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Pontchartrain Park Pioneers Oral History collection

 Collection
Identifier: 834

Content Description

The Pontchartrain Park Pioneers Oral History Collection encompasses ten digital mp4 video interviews with original residents of the safe haven all-black suburb, Pontchartrain Park in New Orleans, formed during the era of Jim Crow and racial segregation. The second oldest black suburb, built between 1955 and 1961, Pontchartrain Park was envisioned and developed by and for middle and upper-class African Americans who were denied the opportunity of homeownership in historic and new suburban communities due to “redlining”: federal, state and local discriminatory mortgage credit policies and practices.

The collection documents the stories of residents who achieved the “American Dream” of homeownership in a community they formed. The interviewees share stories of life in the early 20th century, highlighting segregation and discriminatory lending practices that denied African Americans the opportunity of economic wealth in homeownership, and how Pontchartrain Park changed their lives. The collection explores the topics of discriminatory education, employment and housing, as well as the establishment of Southern University at New Orleans (SUNO) at the northwest corner of Pontchartrain Park and its impact on and interrelationship with the community.

As part of the project, SUNO developed a one-year curriculum to integrate these local oral histories into six existing humanities courses in 2021. In addition to the digital video oral history interviews, the collection includes full interview transcripts, story and unit transcripts, grant reports, and a survey of the Pontchartrain Park Oral History Project’s Curriculum Initiative. The course materials and interviews were used to assist students to broaden their knowledge of the significance of local history as it applies to national issues related to racial discrimination. Additionally, the project is an examination of the effects of discriminatory governmental policies related to the devastation of Pontchartrain Park from Hurricanes Betsy (1965) and Katrina (2005).

Interviewees include Margaret B. Adams; Elvira Henry; Yolanda Henry; Stephen S. Johnson, III; Josie Young Lewis; Sybil Haydel Morial; Ruth Oubre; Edgar Poree; Velma Slack; and Velez White. These individuals purchased their homes in Pontchartrain Park between the years 1955 and 1965. The interviews document the rising black middle class in the middle 20th century and their contributions to the civil rights movement, local integration efforts, and work in New Orleans citywide politics. Many of these voices have been rarely heard and mirror what was happening at the national level as the United States moved slowly toward integration.

Dates

  • 2019

Historical Note

The Pontchartrain Park Pioneers Oral History Project was launched in 2019 under the direction of Dr. Clyde C. Robertson, Director of the Center for African and African American Studies at Southern University at New Orleans (SUNO). Funded by the State of Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism Office of Cultural Development and Historic Preservation, the project, Pontchartrain Park Pioneers: An Oral History of New Orleans’ Civil Rights Era Segregated Black “Suburb in the City,” extensively documents homeownership during the Jim Crow era in the second oldest American all-black suburb in the 1950s to early 1960s.

Extent

39.1 Gigabytes : 34 Digital Items: mp4 video files; pdf documents

Language of Materials

English