Policy Cuts
Chap 8
The Choctaw Club
New Orleans was a city in decline—at least it one judges a city by population or trade export and import. Still, it remained the South’s largest city in this era and it housed the South’s single largest concentration of immigrants (6.7%, mostly Italians). In 1930, New Orleans was 28% black. The city then, as it does today, possesses a culture unlike any in the South—or the rest of the nation. New Orleans was unique. Located in a Confederate state, New Orleans spent only fifteen months in the Confederacy before its conquest in April 1962. In 1920, New Orleans was still one of America’s largest cities (387,000). New Orleans politics for most of the post-Reconstruction period was as conservative as found in the American South.
The Regular Democratic Organization (RDO) was formally organized in the early 1880’s. It symbol was the rooster and its headquarters was at the Choctaw Club. Using paramilitary groups and considerable violence and terror, the RDO acquired power after federal troops left the city. The organization of the “Old Regulars” operating within the Democratic Party, became what can be described as a political machine. The RDO established a one party political system in the city than the state (1896) as well. The state constitution was rewritten to include the Jim Crow laws (Mississippi was the first)-which over the next fifteen years expanded to ten of the eleven states of the former Confederacy. The electoral muscle and power behind the Old Regulars was provided by the Crescent City’s working and immigrant classes. Blacks were, for all practical purposes, completely excluded[1] from political life. The Democratic Party became the one party Solid South. The effect of the one party policy system can be demonstrated by the results of Mayor Behrman’s 1908 election: Behrman the Choctaw Democrat received 26,897 votes against 270 by the Socialist candidate and 89 for an independent candidate. O where, oh where, in all this is the Republican Party?
The one party Solid South cast not only its anti-racial shadow across the South, but also twisted southern state and local policy systems away from either a competitive two party system, or a majority-minority party. If for no other reason, then, the southern state and local policy system, as compared to others across the nation, acquired, for the lack of a better name, a sort of “boss” flavor. To be sure, bosses (notice I do not mention “machine”) exist to some degree in most all state policy systems.
The Democratic Party in the Deep South, having no viable alternative, contained all sorts of factions, and party “bosses”, who often competed at the state level (and municipal) for dominance. Louisiana, dominated by New Orleans, was particularly faction-ridden and the ponderous New Orleans Choctaw Club was able to set the tone of that state’s policy system. Tennessee, in contrast, included several comparable sized municipalities (Memphis, Nashville,, Knoxville and even Chattanooga) and inter-municipal warfare, buried within the Democratic Party, was intensely characteristic of that state’s politics. That the Republican Party in most of the South was useless as a political vehicle also meant that reformers literally had no place to go. The reform candidate that beat Behrman in 1920, Andrew McShane, held no party label whatsoever but operated on the fringes of New Orleans Democratic Party. Not surprisingly, lacking any real party organization, his reform administration was especially unproductive—leaving little impact on subsequent mayors. New Orleans did possess a business reform faction, and it preceded Behrman in power and interrupted his tenure as mayor—so it was not electorally impotent. The organizational power of the RDO, however, severely limited the ability of reform administrations to actually “reform” once elected.
As a young and rising Democratic (German-Jewish, converted Roman Catholic) politician Martin Behrman was deeply involved in these affairs. He served as a delegate to the 1898 Louisiana constitutional convention. In 1904, he was elected for the first of four successive terms as mayor, before being ousted in 1921 by a reform candidate. Behrman, however, returned to office for his fifth term in 1925—and he died the year after. Behrman is New Orleans only five term mayor. Behrman managed a coalition that included virtually all elements save blacks and a “silk stocking business reformers” (who ousted him after his fourth term).
Behrman in 1920 was probably more than anything a victim of factional politics, an increase in street car fares, and an exhaustion that follows four terms in office. He was not helped by his reluctant “desegregation” of the vice wards of New Orleans, an action that was forced on him by Washington’s War Department that compelled Behrman’s action. His 1924 victory rested on a platform of racial purity, suppression of crime, extensive street paving, parks and playgrounds, garbage disposal, an auditorium and courts building (shades of city beautiful civic center). In office he instituted a zoning ordinance, and a significant waterfront development project on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. His administration of Prohibition laws was unsurprisingly, “relaxed”. This agenda seems relatively congruent with structural reformers if one ignores civil service, efficiency, and balanced budgets—honesty may have been an issue also.
The Choctaw Club was a businessman’s club; it is not, however, sufficiently studied, in my opinion, to answer whether it was comparable to Philadelphia’s Pilgrim’s Club or even Tammany Hall. Behrman was the undisputed “Boss” of Choctaw while in the mayor’s office. According to Zink he preferred to operate the city’s machine away from “back room politics” and he publically stated that “Tammany Hall might enhance its reputation by abandoning its secretiveness and its skepticism of publicity”.[2] Despite its outward appearances, however, Choctaw did not ever mirror the organizational coherence of Tammany, and a one party system lent an entirely different complexion in election campaigns and coalitions. It was more a container for factions and political ambitions and its executive committee compared more to the “Six Families” than Tammany.
Bankers, businessmen, immigrants, working class, and those who wanted to pursue careers in New Orleans and Louisiana politics were inside the Choctaw Club’s organizational fabric. It may be, the RDO was as closer to a corporative political party, rather than a political and electoral machine. “Supported by contributions from major business elements, and from gambling, liquor, racing and prostitution interests, Behrman and the Choctaws tolerated much open vice, ignored the Sunday closing laws , manipulated assessment, and regulated utilities. Structural reform in this atmosphere meant little. New Orleans embraced the commission form of government in 1912, The original inspiration for a commission came from New Orleans Good Government League which saw the commission as a way of checking the power of Behrman and Choctaw. The League crafter and submitted a bill to the state legislature for a charter approval. Behrman crafted his own bill and modified the commission to fit his being independently elected as mayor. Miracle of miracles, Behrman’s bill was approved.
So Behrman and Choctaw never missed a beat. Behrman as mayor simply became one of the five commissioners. In the complex world we live in, it also must be admitted the Behrman administration did some good. Behrman was behind the “historical preservation” of the Vieux Carre, ensuring the preservation of New Orleans’ Creole culture and Canal Street—the nucleus of New Orleans’ present day tourism industry.
[1] In 1900, although a majority of Louisiana state residents, there were only approximately 5,500 Afro-Americans registered to vote in the state. By 191, there were only about 750.
[2] Harold Zink, City Bosses in the United States: a Study of Twenty Municipal Bosses (Durham NC, Duke University Press, 1930), pp. 332-333.
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Ron W. Coan 