Stories tagged "Transportation": 49
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Madame Josephine Decuir
By the 1870s, steamboats carried passengers up and down the Mississippi River, docking in the ports of major cities like New Orleans. Here, in July 1872, Captain John Benson denied Josephine Decuir…
Shirley Thompson
Shirley Thompson, the youngest of the Thompson sisters, joined the New Orleans Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Freedom Rides as they tested the Interstate Commerce Commission’s desegregation of bus…
Jean Thompson
On May 24, 1961, Jean Thompson, at age 19, participated in the Freedom Ride from Montgomery, Alabama to Jackson, Mississippi as civil rights activists tested the Interstate Commerce Commission’s…
Alice Marie Thompson
On November 1, 1961, Alice Marie Thompson joined other New Orleans Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) members to test the Interstate Commerce Commission’s new policy of bus desegregation at the New…
Sintes Boat Works: Life and Business on the Banks of Lake Pontchartrain
Since 1952, the Sintes family has run Sintes Boat Works and Sea Chest Marina, providing a maritime outlet for New Orleanians and residents of the West End neighborhood.
The Story of Fanny: Escaping Bondage in New Orleans
There were times when enslaved people in New Orleans could no longer bear the intense burden that came with the constant suffering of bondage. Escape became the last hope for some of these slaves…
Streetcar Historian Michael Mizell-Nelson
Michael Mizell-Nelson was a historian of the streetcar, exploring the labor history and publicizing the connection of streetcar strikes to the creation of the Po Boy Sandwich, examining streetcar…
Duties of the Wedell-Williams Air Service, Patterson
The air service at Patterson performed transportation and maintenance services and built the racing planes which brought fame to Wedell-Williams.
The Air Service’s routes usually started and…
End of the Wedell-Williams Air Service
The Air Service hit its height in 1933 and 1934, but it experienced a period of decline partially due to the construction of the Shushan Airport in November 1933. The air service took a bigger hit…
Wedell-Williams Air Service Goes Coast to Coast
The Wedell-Williams Air Service clearly took little time to establish itself in New Orleans. In July 1929, two months after Wedell and Williams founded the company, Wedell inaugurated a route to St.…
Happenings at the Wedell-Williams Airport
The Wedell-Williams Airport saw quite a bit of excitement after it opened in early 1931. The Ford company sponsored a series of annual air tours dubbed “The National Air Tour,” with the 1931 tour…
Duties of the Wedell-Williams Air Service
The Wedell-Williams Air Service sold and distributed planes, taught the next generation of pilots and mechanics, and transported passengers.
To sell planes, the air service received informational…
Construction of the Jefferson Airport
As the Wedell-Williams Air Service expanded their air service, a new airport was under construction near Harahan in Jefferson Parish. Costing $63,000, the airport featured a 100 foot x 120 foot steel…
1984 World's Fair Gondola (MART)
The signature attraction of the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition held in New Orleans was MART (Mississippi Aerial River Transit), a $12 million aerial gondola transport system that connected the fair…
Joseph Guillaume's Audacious Ride
On May 4, 1867, Guillaume acted. What happened next is open to some debate. According to the New Orleans Times, at 11:30 a.m. Guillaume hailed a “Whites Only” car number 148 on Love Street, now known…
Previous Protests of Streetcar Segregation
No doubt Guillaume had heard of Dr. R. I. Cromwell, who had forcibly been thrown from a non-star car by five or six men who kicked him and tore his clothes. Cromwell noted the inequity of the star…
The Star Car
Joseph Guillaume had had enough. The Civil War was over, Reconstruction was in full swing, yet the practice of segregation on the streetcars of New Orleans continued. Every third streetcar—although it…
The Desire Line: Streetcar Loss & Rebirth in New Orleans
The Desire streetcar line gained widespread acclaim when Tennessee Williams' play, "A Streetcar Named Desire," was published in 1947. By that time, New Orleanians were quite familiar with the Desire…
1984 World's Fair Monorail
When planning the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition (LWE), fair and city officials decided to build a monorail system. This project had two objectives. First, it was intended to move many visitors so as…
Prytania Streetcar Line
The Prytania Streetcar began operation in 1861 as a mule-drawn car line. It was called the "Silk Stocking" line because its route included the streets of the "Garden District," an uptown area of the…
1929 Streetcar Strike
Following increasingly heated contract negotiations, New Orleans streetcar motormen and conductors struck beginning July 1, 1929. The survival of the carmen's union and 1,100 jobs was in question.…
WWII Conductorettes and Motorettes
During the Second World War, a labor shortage developed as men began to serve in the armed forces. Women were increasingly encouraged to take over responsibilities on the home front. Women took jobs…
1892 General Strike
Shortly before the arrest of Homer Plessy in June 1892, a successful streetcar strike initiated a wave of union organizing that culminated in what has been called the first biracial general strike in…
Dryades Streetcar Maims Child in the 1920s
In an era when urban planners tout streetcars as engines of urban redevelopment, it is good to remember how dangerous these urban railroads could be.
In the oral history below, the late journalist…