The Impact of Black Mayors on the Black Community: The Case of New Orleans’ Ernest Morial

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Abstract
Conclusion Dutch Morial is deeply respected by the New Orleans black community. According to a poll conducted in April 1983 by Rose-Stekler Associates, 80% of the black respondents gave Morial “excellent” or “good” job ratings, compared to only 11% who found him doing a “fair” or “poor” job. Despite very limited resourses, the Morial mayoralty has facilitated the entrance of the black middle class into the governmental process, providing access to city contracts and administrative positions. On the other hand, the black underclass has received meager rewards in the form of employment or a reduction in police brutality. Hopefully, economic development, in the long-run, will create jobs and provide additional city revenue to fund services for the poor. But for now, the primary impact of a black mayor on the black community of New Orleans has been symbolic kinds of benefits. Yet the potential positive benefits of a black mayor serving as a role model for black youth, as well as the value of civil rights rhetoric in fostering hopefulness and a more self-reliant black community, should not be underestimated. The characterization of the status of the civil rights movement in 1983 offered by C. T. Vivian, head of the Anti-Klan Network, well applies to New Orleans black community today: “Everything has changed and nothing has changed. The statistics are still terrible. But the atmosphere is totally different.”49

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