Major Points
New Orleans……………………………………………………………………………………....2
History of New Orleans……………………………………………………………………...........3
The French Quarter………………………………………………………………………………..5
Birthplace of Jazz………………………………………………………………………………….6
Louis Armstrong…………………………………………………………………………………..8
Louisiana Voodoo………………………………………………………………………………..10
Hurracane Katrina………………………………………………………………………………..13
Interesting Facts………………………………………………………………………………….16
References…………………………………………………………………………………..……18
History of New Orleans
There's a lot more to New Orleans- the "Big Easy"-than its tourist image as a nonstop party town.
The mixture of cultures and races that built the city still gives it its heart; not "easy" exactly, but
quite unlike anywhere else in the States - or the world.
New Orleans began life in 1718 as a French-Canadian outpost, an unlikely set of shacks on a
marsh. Its prime location near the mouth of the Mississippi River led to rapid development, and
with the first mass importation of African slaves, as early as the 1720s, its unique demography
began to take shape.Despite early resistance from its francophone population, the city benefited
greatly from its period as a Spanish colony between 1763 and 1800.By the end of the eighteenth
century, the port was flourishing, the haunt of smugglers,gamblers,and pirates.Newcomers
included Anglo-Americans escaping the American Revolution and aristocrats fleeing revolution in
France.The city also became a haven for refugees - whites and free blacks, along with their slaves -
escaping the slave revolts in Saint-Domingue.
As in the West Indies,the Spanish,French and free people of color associated and formed alliances
to create a distinctive Creole culture with its own traditions and ways of life,its own patois,and a
cuisine that drew influences from Africa,Europe and the colonies.New Orleans was already a
many-textured city when it experienced two quick-fire changes of government,passing back into
French control in 1801 and then being sold to America under the Louisiana Purchase two years
later. Unwelcome in the Creole city - today's French Quarter - the Americans who migrated here
were forced to settle in the areas now known as the Central Business District (or CBD) and,later, in
the Garden District. Canal Street,which divided the old city from the expanding suburbs,became
known as "the neutral ground" - the name still used when referring to the median strip between
main roads in New Orleans.
Though much has been made of the antipathy between Creoles and Anglo-Americans,in truth
economic necessity forced them to live and work together.They fought side by side in the 1815
Battle of New Orleans,the final battle of the War of 1812,which secured American supremacy in
the States.The victorious general,Andrew Jackson, became a national hero - and eventually US
president; his ragbag volunteer army was made up of Anglo-Americans,slaves,Creoles,free men of
color and Native Americans,along with pirates supplied by the notorious buccaneer Jean Lafitte.
New Orleans' antebellum "golden age" as a major port and finance center for the cotton-producing
South was brought to an abrupt end by the Civil War.The economic blow wielded by the lengthy
Union occupation - which effectively isolated the city from its markets - was compounded by the
social and cultural ravages of Reconstruction.This was particularly disastrous for a city once famed
for its large, educated, free black population.As the North industrialized and other Southern cities
grew,the fortunes of New Orleans took a downturn.
Jazz exploded into the bars and the bordellos around 1900,and along with the evolution of Mardi
Gras as a tourist attraction, breathed new life into the city.And although the Depression hit here as
hard as it did the rest of the nation it also heralded the resurgence of the French Quarter,which had
disintegrated into a slum.Even so, it was the less romantic duo of oil and petrochemicals that really
saved the economy.The city now finds itself in relatively stable condition with a strengthening
economy based on tourism.
One of New Orleans' many nicknames is "the Crescent City" because of the way it nestles between
the southern shore of Lake Pontchartrain and a dramatic horseshoe bend in the Mississippi River.
This unique location makes the city's layout confusing,with streets curving to follow the river,and
shooting off at odd angles to head inland.Compass points are of little use here - locals refer instead
to lakeside (towards the lake) and riverside (towards the river),and using Canal Street as the
dividing line, uptown (or upriver) and downtown (downriver).
