Silk stockings and ballot boxes: Women of the upper class and New Orleans politics, 1930-1955
Description
New Orleans women took little part in politics after passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. The advent of Huey Long as a political force changed this. Long's personal behavior and policies enraged the upper class, the former offending them and the latter threatening to affect their economic wellbeing. Women of the upper class mobilized into a movement to unseat Long from the U.S. Senate Though unsuccessful in efforts to remove Long from government, the women gained experience through their work. When, in 1939, revelations of graft and corruption among Long's inheritors came, these women formed the nucleus of a women's movement in New Orleans to unseat Earl Long and put an anti-Long candidate in as governor. Though their movement broadened to include middle-class women, upper-class women retained the leadership. Six years later, the same coterie of women united to work for the election of a reformer as mayor of their city and, in an upset of stunning proportions, saw him elected Upper-class women worked hard to expand the electorate in New Orleans. Though genteel, privileged reformers are traditionally associated in U.S. history with efforts to restrict the suffrage, these women went about the task of increasing the numbers of registered voters and of getting out the vote on election days. Their work helped upset a powerful machine which had relied on a small, easily controlled electorate for its successes Socially and economically comfortable, the elite women failed to understand the lure of patronage and bossism to citizens whose needs were greater than their scruples. This failing prevented their leading a movement with great appeal to the masses. While they promised 'good government,' they declined to address issues of social and economic justice. Their efforts did nevertheless render New Orleans elections much cleaner and New Orleans polls much less volatile, threatening, and unsavory than in times past. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)