting the United States that gave birth to the modern tourism industry. Concern with maintaining white supremacy spurred interest in reducing the influence of black culture even as jazz seized the popular imagination. Local leaders worked diligently to reduce black history into acceptable stereotypes while constructing urban spaces for whites. Furthermore, Prohibition altered urban spaces by removing saloons and bars, traditionally male entertainment venues also associated with women of questionable character, from public view. Combined with the successful culmination of the suffrage movement, the ban on alcohol, along with tighter restrictions on prostitution, allowed white women with middle class sensibilities to feel comfortable entering the streets, thereby creating a larger tourist market. No longer did women fear being confused with less respectable, “public” women. Moreover, the advent of the automobile forced businessmen to reconsider their roles as urban boosters. Businessmen since the early 1800s emphasized the importance of industrial and commerce development. However, the ethos of hard work and efficiency clashed with the desires of drivers eager to visit leisurely, exotic locales. Only slowly, with a rising number of motorists and the upheaval of the Great Depression, did businessmen and politicians come to embrace tourism as the centerpiece of the local economy. The solidification of white supremacist views, the alteration in gender conventions, and the new commitment of businessmen to tourism each physically impacted the cityscape by contributing most prominently to the re-invention of the French Quarter and Mardi Gras. New Orleans manifested the preconditions that contributed to the emergence of modern tourism in the United States and Americans' increasing acceptability of leisure activities as worthwhile endeavors both to the community and among individuals.