From Slavery to Civil Rights: On the Streetcars of New Orleans, 1830s–Present

Abstract

In From Slavery to Civil Rights, Hilary McLaughlin-Stonham promises to offer at heart a political history of the rise and decline of Jim Crow in Louisiana. She focuses on how politicians developed segregationist legislation and whether the laws were in lockstep with the state's white population. The streetcars of New Orleans serve as the site for this political history because of the city's primary importance in the state and because over many decades conflicts over racial hierarchy often played out on streetcars. The book's strongest sections cover the era from 1890 to 1930. In this period the streetcar system expanded as the population of New Orleans grew. Racial hierarchy and the enabling legislation of segregationist laws solidified across the South. In 1890 Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act, which helped pave the way for laws that prohibited miscegenation and disfranchised Black voters. McLaughlin-Stonham analyzes not just how the Separate...