Former New Orleans mayor dies
Moon Landrieu, 92, took a stand against segregationists
NEW ORLEANS — Former New Orleans Mayor Moon Landrieu — whose early stand against segregationists in the Louisiana Legislature launched a political career — died Monday, a family friend confirmed. He was 92.
“He died peacefully this morning surrounded by family,” Ryan Berni, a longtime friend of the family, told The Associated Press.
A progressive white Democrat, Landrieu came from a blue-collar Roman Catholic family, served in the Army and sat alongside the first Black students at the city’s Loyola law school before winning a statehouse seat in 1960.
By then, six years had passed since the U.S. Supreme Court ordered public schools to desegregate. Gov. Jimmie Davis steamrolled legislation to keep students in New Orleans separated by race. The measures passed by lopsided margins with Landrieu, at least once, the lone “no” vote.
He held onto his House seat in 1963 and then won a City Council seat in 1965 with strong support from Black voters, whose influence was beginning to be felt at the polls.
To win his first mayoral term, Landrieu assembled a coalition of white liberals and African Americans and campaigned to bring Black people into important positions in government.
Integrating City Hall had its costs. Landrieu discussed the blowback over race in a 1977 speech to the National League of Cities convention.
“If you embark on a campaign to end racial discrimination in your hometown, you will need nerves of steel … to withstand the slings and arrows,” he said.
As Black voters gained influence, the coalition that elected Landrieu to the maximum two terms helped make Ernest “Dutch” Morial the city’s first Black mayor, in 1978.
Landrieu then became President Jimmy Carter’s secretary of housing and urban development, an agency whose programs came under attack when President Ronald Reagan took office on a platform to reduce the federal government’s size and power.
Landrieu criticized Reagan for “gutting” public aid programs and briefly considered a presidential bid. But he instead became a judge serving on Louisiana’s 4th Circuit Court of Appeal from 1992 to 2000.
Several of Landrieu’s nine children continue his legacy in law and politics.
Mitch, also a two-term New Orleans mayor, is now President Joe Biden’s infrastructure coordinator. Mary, who served three terms as a U.S. senator, is now a policy adviser with a Washington law firm. Madeleine became dean of the law school at Loyola University in New Orleans and Maurice is a federal prosecutor.
Born Maurice Landrieu on July 23, 1930, he was called Moon, a family nickname, throughout his life and eventually made that his legal first name. He served three years in the Army before opening a law office with classmate Pascal Calogero, later the chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court.
Landrieu credited his wife, Verna, with nudging him into politics, and his Black classmates, including Norman Francis, who would become Xavier University’s dean and president, for opening his eyes.
“It wasn’t just a question of racial justice, but from a practical standpoint, I recognized — as a politician, as a legislator and councilman — that we were wasting so much talent, wasting so much energy, by precluding Blacks from participation in all matters,” he recalled in a 2020 interview with the New Orleans weekly newspaper Gambit.
“And I was determined, as I became mayor, to revitalize this city and to bring about racial integration, so that the city could enjoy the full benefit of white and Black participants.”