Moon Landrieu

Moon Landrieu
File:Moon Landrieu.gif
7th United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
In office September 24, 1979 – January 20, 1981
President	Jimmy Carter
Preceded by	Patricia Roberts Harris
Succeeded by	Samuel Pierce
56th Mayor of New Orleans, Louisiana
In office May 2, 1970 – May 1, 1978
Preceded by	Victor H. Schiro
Succeeded by	Ernest Nathan Morial
Councilmember at Large, City Council of New Orleans
In office 1966–1970
Member of the Louisiana House of Representatives
In office 1960–1966
Personal details
Born	(1930-07-23) July 23, 1930 Uptown New Orleans, Louisiana
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Verna Satterlee Landrieu
Children	Nine children, including U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu and Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu
Profession	Attorney; Politician

Maurice Edwin "Moon" Landrieu (born July 23, 1930) is a Democratic politician from Louisiana who served as Mayor of New Orleans from 1970-1978. He also is a former judge. He represented New Orleans' Twelfth Ward in the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1960 to 1966, served on the New Orleans City Council as a member at-large from 1966 to 1970 and was the United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under U.S. President Jimmy Carter from 1979-1981.

Early life and career

Moon Landrieu was born in Uptown New Orleans, the son of Joseph G. Landrieu (owner of a small corner grocery) and the former Loretta Bechtel. While his birth name was Maurice, he acquired the nickname "Moon" in his early childhood, and later had his name legally changed. He went to Jesuit High School. A promising athlete, Landrieu won a baseball scholarship at Loyola University New Orleans, where he received a bachelor of arts in business administration in 1952 and a law degree in 1954. As an undergraduate, he was elected student body president at Loyola. After a three year stint in the United States Army, Landrieu opened a law practice and taught accounting at Loyola. In 1954, Landrieu married Verna Satterlee, with whom he had nine children.

In the late 1950s, Landrieu became involved in the youth wing of Mayor deLesseps Morrison's Crescent City Democratic Organization. Running on Morrison’s ticket, Moon Landrieu was elected by the 12th Ward of New Orleans to the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1960. There he was one of the few white legislators who voted against the "hate bills" of the segregationists which the legislature passed in the effort to thwart the desegregation of public facilities and public schools.

In 1962, Landrieu ran for New Orleans City Council and lost, but in 1966, Landrieu was elected Councilman-at-large. In 1969, he led a successful push for a city ordinance outlawing segregation based on race or religion in public accommodations, an issue that had been addressed nationally in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As councilman, Landrieu also voted to remove the Confederate flag from the council chambers and voted to establish a biracial human relations committee.

Landrieu as mayor

Moon Landrieu was elected mayor of New Orleans in the election of 1970 to succeed fellow Democrat Victor Schiro. His opponent in the Democratic primary runoff was Jimmy Fitzmorris, who was supported by most of the city’s political establishment. Running on a "progressive" platform, Landrieu won an unexpected victory by having assembled a coalition of 90 percent of black voters and 39 percent of whites. Perennial candidate A. Roswell Thompson, the operator of a taxi stand and a member of the Ku Klux Klan, ran again for mayor in the Democratic primary but polled negligible support.

In the general election, Landrieu defeated Ben C. Toledano, the only Republican to make a serious bid for mayor of New Orleans in the 20th century. In that contest, his pro-civil rights stance was rewarded when he received an overwhelming 99 percent support from black voters.

During his tenure as mayor, Landrieu oversaw desegregation of city government and public facilities as well as business and professional organizations. Before Landrieu was elected, there were no high-ranking black employees or officials in City Hall; he worked actively to change this by appointing African Americans to top positions, including his Chief Administrative Officer. When he took office in 1970, African-Americans made up 19 percent of city employees, by 1978, this number had risen to 43 percent. He also appointed Rev. A.L. Davis, a prominent civil rights leader, to fill a temporary vacancy on City Council; Davis thus became the city’s first black city councilor.

Landrieu was able to obtain federal funds for the revitalization of New Orleans's poor neighborhoods, and promoted involvement of minority-owned businesses in the city's economic life. He was also involved in the planning and construction of the Superdome and other projects designed to improve the economy of New Orleans. He also tore down many dilapidated structures in the city’s Central Business District, earning the opposition of preservationists. He created the Downtown Development District to revitalize the CBD, and worked to promote the city’s growing tourism industry. His tourism-related projects included the Moon Walk, a riverfront promenade facing the French Quarter, the Superdome, as well as renovations of the French Market and Jackson Square. Critics alleged that patronage from these development projects disproportionately aided his campaign contributors, most notably his political allies who controlled Superdome Services, Inc.

During 1975-1976 Landrieu served as president of the United States Conference of Mayors. Landrieu became nationally known as an advocate for American cities in Washington, D.C., and was credited with helping to convince Congress to bail out New York City during its financial crisis.

He was reelected in 1974 and served until April 1978. To date, he is the city's last white mayor. After leaving office, he was succeeded by the city's first black mayor, Dutch Morial.

After city hall

After leaving office in 1978, Landrieu served as Secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Landrieu served as Judge of the Louisiana 4th Circuit Court of Appeals from 1992 until his retirement in 2000.

He is the father of U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu and of Louisiana Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu, an unsuccessful candidate in the 2006 New Orleans mayoral election.

In 2004, Landrieu was inducted in the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield.

References

• Baker, Liva. The Second Battle of New Orleans: The Hundred Year Struggle to Integrate the Schools. Harper Collins, 1996.
• Hirsch, Arnold and Joseph Logsdon. Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization. LSU Press, 1992.
• Perez, Dawn Watts. “Moon Landrieu: Reflections of Change.” UNO Masters Thesis, 1996.

External links

• Oral history interview by Jack Bass and Walter DeVries, January 1974 (Southern Oral History Program, UNC-Chapel Hill)