When historian Alecia Long was casting about for the subject of her next book, she hit upon the idea of writing about New Orleans in the 1960s.
Although the city is known for its laissez-faire, gay-friendly atmosphere, Long found that it wasn’t always that way. In fact, many homophobic activities and ordinances in the state originated in New Orleans.
“I started out looking at antihomosexual activity from 1950 to 1960,” said Long, a Knoxville native who divides her time between her adopted home in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, where she is an associate professor of history at LSU.
“By 1960, there was a legislative committee on ‘sex deviates,’” said Long. “The committee named an advisory panel of people from around the state and held hearings about the problems of ‘sex deviates,’ about gay people gathering in the French Quarter—which leads us to question the idea of New Orleans as the only liberal place in the state.
“The antihomosexual panic was really a product of New Orleans. Very vocal reformers were adding information to the ordinances of Orleans Parish so that ‘sex perverts’ could not work in bars or other places that served alcohol. They wanted to toughen up the laws, and they had some success. I’m trying to show how this comes out of New Orleans and spreads to the rest of the state.”
One of the most active proponents of antihomosexual activity, Long discovered, was Jacob Morrison, the half-brother of deLesseps “Chep” Morrison, mayor of New Orleans from 1946 to 1961. Jacob Morrison and his wife Mary lived in the French Quarter and are honored today by the Vieux Carré Commission Foundation for their work to preserve the Quarter.
In the 1940s, Morrison was president of the Vieux Carré Property Owners Association. A member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, he worked to support preservation through legislation and incentives for owners to maintain their properties. In 1957, he published a pioneering textbook, Historic Preservation Law, in which he wrote, “The ‘City that Care Forgot’ has more than its share of people who don’t care and who always seem to forget.”
His widow Mary said in a 1978 newspaper interview, “We were young and full of energy and terribly optimistic . . . . We were so filled with enthusiasm about the charm and historic importance of the Vieux Carré, and we thought that once we had made others aware of that importance, the Quarter would be safe. Instead, we’ve had to fight over and over again to save the Vieux Carré from one threat after another.”
One of those “threats,” according to Long, was the presence of homosexuals, particularly those who congregated in bars. Long looked at the Morrison papers at The Historic New Orleans Collection and found that Jacob “was really [obsessed] about homosexuals congregating in public. He worried that homosexuality would spread. He got gay bars shut down, including the Starlet Lounge on Chartres, which had cross-dressing bartenders.”
Long found a 1953 newspaper article in which Morrison described the Starlet Lounge as “a hangout for queers, fairies and ne’er-do-wells” and described it as “the congregating point for homosexuals of every age imaginable.” The bar was permanently closed in 1954. “The city council shut it down as a ‘nuisance,’” said Long.
“A 1958 court case resulted in a big flurry of activity from 1958 to 1960. People at Tony Bacino’s bar [on Toulouse near Bourbon Street] were arrested for being ‘sex perverts’ working in alcoholic outlets. Over the next week the employees were arrested several more times.”
Finally, manager Roy Maggio and bartenders Louis Robichaux and Amos McFarlane filed suit against the city to prevent further harassment. “They said they had been arrested without warrants and without probable cause,” said Long.
“The case went to court in August 1958. The court case is very rich. Forty-nine people were called to testify. On the witness stand Robichaux and McFarlane would not admit to being homosexuals. If they had, they would have lost their jobs and, under the state’s crime-against-nature statute, could possibly be charged with felonies and sentenced to two to ten years at hard labor.” The plaintiffs lost.
In late 1958, Morrison wrote “Report of Committee on the Problem of Sex Deviates in New Orleans” and presented it to the city council. He concluded that the case of Maggio et al. v. New Orleans “illustrated the effectiveness of relentless law enforcement—legal harassment, if you will.”
“The state passed some legislation in 1961 criminalizing renting property ‘for purposes of obscenity,’ which was clearly aimed at homosexuals,” said Long.
“But the police were not anxious to arrest them. Unless there were complaints, they would not make an arrest, especially of what they called ‘high-type persons’ who were prominent professionally.”
One such person was Clay L. Shaw, a native of Kentwood who had grown up in New Orleans, worked for several years in New York, served in the army during World War II (honorably discharged with the rank of major), and returned to New Orleans to become the founding director of the International Trade Mart. Shaw also bought and refurbished French Quarter properties, which he then sold or rented. A homosexual who was discreet about his personal life, he was a respected citizen with many influential friends, including Ella Brennan of the Brennan’s restaurant empire and philanthropist Edith Stern.
As Long pondered writing a book about New Orleans in the 1960s, she realized that “You can’t write about that decade without including Jim Garrison’s investigation and Clay Shaw’s prosecution. I realized that Clay Shaw had not been given his due as a historical subject.”
That story began on March 1, 1967, when Garrison, the district attorney of New Orleans, had Shaw arrested for having conspired to murder President John F. Kennedy, who was slain in Dallas on November 22, 1963. The assumed shooter, New Orleans native Lee Harvey Oswald, was shot and killed two days later, launching an explosion of rumors and conspiracy theories that continue today.
Garrison concocted a series of theories linking Shaw to the murder, at one point calling it “a homosexual thrill killing.” His legal team pointedly asked various witnesses if they had ever seen Shaw attired in “tight pants.”
Long has developed a PowerPoint presentation about the case and related issues, titled “The Trouble with Tight Pants, or History below the Belt in 1960s New Orleans.”
Garrison tried to make a case for Shaw’s having conspired with Oswald and others to murder the president. But the jurors were not convinced, and on March 1, 1969, exactly two years after his arrest, they found Shaw not guilty in less than an hour. Within days, Garrison had Shaw arrested on perjury charges, which Shaw fought for several years.
Shaw, in turn, filed a civil suit for two million dollars against Garrison and his legal team, claiming they had violated his civil rights, ruined his reputation, and depleted his finances. Finally, in 1972, a federal court enjoined Garrison from further prosecution of Shaw.
But by then Shaw’s life had effectively been ruined. He was diagnosed with cancer in 1973 and died in 1974 at the age of sixty-one.
“From March 1967 until his death in 1974, he was constantly involved in litigation,” said Long.
“Most people are interested in whether Jim Garrison was right. That’s not my interest. But there is a longer Louisiana-focused story to be told—the history of how politicians are allowed to behave, how public officials violate people’s civil rights and get away with it.
“I wanted to take a close look at the context before, during, and after the Garrison investigation as a Louisiana and New Orleans event. The person with the most instructive history is Clay Shaw.”
Long originally came to New Orleans in 1997 to do research for her dissertation on New Orleans’ Storyville district, where prostitution was legal. A revised version was later published as The Great Southern Babylon: Sex, Race, and Respectability in New Orleans, 1865–1920. Long uncovered a connection between the geographical segregation of prostitution and racial segregation.
Her work-in-progress is tentatively titled, Crime against Nature. “I started with the intention of writing a biography,” said Long. “That infamous last chapter of Shaw’s life contrasted with his previous life of success. He ended up being quite notorious. The rest of his life was overshadowed by this miscarriage of justice. The case was a real travesty of justice.
“Jim Garrison had a political fiefdom with essentially no boss; he could do what he wanted. He was in the right place and the right position. And there was a New Orleans connection. Oswald had been in New Orleans that year [in the spring and summer of 1963, the year JFK was killed]. I think Garrison did believe he was on to something.
“The moral issue connects to my earlier work on prostitution. At this point it’s more a study of a particular case. But it’s morphing into a richer contextual history of the idea of crimes against nature.”
Long pointed out that even now the state discriminates against homosexuals, noting U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman’s ruling last month upholding Louisiana’s ban on gay marriage.
“As late as 2012 East Baton Rouge officials, using the state’s crime-against-nature statute, were arresting men for agreeing to have sex,” said Long. “That statute had been ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003.
“Parts of the state’s statutes are unconstitutional. You can only say that homosexuals are not discriminated against here if you ignore the fact that a legal regime of harassment was developed. Gay people have been and continue to be discriminated against in Louisiana’s laws.”
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