{"id":38413,"date":"2014-11-19T20:25:42","date_gmt":"2014-11-19T20:25:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=38413"},"modified":"2014-11-19T20:25:42","modified_gmt":"2014-11-19T20:25:42","slug":"empire-of-sin-by-gary-krist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=38413","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Empire of Sin,\u2019 by Gary Krist"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018Empire of Sin,\u2019 by Gary Krist<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\nSunday Book Review<\/a>
\n2014-11-06<\/p>\n

Walter Isaacson<\/strong><\/a>, President and CEO
\nAspen Institute<\/em><\/p>\n

Empire of Sin: A Story of Sex, Jazz, Murder, and the Battle for Modern New Orleans<\/em><\/a> By Gary Krist; Illustrated. 416 pp. Crown Publishers. $26.<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Tom Anderson\u2019s saloon opened in 1901, at the entrance to the recently designated sin district known as Storyville<\/a> on the edge of New Orleans\u2019s<\/a> French Quarter<\/a>, people from all over town came to marvel at its opulence. Its cherrywood bar stretched half a block and was lit by a hundred electric lights. With Anderson\u2019s encouragement, high-class brothels were soon flourishing down Basin Street<\/a>. Josie Arlington<\/a>, his business partner, had a four-story Victorian mansion with a domed cupola, mirrored parlor and Oriental statues. The exotic, mixed-race Lulu White built a brick palace that specialized in interracial sex and featured the jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton<\/a> at the piano. Another octoroon<\/a> (the appellation given to people considered to be one-eighth black), Willie V. Piazza<\/a>, passed herself off as a countess and sported both a monocle and a diamond choker. Anderson, whose civic spirit earned him the title \u201cthe Mayor of Storyville,\u201d published a Blue Book that contained photos and descriptions of the area\u2019s better prostitutes, annotated with symbols (\u201cw\u201d for white, \u201cc\u201d for colored, \u201cJ\u201d for Jewish and \u201coct.\u201d for octoroon). It was all a vivid expression of the city\u2019s tolerance and diversity…<\/p>\n

…Through much of the 19th century, New Orleans had been racially progressive, especially for Creoles of color, most of them French-speaking Roman Catholics descended from families that had intermarried with Europeans. From the early 1870s onward, blacks could vote and serve on juries; marriage between different races was legal; and schools, lakefront beach areas and many neighborhoods were integrated. But the advent of Jim Crow laws<\/a> after Reconstruction<\/a> created a new dynamic. The reformers of the city\u2019s elite took the lead in passing segregation laws as well as in cracking down on prostitution. In 1908, the State Legislature passed a bill that barred musical performances in saloons, prohibited blacks and whites from being served in the same establishment and excluded women from bars…<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Empire of Sin,\u2019 by Gary Krist The New York Times Sunday Book Review 2014-11-06 Walter Isaacson, President and CEO Aspen Institute Empire of Sin: A Story of Sex, Jazz, Murder, and the Battle for Modern New Orleans By Gary Krist; Illustrated. 416 pp. Crown Publishers. $26. When Tom Anderson\u2019s saloon opened in 1901, at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,459,369,8,20],"tags":[18478,1438,2640,10760,2327,18479],"class_list":["post-38413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-history","category-louisiana","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-gary-krist","tag-new-orleans","tag-new-york-times","tag-storyville","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-walter-isaacson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}