deLesseps Story Morrison

deLesseps Story Morrison
Morrison in 1961
54th Mayor of New Orleans, Louisiana
In office April 4, 1946 – July 17, 1961
Preceded by	Robert Maestri
Succeeded by	Victor H. Schiro
Member of the Louisiana House of Representatives
In office 1940–1946
Personal details
Born	(1912-01-18)January 18, 1912 New Roads, Louisiana, U.S.
Died	Ciudad Victoria, Mexico
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Corinne Waterman Morrison (1921–1959, married from 1942 until her death)
Relations	Half-brother Jacob Haight Morrison
Children	deLesseps Morrison, Jr. (1944–1996) Corinne Ann Morrison (born 1947) Randolph Waterman "Randy" Morrison (1956–1964)
Alma mater	Louisiana State University Paul M. Hebert Law Center
Profession	Lawyer
Religion	Roman Catholic
Nickname(s)	Chep Morrison

deLesseps Story "Chep" Morrison, Sr., (January 18, 1912 — May 22, 1964) was an attorney and politician, the mayor of New Orleans from 1946 to 1961. He also served as an appointee of U.S. President John F. Kennedy as the United States ambassador to the Organization of American States between 1961 and 1963.

New Orleans' peak population was reached during Morrison's mayoralty, when the 1960 census recorded 627,525 inhabitants, a 10 percent increase from the 1950 figures. Morrison ran three primary campaigns for the Louisiana Democratic gubernatorial nomination, but was unsuccessful. As Louisiana's African Americans had been effectively disfranchised since the turn of the century, the Democratic primary was the only competitive election in the then one-party state.

Early life, education, military

Morrison was born to Jacob Haight Morrison, III (1875–1929), a district attorney in Pointe Coupee Parish, and his wife, Anita (née Olivier), a New Orleans socialite, in New Roads, the seat of Pointe Coupee Parish. The boy was named after deLesseps Story, a respected New Orleans judge to whom he was related on his mother's side; the family was related to Ferdinand de Lesseps and Sidney Story, an alderman for whom the area of Storyville was named. He was the half-brother of Jacob Haight Morrison.

As a boy, Morrison once worked for an ice dealer, Alton Gaudin, father of future Louisiana state Representative Clark Gaudin of Baton Rouge. He had an older half-brother, Jacob Haight Morrison, IV, son of his father's first marriage to the former Eloise Yancy (1876–1905) of Jonesville, who died the year her son was born. In 1932, Morrison graduated from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. In 1934, he completed his law degree from the Louisiana State University Law Center.

Law and political career

Morrison moved to New Orleans, where he became an attorney with the National Recovery Administration, a New Deal agency. Thereafter, he became a law partner with his brother Jacob Morrison and Thomas Hale Boggs, Sr., a future Democratic U.S. Representative and House Majority Leader. As an active Democrat, Morrison in 1939 helped to organize the People's League of Independent Voters in New Orleans. In 1940, Morrison was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives from the 12th Ward; he became a reliable floor leader for the reform faction led by Governor Sam H. Jones. One of his colleagues, William J. "Bill" Dodd, from Allen Parish, became a future intraparty rival and occasional ally.

In 1942, Representative Morrison introduced Governor Jones's proposal for a volunteer state guard. One of the five opponents of the bill, T. C. Brister, then a freshman member from Pineville in Rapides Parish, explained that he opposed the measure not because of opposition to the Jones administration but because he believed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was better suited for handling such wartime security issues.

Marriage and family

In 1942, Morrison married Corinne Waterman of New Orleans. They had three children together. Their oldest son, deLesseps Story Morrison, Jr, known as "Toni", became a politician like his father and was elected as a Louisiana State Representative (1974–1980).

World War II and after

During World War II, Morrison left the state legislature to join the United States Army. He was promoted to the rank of colonel, and became chief of staff of the occupation forces stationed in the city of Bremen, Germany. He received the Bronze Star and also served in England, France, and Belgium. In 1944, both he and Bill Dodd were reelected to the legislature in absentia by their constituents. After the war, Morrison returned to New Orleans to practice law. Continuing with the U.S. Army Reserve, he attained the rank of major general.

Election as mayor

Morrison was approached by a group of Uptown reformers in December 1945 to run for mayor in the election of 1946. The attractive and dynamic young veteran ran a campaign emphasizing the need to clean up the corruption of incumbent Mayor Robert Maestri, who had been affiliated with the Earl Long faction of Louisiana Democratic politics. Maestri's Old Regulars had dominated New Orleans for decades. Morrison pulled a major upset when he defeated Maestri in the first primary. He was among many returning World War II veterans to gain political office during that period.

Morrison as mayor

As mayor, Morrison put together a strong public relations team, which helped him cultivate an image as a dynamic reformer and of the city as a progressive one. He gained widespread praise in the national press.

In 1950, Morrison struck a deal with his intraparty rival, Governor Earl Kemp Long by which Long would agree to return home rule to the Crescent City, which at the time was being virtually governed by the state out of Baton Rouge. Morrison agreed not to work against Long's nephew, Russell B. Long, for a full term in the United States Senate but would formally endorse one of Long's rivals, Malcolm Lafargue, the former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, based in Shreveport. Though Morrison endorsed Lafargue, he privately urged his followers to support Russell Long, whom he expected to win the race, as it developed.

Journalist Iris Kelso was first assigned to the City Hall beat in 1954 and covered the Morrison administration in great detail.

Morrison marketed the city effectively, and was instrumental in creating the post-World War II image of New Orleans as a growing and progressive Sun Belt metropolis. His administration attracted significant private investment and welcomed the establishment of numerous oil industry and white-collar corporate offices in downtown New Orleans, as well as several sizable new industrial plants elsewhere. To emphasize his differences from his predecessor, whom he had characterized as dictatorial, Morrison worked to get a law passed to reduce the powers of the mayor. He created a new city planning commission and moved to make administration more efficient by firing many of Maestri's patronage appointments (though some were replaced with Morrison's own supporters).

Morrison downsized city operations by selling off most of the city's public markets. Most were torn down, which was regretted later as costing the city valuable community centers. He addressed a housing crisis by building veterans' housing operated by the Housing Authority of New Orleans, and engaged in more large-scale urban renewal than any other New Orleans mayor. Morrison's administration demolished low-income neighborhoods to build new or expand existing public housing projects, expropriated private property to construct the New Orleans Civic Center, the New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal, and several street-widening projects in the city's downtown.

One of his most popular acts was to create the New Orleans Recreation Department (NORD), which included segregated facilities for whites and blacks (all public facilities were segregated in those years). He began an extensive citywide street improvement program financed though a bond issue, and located funding sufficient to construct numerous street overpasses and underpasses, eliminating most at-grade railway crossings within the city limits. Morrison acquiesced in New Orleans Public Service's dismantling of the city's extensive streetcar network in the 1950s.

A proponent of increased international trade, Morrison lent his support to the construction of the International Trade Mart - precursor to the city's World Trade Center. He traveled extensively in Latin America to promote trade with New Orleans. He became friends with dictators Rafael Trujillo and Juan Perón. Morrison's wish to reinforce ties with Latin America was expressed in such urban renewal projects as having new central area circulators embellished with monuments to Central and South American historical figures. The widened Basin Street was outfitted with monuments to Simón Bolívar, Benito Juárez, and Francisco Morazán. A statue of Bolívar was prominently sited and still stands at the corner of Canal and Basin streets. A new circulator in Central City was renamed Simon Bolivar Avenue.

Despite running on a platform stressing the elimination of the Old Regular machine, after his election Morrison quickly built his own political organization, the Crescent City Democratic Association. The CCDA began finding its supporters jobs in City Hall and in municipal construction contracts. In October 1946, Morrison broke a garbage collectors' strike by organizing volunteer scab labor to take over the duties of the strikers. Morrison's organization's power quickly eclipsed that of the Old Regulars, and he secured easy re-elections in 1950, 1954, and 1958.

Morrison pushed for a new city charter in 1954, which replaced the at-large council commission system with a legislative city council combining five district-based and two at-large members. The system of municipal government established by the 1954 charter still operates in New Orleans. Late in 1954, Morrison attended the inauguration of newly elected Mayor James C. Gardner of Shreveport, who served a single four-year term. Gardner undertook similar reforms in Shreveport of the kind that Morrison had initiated in New Orleans. The two became good friends over the years; Gardner was considered more conservative than Morrison. In 1950, Morrison was elected president of the National Municipal Association. In 1953, he won the organization's LaGuardia Award, named for former New York City Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia.

Morrison, crime, and the NOPD

After assuming office in 1946, Morrison appointed Adair Watters superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) in an effort to eliminate corruption. But tensions developed when Watters moved to suppress gambling, prostitution, and other vice too zealously for Morrison's liking. Watters resigned in February 1949 because of Morrison's political interference with NOPD activities. Throughout most of the 1950s, scandals continued to be revealed concerning the involvement of the NOPD in graft and vice. In 1952, the Metropolitan Crime Commission of New Orleans was established as an independent monitor of the NOPD and the Morrison administration's approach to vice. State Police Colonel Francis Grevemberg, later a two-time gubernatorial candidate, led a series of high-profile raids on New Orleans gambling establishments that embarrassed Morrison and the NOPD for its inactivity. Eventually, retired FBI Agent Aaron M. Kohn was sent from Chicago to investigate NOPD involvement in vice. Kohn later recalled:

"After about a year, I began to realize something about the system down here. In Chicago, people were generally on one side of the fence or the other—honest or crooked. But in Louisiana, there just isn't any fence."

He soon complained that Morrison was obstructing his efforts. In 1955, Morrison forced the mayor to ask for Schuering's resignation.

Morrison and race

Early in his administration, Morrison supported the construction of a suburban-style black neighborhood named Pontchartrain Park, built public housing for low-income blacks, and spent money on street and infrastructure improvements in black neighborhoods. NORD built playgrounds, swimming pools, and recreational centers for African Americans. These actions earned him the enmity of hard-line segregationists. In 1950, he oversaw the NOPD's hiring of its first black policeman since the advent of the Jim Crow era in the late 19th century. These measures aside, Morrison remained committed to segregation and was known to use racial slurs in private conversations. The facilities he built in black neighborhoods were segregated and received inferior funding compared to civic projects in white neighborhoods. Historian Adam Fairclough interprets Morrison's building programs for blacks as a way of "shoring up segregation" by defusing dissatisfaction with inferior facilities. Many black leaders found him sympathetic but unwilling to take more meaningful action to address their concerns. Morrison's approach to race relations increasingly fell behind the times as the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s gained momentum.

In his 1959 gubernatorial runoff contest, Morrison proclaimed his support for segregation and noted that New Orleans was at that time the least racially mixed of the large southern cities. He boasted that he had been sued by the NAACP over his segregationist policies in the city.

New Orleans gained national attention in the fall of 1960 as the city's school board implemented a federal integration order for its public schools. A handful of black students entered two white schools in the city's Ninth Ward, but were greeted outside with mobs of white women and youths screaming racial slurs and throwing bottles and refuse. While Morrison did not join Governor Jimmie Davis' drive to prevent integration by shutting the schools down, he did nothing to prevent the intimidating segregationist demonstrations. The NOPD passively stood by while mobs heckled parents bringing their children to school, but at the same time, police arrested civil rights activists holding lunch counter sit-ins in the city. Morrison's lack of action stemmed from his political need to avoid alienating black supporters while publicly retaining a segregationist stance to satisfy whites. His position resulted in criticism from both sides; black New Orleanians and supporters of civil rights felt he had betrayed them, while hard-line segregationists accused him of supporting integration. Ultimately, his fence-straddling on civil rights contributed significantly to the fatigue and disenchantment with which the citizenry received his administration's actions in its final years - a sharp contrast with the comparatively ebullient 1950s. Morrison's leadership failures on civil rights did much to compromise his earlier achievements. This resulted in New Orleans being more poorly positioned socially and economically for the post-Civil Rights era than its (at that time) peer cities such as Atlanta, Houston, and Dallas.

Election of 1956

In the election of 1956, Morrison lost to Earl Long. The acerbic Long ridiculed Morrison as a "city slicker" out of touch with residents of small towns and rural areas. Long laughed at his opponent's unusual first name deLesseps: "Ole De la Soups is the only man that can talk out of both sides of his mouth, whistle, and strut all at once." Trailing both Long and Morrison in the 1956 primary were Fred Preaus of Farmerville, the choice of outgoing Governor Robert Kennon; Francis Grevemberg, the former state police superintendent; and James M. McLemore, the Alexandria auction-barn owner who ran his second consecutive unsuccessful race on a strictly segregationist platform.

Fred Preaus's running-mate for lieutenant governor was Morrison's city council colleague, A. Brown Moore, a decorated veteran of World War II who had served under General George S. Patton, Jr.

Election of 1959-1960

Three LSU scholars described Morrison, as he launched his second bid for governor, accordingly:

Morrison was different from the typical anti-Long candidate inasmuch as he had demonstrated liberal proclivities, particularly in giving support to the national Democratic Party and his attitude on labor and race relations. In many respects, Morrison seemed to represent the combination that Louisiana voters had unsuccessfully groped for over a long period of time: respectability and integrity in combination with a welfare-state programmatic outlook ... Morrison was faced with two awesome handicaps: he was from New Orleans, and he was of the Roman Catholic faith. The traditional suspicion of the 'big-city' counted against him in many areas of the state, and the predominantly Protestant north Louisiana sector has long contended that no Catholic could or should be governor of the state."

In the election of 1959-1960, Morrison lost to former Governor Jimmie Davis, a singer of both popular songs and gospel hymns. He polled 414,110 votes (45.5 percent) in the runoff to Davis' 487,681 (54.1 percent). Davis was endorsed in the runoff by the third-place candidate, segregationist William Monroe Rainach of Claiborne Parish, as well as Rainach's preferred candidate for state comptroller, future U.S. Representative Joe D. Waggonner. Morrison was endorsed by the fifth-place candidate, Bill Dodd, but Dodd's showing had been insufficient to help Morrison that much. Rainach later expressed disappointment with the second Davis administration, even though he had endorsed the man. In the primary runoff, Morrison's lieutenant governor choice, then Alexandria Mayor W. George Bowdon, Jr., lost his race to Clarence "Taddy" Aycock of Franklin, Louisiana, and a former Speaker of the Louisiana House.

Other Morrison ticket candidates lost too, including George W. Shannon for Commissioner of Agriculture and Forestry, Fred Columbus Dent, Sr., for register of state land, David Wallace Chennault, son of General Claire Chennault, for custodian of voting machines, Mrs. Marion Henderson of Colfax, Grant Parish for state comptroller, and R. W. "Tom" Farrar, Jr., for state attorney general.

In an appearance in Shreveport, Country music star Minnie Pearl campaigned for Morrison, rather than fellow entertainer Jimmie Davis. Morrison carried the endorsement of three of the four Louisiana Teamsters Union chapters, with only the Lake Charles branch remaining neutral in the runoff election against Davis. The Louisiana AFL-CIO, later headed for decades by Victor Bussie of Shreveport and Baton Rouge, endorsed Davis through its Committee on Political Education, or COPE, favored Morrison's running-mate, George Bowdon, for lieutenant governor.

Jimmie Davis had avoided segregationist rhetoric in the first primary race in 1959 and, according to Morrison, had sought support from the NAACP in New Orleans and Lake Charles. In the runoff with Morrison, Davis projected himself as a more determined and dedicated segregationist than his rival. Morrison questioned Davis's change in campaign strategy and tried himself to appeal to segregationists. Morrison charged that Davis had "operated an integrated honky-tonk in California", when Davis was out of state with his singing career. Morrison also said that Davis had allowed the illegal operation of nine thousand slot machines when Davis was governor in the 1940s.

Election of 1963–1964

In the election of 1963–1964, Morrison lost to Public Service Commissioner John McKeithen from the small town of Columbia in rural Caldwell Parish. In the 1964 primary, Morrison ran with attorney Claude B. Duval, from Houma (Terrebonne Parish), who sought the office of lieutenant governor. Duval, a longtime personal friend of Morrison's, also lost, defeated by his St. Mary Parish neighbor, C. C. Aycock, who ran as an "independent Democrat" that year. (Although he was a Democrat, Aycock was not allied with a gubernatorial slate of candidates.) Two other Morrison-backed candidates were State Representative Jack M. Dyer of Baton Rouge for insurance commissioner and Mayor Raymond Laborde of Marksville for custodian of voting machines. Dyer lost to Dudley A. Guglielmo, and Laborde fell to the incumbent Douglas Fowler of Coushatta in Red River Parish. Laborde had argued for the abolition of the office, which was finally abolished in 2004.

Declining political fortunes

By his final term as mayor, Morrison's luster had faded somewhat. Some of his ideas, such as the unsuccessful 1959 proposal for a monorail, were met with widespread opposition. He moved surprisingly slowly to construct a passenger terminal for New Orleans' international airport; for its first thirteen years of operation New Orleanians departed from a glorified barn while its regional economic rivals invested in constructing modern facilities. Morrison failed to keep the Pelicans baseball team in New Orleans. The energy that had characterized his early years in office seemed thoroughly dissipated. Former political allies such as City Councilman and future Lieutenant Governor James Edward "Jimmy" Fitzmorris, Jr., began to express their independence and positioned themselves for a future without Morrison. In the aftermath of the school integration crisis, Morrison's political future was uncertain. He was the first of many New Orleans mayors to try to amend the 1954 city charter to allow a third consecutive term as mayor, but did not succeed.

Morrison (right) with President John F. Kennedy, 1961

Seeking a political base from which to stage another run for governor, he approached the John F. Kennedy administration and was appointed Ambassador to the Organization of American States on July 17, 1961. In a further sign of his declining political fortunes, his chosen candidate for mayor in the New Orleans election of 1962 – State Senator Adrian G. Duplantier – lost the Democratic runoff to Victor Schiro.

Death

Four months after his final election defeat, Morrison and his son, Randy, died on May 22, 1964, in a plane crash in Ciudad Victoria, Mexico.

Morrison funeral

Former Shreveport Mayor Jim Gardner, in his memoirs, recalls details of the Morrison funeral:

"The Morrison funeral was a moving and impressive event. A motorcade formed in front of the Capitol House Hotel [in Baton Rouge] at 8:45 a.m. on Tuesday, May 26, 1964. There were about twenty automobiles led by the governor [John McKeithen]. I rode down with four other state representatives in Representative Spencer Todd's brand new Cadillac. Others in the car were Conway LeBleu, Joe Henry Cooper, and Steve Dupuis. It turned out that Steve lived next door to my cousin ... in Opelousas.

"When we arrived in New Orleans we went to the new City Hall and were joined by Mayor Victor Schiro and thence to Gallier Hall, where the bodies [Morrison and son] were in state. Gallier Hall is an architecturally magnificent old building that had been the City Hall for most of Chep's tenure. It was there that I had attended one of his staff meetings in 1955.

"The public viewing was now completed and our visit was special. The body was in the former waiting room for the mayor's office ... At the door were smartly uniformed firemen and policemen. The room itself was still adorned with large fine paintings ... The two-star flag of a major general with black streamers hung over the flag-draped coffin which was attended by a military honor guard. Chep loved things military and would have approved of the arrangements.

"We were officially greeted by Jimmy Fitzmorris (later lieutenant governor) who was chairman of the New Orleans City Council. Jimmy, also a friend of mine, had been asked by the Morrison family to handle all of the arrangements which he did in splendid fashion. Everything seemed so right. I found it easy to visualize the excitement of the room when Chep ruled from there."

"... The mass lasted about an hour ... A military presence was still evident as all of the pallbearers were Army officers ... Life was going on as a great and good friend departed it."

The Morrison family

Morrison married Corinne on October 3, 1942. Mrs. Morrison (born August 17, 1921) died at the age of thirty-seven on February 26, 1959, just a few months before her husband launched his second gubernatorial bid. The Morrisons' seven-year-old son, John Randolph Waterman "Randy" Morrison (born September 24, 1956), died with his father in the 1964 plane crash. The Morrisons' daughter, Corinne Ann Morrison (born 1947), became an attorney and practiced in New Orleans. Their elder son, deLesseps Story Morrison, Jr. (1944–1996), who like his father was elected to the state house, ran unsuccessfully for mayor in the 1977 New Orleans mayoral election. deLesseps Jr. died of lung cancer on August 21, 1996. Both father and son died at age 52. All four Morrisons are buried in Metairie Cemetery, New Orleans.

In 1995, the senior deLesseps Morrison was inducted posthumously into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield, Louisiana.

See also

• Timeline of New Orleans, 1940s–1960s

References

• Mark T. Carleton, Readings in Louisiana Politics (1975) includes a study of Morrison's three failed gubernatorial campaigns.
• "DeLesseps Story Morrison", A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, publication of the Louisiana Historical Association (1988), p. 585
• Fairclough, Adam. Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915–1972. University of Georgia Press, 1995.
• Gardner, James C. Jim Gardner and Shreveport, Vol. II. Shreveport: Ritz Publications, 2006, pp. 43–44.
• Haas, Edward F. DeLesseps S. Morrison and the Image of Reform: New Orleans Politics, 1946–60. Louisiana State University Press, 1974.
• Hathorn, Billy. "The Republican Party in Louisiana, 1920–1980", Master's thesis (1980) at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches

Links

• Profile, nutrias.org; accessed September 18, 2014.

Preceded by Robert Maestri

Mayor of New Orleans 1946–1961

Succeeded by Victor Schiro