deLesseps Story "Chep" Morrison Sr. (January 18, 1912 – May 22, 1964), was an American attorney and politician who was the 54th mayor of New Orleans, Louisiana, from 1946 to 1961. He then served as an appointee of U.S. President John F. Kennedy as the United States ambassador to the Organization of American States between 1961 and 1963.
The population of New Orleans peaked during Morrison's mayoralty, when the 1960 Census recorded 627,525 inhabitants, a 10 percent increase from 1950. Morrison ran three primary campaigns for the Louisiana Democratic gubernatorial nomination, but was unsuccessful.
Early life and education Morrison was born to Jacob Haight Morrison, II (1875–1929), a district attorney in Pointe Coupee Parish, and his wife, the former Anita Olivier, a New Orleans socialite, in New Roads, the Pointe Coupee parish seat of government. He was named after deLesseps Story, a respected New Orleans judge to whom he was related on his mother's side; the family was related to Ferdinand de Lesseps and Sidney Story, an alderman for whom the New Orleans area of Storyville was named.New Orleans in the Forties by Mary Lou Widmer. Pelican Publishing: 2007; , p. 119 Morrison spoke French fluently."Le Grand Charles, Delasoups, and Uncle Earl: De Gaulle's Visit to New Orleans" by Philip C. Cook. Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association Vol. 49, No. 1 (Winter, 2008), pp. 5-20
In 1932, Morrison graduated from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. In 1934, he completed his law degree from the Louisiana State University Law Center.
Law and political career Morrison moved to New Orleans, where he became an attorney with the New Deal agency, the National Recovery Administration. Thereafter, he became a law partner with his brother Jacob Morrison and Thomas Hale Boggs Sr., a future Democratic U.S. Representative and House Majority Leader.
Marriage and family In 1942, Morrison married Corinne Waterman of New Orleans. They had three children together. Their oldest son, deLesseps Story Morrison Jr., known as "Toni", became a politician like his father and was a Louisiana state representative from 1974 to 1980.
Military service
After graduation from college he was commissioned in the Army Reserve as a Second Lieutenant in 1933.Army R, D & A. V4 1962-1963 During World War II, Morrison left the state legislature to join the United States Army. He was promoted to the rank of colonel, and became chief of staff of the occupation forces stationed in the city of Bremen, Germany. He received the Bronze Star, the Legion of Merit and also served in England, France, and Belgium. In 1944, both he and Bill Dodd were reelected to the legislature in absentia by their constituents. He served on active duty from 1941 to 1946. He was also decorated with the Legion of Honour and the Belgian Order of Leopold.
After the war, Morrison returned to New Orleans to practice law. Continuing with the U.S. Army Reserve in 1946, he attained the rank of Major General.Army reserve magazine. v.6/10 His reserve career included serving as the commanding general of the 377th Transportation Command and later Deputy Chief of the Transportation Corps within the United States Department of the Army.
Election as mayor Morrison was approached by a group of Uptown reformers in December 1945 to run for mayor in the election of 1946. The attractive and dynamic young veteran ran a campaign emphasizing the need to clean up the corruption of incumbent Mayor Robert Maestri, who had been affiliated with Huey Long and the Earl Long faction of Louisiana Democratic politics. Maestri's Old Regulars had dominated New Orleans for decades. Morrison pulled a major upset when he defeated Maestri in the first primary. Historian Pamela Tyler notes that outside of New Orleans Morrison's surprise victory was attributed to the role of women. The International Women's Organization, (IWO) under the leadership of July Breazeale Waters (1895–1989), registered voters, became poll watchers, canvassed, distributed literature and signs and got out the vote on election day on behalf of Morrison. One notable event planned by women that moved the electorate was the "March of Brooms" whose theme was, "A Clean Sweep with Morrison." The IWO and the Broom Brigade were key to Morrison's victory, with the Christian Science Monitor stating, "The women of New Orleans elected deLesseps S. Morrison." He was among many returning World War II veterans to gain political office during that period.
Morrison as mayor
As mayor, Morrison put together a strong public relations team, which helped him cultivate an image as a dynamic reformer and of the city as a progressive one. He gained widespread praise in the national press. A later 1993 survey of historians, political scientists and urban experts conducted by Melvin G. Holli of the University of Illinois at Chicago ranked Morrison as the sixteenth-best American big-city mayor to have served between the years 1820 and 1993.
Morrison marketed the city effectively, and was instrumental in creating the post-World War II image of New Orleans as a growing and progressive Sun Belt metropolis. His administration attracted significant private investment and welcomed the establishment of numerous oil industry and white-collar corporate offices in downtown New Orleans, as well as several sizable new industrial plants elsewhere. To emphasize his differences from his predecessor, whom he had characterized as dictatorial, Morrison worked to get a law passed to reduce the powers of the mayor. He created a new city planning commission and moved to make administration more efficient by firing many of Maestri's patronage appointments (though some were replaced with Morrison's own supporters).
Morrison downsized city operations by selling off most of the city's public markets. Most were torn down, which was regretted later as costing the city valuable community centers. He addressed a housing crisis by building veterans' housing operated by the Housing Authority of New Orleans, and engaged in more large-scale urban renewal than any other New Orleans mayor. Morrison's administration demolished low-income neighborhoods to build new or expand existing public housing projects, expropriated private property to construct the New Orleans Civic Center, the New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal, and several street-widening projects in the city's downtown.
One of his most popular acts was to create the New Orleans Recreation Department (NORD), which included segregated facilities for whites and blacks (all public facilities were segregated in those years). He began an extensive citywide street improvement program financed though a bond issue, and located funding sufficient to construct numerous street overpasses and underpasses, eliminating most at-grade railway crossings within the city limits. Morrison acquiesced in New Orleans Public Service's dismantling of the city's extensive streetcar network in the 1950s.
A proponent of increased international trade, Morrison lent his support to the construction of the International Trade Mart, a precursor to the city's World Trade Center. He traveled extensively in Latin America to promote trade with New Orleans. He became friends with dictators Rafael Trujillo and Juan Perón. Morrison's wish to reinforce ties with Latin America was expressed in such urban renewal projects as having new central area circulators embellished with monuments to Central and South American historical figures. The widened Basin Street was, from 1957, developed as the Garden of the Americas and outfitted with monuments to Simón Bolívar, Benito Juárez, and Francisco Morazán. A statue of Bolívar was prominently sited at the corner of Canal and Basin streets, and a new circulator in Central City was renamed Simon Bolivar Avenue. "Why the section between Calliope and First streets changed from Loyola Avenue to Simon Bolivar Avenue?" , bestofneworleans.com, March 18, 2014; accessed September 17, 2014. Morrison endorsed the Information Council of the Americas (INCA), an anti-communist organization, at the behest of its founder Edward S. Butler in order to boost its membership. He called on citizens to support INCA "with vigor".
In 1949, Morrison served as president of the National League of Cities.
Despite running on a platform stressing the elimination of the Old Regular machine, after his election Morrison quickly built his own political organization, the Crescent City Democratic Association. The CCDA began finding its supporters jobs in City Hall and in municipal construction contracts. In October 1946, Morrison broke a garbage collectors' strike by organizing volunteer scab labor to take over the duties of the strikers. Morrison's organization's power quickly eclipsed that of the Old Regulars, and he secured easy re-elections in 1950, 1954, and 1958.
Morrison pushed for a new city charter in 1954, which replaced the at-large council commission system with a legislative city council combining five district-based and two at-large members. The "strong mayor" system of municipal government established by the 1954 charter still operates in New Orleans. The charter limited the mayor to two consecutive four-year terms, but did not apply to Morrison, who was exempted by a grandfather clause.
Morrison, crime, and the NOPD After assuming office in 1946, Morrison appointed Adair Watters superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) in an effort to eliminate corruption. But tensions developed when Watters moved to suppress gambling, prostitution, and other vice too zealously for Morrison's liking. Watters resigned in February 1949 because of Morrison's political interference with NOPD activities. Throughout most of the 1950s, scandals continued to be revealed concerning the involvement of the NOPD in graft and vice. In 1952, the Metropolitan Crime Commission of New Orleans was established as an independent monitor of the NOPD and the Morrison administration's approach to vice. State Police Colonel Francis Grevemberg, later a two-time gubernatorial candidate, led a series of high-profile raids on New Orleans gambling establishments that embarrassed Morrison and the NOPD for its inactivity. Eventually, retired FBI Agent Aaron M. Kohn was sent from Chicago to investigate NOPD involvement in vice. Kohn later recalled:
After about a year, I began to realize something about the system down here. In Chicago, people were generally on one side of the fence or the other—honest or crooked. But in Louisiana, there just isn't any fence."Life Magazine, September 8, 1967, p. 94.
He soon complained that Morrison was obstructing his efforts. In 1955, Morrison forced the mayor to ask for the resignation of Joseph Schuering, the NOPD superintendent implicated in the scandals.
Morrison and race