Every drama deserves a good backstory. For New Orleans, this narrative takes place during the “long 1970s,” a time when political transformation, cultural rebirth, and urban reimagining revived a fading port city. Hosted by historian Justin Nystrom and journalist Jack Davis, each episode of the Making Modern New Orleans podcast explores how the city we know came into being through first-hand accounts of the people who made them happen.
This podcast has its origins in 2012 when Davis and Nystrom began recording interviews for what would become the “Making Modern New Orleans” oral history collection, source material that has given it insights on a key era that will only be found here. This is the first podcast produced fully by the Digital Humanities Studio and the Department of History since the creation of its podcast studio in 2022, following closely on the Flourishing Sisterhood podcast by the Loyola Institute for Ministry, a project in which that the History Department and Studio played an important supporting role.
Season one opens with Civil Rights attorney Lolis Edward Elie, a 1958 graduate of Loyola University’s School of Law. In it Elie discusses his involvement with the desegregation of Canal Street, the perspectives of Civil Rights activists on the pivotal mayoral election of 1969-70, the disruption to Black New Orleans communities brought by Interstate 10 and Armstrong Park, the rediscovery of music and especially food culture in the 1970s, and his work with Rudy Lombard on the classic volume Creole Feast.
Episode 2 is with political insider and businessman Robert “Bob” Tucker. As a young army veteran and civil rights activist, Tucker joined the 1969 mayoral campaign of Maurice “Moon” Landrieu and eventually served as the city’s first African American deputy mayor. Landrieu came to rely on Tucker when it came to navigating conflict and change in the 1970s including the dramatic days surrounding the Black Panther standoff in the Desire Housing Project and the tragic Mark Essex incident.
Episode 3 is with lawyer and iconoclastic social critic Ben C. Toledano. Born to one of the city’s old families, he grew over time to see the failings of what he would describe as an insulated and intellectually incurious elite. He was an early Republican at a time when the Democratic Party dominated Louisiana politics, a talented lawyer who was happier discussing literature, and someone who loved the city so much that he couldn’t bear to live here anymore. In this episode Toledano talks about what he saw as the hypocrisy of the political establishment, his unprecedented challenge to Moon Landrieu in the 1970 mayoral election, the failings of the elite institutions like the Boston Club, and literary figures like his friend Walker Percy.
Episode 4 is with newspaper editor Charlie Ferguson. Davis suggests that Ferguson had more of a positive impact on New Orleans journalism than anyone else in the latter half of the twentieth century, a record for which this episode makes a case. Ferguson began working in journalism when he was a copy boy in his father’s office, and went on to become a reporter in the early 1960s for the New Orleans States-Item. At the age thirty-two he was made that paper’s editor, a move that ushered in an era of aggressive reporting in an era when the city underwent profound change. We cover everything from the relationship between the paper and politics to the desegregation of Carnival, the emergence of food criticism in the city, and the impressive team of young journalists Ferguson assembled at the States-Item and later Times-Picayune.
Episode 5 is with restaurant legend, Ella Brennan. The Brennan family is well known in New Orleans and around the world for its culinary contributions and the sheer volume of talent that has come through the kitchen. Nowhere else is this more true than at Commander’s Palace. In this episode we follow Ella Brennan as she describes how she and her siblings came to the restaurant after the family split of 1974 and transformed it into the global dining destination that we know today. We talk about Paul Prudhomme and Emeril Lagasse, but also the role played by the Brennan family in bringing the city’s dining landscape into the modern era.
Making Modern New Orleans is on Apple Podcasts and most other popular podcasting platforms.
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