Moon Landrieu obit

Moon Landrieu, mayor who bridged Black and White New Orleans, dies at 92

He served in all branches and levels of government, pressed to build Superdome on Poydras

 

 He was not on the list.

Moon Landrieu, a transformational New Orleans mayor who helped usher in the rise of Black political power at City Hall and whose passion for public service spawned a political dynasty, died Monday at his home in New Orleans, his family said. He was 92.

A state legislator and City Council member during the tumultuous end of government-sanctioned segregation, Landrieu ascended to the mayor’s office in 1970 in part by promising to make jobs and other opportunities available to Black New Orleanians.

He oversaw the completion of the Superdome and the reshaping of the Central Business District as skyscrapers and major hotels took root. And before moving on to a Cabinet post in President Jimmy Carter's administration and later to a state appeals court judgeship, he handed the keys to an integrated City Hall in 1978 to New Orleans’ first Black mayor, Ernest N. "Dutch" Morial, starting a succession of African-American leaders interrupted only by Landrieu's son, Mitch, who took office in 2010.

“He took the important first step of integrating City Hall and thereby sending a strong message about the future of the city when it came to racial justice,” said Marc Morial, son of Dutch Morial, mayor from 1994 to 2002 and now president of the National Urban League.

“There was no forbidden territory for Moon Landrieu,” said Robert Tucker Jr., who, as Landrieu’s executive assistant, was the White mayor’s first Black appointee. “Everything that he did was [based on] ‘How can I make this city better?’ and ‘How can I make it better for people who have been locked outside of the American dream?’”

Landrieu passed his legacy of civic involvement to his nine children, who went on to high-profile elected offices, judgeships and board appointments. His daughter, Mary, was a legislator and state treasurer who served three terms from Louisiana in the U.S. Senate, while Mitch Landrieu was elected lieutenant governor and mayor of New Orleans and now serves as a senior adviser to Joe Biden for implementing the president's infrastructure program.

“We all, every one of us, are in some form of community service,” said Madeleine Landrieu, a former Civil District Court and 4th Circuit Court of Appeal judge who is dean of Loyola University’s law school.

Said former President Carter: “Moon was admired throughout our great nation as a national leader in urban policy and a tough-minded and historically significant mayor. He effectively demonstrated that the new South would only thrive through racial coalition rather than the historical pattern of division. He was a superb secretary of housing and urban development, and I have been proud to have him in my Cabinet and as my friend.”

Anthony Gagliano, one of Landrieu’s top aides at City Hall, said the former mayor's belief in the importance of social justice was a result of his upbringing, his strong Roman Catholic faith and his Jesuit education at Loyola University, where he earned undergraduate and law degrees.

 

“That never left him,” Gagliano said. “Over time, he got more and more concerned about racial justice. I think that impelled him a lot.”

So did his friendship with Norman Francis, the first Black student at Loyola's College of Law, where they met on Francis' first day.

Francis recalled a moment when Landrieu was part of a racially mixed group of students traveling by bus to a conference in the 1950s, when segregation of public facilities was still the rule. After a few hours on the road, Landrieu asked why the driver hadn’t stopped for a restroom break, Francis said.

The Black students knew better: Most were closed to them.

“We said, ‘You’ve got to start traveling with us because you’ll learn a lot,’” Francis said.

Maurice Edwin Landrieu was born July 23, 1930, and grew up on Adams Street in a mixed-race neighborhood in the Carrollton area.

In childhood, Moon was the nickname of his brother, Joseph Landrieu. Tiring of it, Joseph began calling the future mayor "Little Moon," and the moniker stuck, according to a 1969 article in The States-Item.

That was the year that Landrieu had his first name changed to Moon, said Helen Lorio, his secretary for 36 years. For his run for mayor in 1969, political advisers wanted him to list his name as “Maurice E. Landrieu,” Lorio said, “But he said, ‘No, I’m Moon.’ He’s been Moon ever since.”

Landrieu graduated from Jesuit High School, where his prowess as a pitcher won him a scholarship to Loyola.

“He told me that when he graduated from Loyola, he was offered a small bonus by a baseball team, but he was thinking about going to law school,” said Charles Ferguson, a friend and former editor of The States-Item and The Times-Picayune. “He made the right decision.”

At Loyola, Landrieu was Student Council president and was blanketed with honors, including the Charles H. Bailey Trophy, an annual award to the outstanding student leader.

He started spending time at Student Council meetings to be near a fellow student, Verna Satterlee, political commentator Clancy DuBos said. It was Satterlee who got Landrieu interested in politics.

“She saw that he had the potential,” DuBos said. “She kindled that spark, and he was inspired to live up to the way she inspired him to serve.”

 

Landrieu married Satterlee on Sept. 25, 1954, gaining not only a wife but a manager for each of his campaigns for the rest of his political life.

That same year, Landrieu entered the Army as a second lieutenant, serving in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps until his discharge in 1957.

When he returned to civilian life, he opened a law practice and taught accounting at Loyola. He also became involved in the youth wing of the Crescent City Democratic Organization, then controlled by Mayor deLesseps S. “Chep” Morrison.

In the 1959-60 election, Landrieu, a lifelong Democrat, ran on Morrison’s ticket and was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives from the 12th Ward. He served six years, a time when lawmakers were confronted with the issue of school integration.

Landrieu was one of two House members to vote against bills that opposed integrating public schools, part of segregationists’ continued attempts to delay implementing the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling.

In response, two arch-segregationists - Rep. William Rainich and Plaquemines Parish political boss Leander Perez - “stuck their fingers in his chest and said they were going to get him,” said journalist and author Walter Isaacson, who, as a reporter for The States-Item, later covered Landrieu when he was mayor.

It was a defining moment for the young legislator, Isaacson said.

“That can make you want to cower and go along, or it can make you more determined in what you feel is your moral compass,” Isaacson said. “That was a huge moment for Landrieu, and it gave him a mission.”

Landrieu lost a 1962 race for the City Council but won in 1966. From the dais, he led successful moves to ban segregation in public accommodations and to establish a biracial human relations commission.

He also voted to remove the Confederate flag from the council chamber, foreshadowing his son Mitch’s work to remove four Confederate and White supremacist monuments from places of prominence in New Orleans.

It was Landrieu’s run for mayor in 1969 that began shaping his early work for integration into a legacy. During the campaign, race emerged as a key issue in a debate in which Landrieu and James Fitzmorris Jr., his opponent in the Democratic Party runoff, were asked whether they would appoint Black people to positions at City Hall.

DuBos recalled that Fitzmorris said he would appoint everyone based on merit. Landrieu said he would appoint African Americans “in significant numbers” because they had been underrepresented.

 

Landrieu won 90% of the Black votes in that contest, and 99% in the general election against Ben Toledano, the Republican candidate.

He took the oath of office on May 4, 1970. “We were beginning, not ending a campaign, beginning the administration of a city that needed help,” he told DuBos in a 2020 WWL-TV interview marking the 50th anniversary of his inauguration.

When Landrieu took office, African Americans made up 19% of municipal employees. When he left office eight years later, that figure was 43%. Landrieu also appointed Rev. A.L. Davis to fill a City Council vacancy, making him the first Black member of that body.

Landrieu said later that it was just common sense.

“We were wasting so much talent, wasting so much energy by precluding Blacks from participation in all matters,” Landrieu said in the WWL-TV interview. “I was determined, as I became mayor, to revitalize this city and to bring about racial integration so that the city could enjoy the full benefit of White and Black participants.”

Former Mayor Sidney Barthelemy, who served two terms starting in 1986, said Landrieu should be credited for recognizing that “all citizens deserve to have government serve them.”

“He leaves a strong legacy of doing what’s right and recognizing people as being equal citizens, particularly African Americans,” Barthelemy said.

Throughout Landrieu’s two terms, “he was working on righting historical wrongs, and he knew he was doing it,” said Lynda Friedmann, whom Landrieu appointed to be the first female executive director of the Vieux Carré Commission. “He trusted people to do their jobs well, and he supported them. He was an ideal boss.”

Criticism was inevitable, but Tucker said it never held Landrieu back.

“The stronger people pushed against him, the stronger he became,” he said.

Landrieu’s tenure also reshaped the city’s skyline. At the time, Dave Dixon, who would become known as the father of the Superdome, was part of a group that wanted the stadium in New Orleans East.

“They thought it would help the city grow because it was growing in that direction,” DuBos said.

But Landrieu was adamant about putting the Superdome on Poydras Street. Since the stadium opened in 1975, that location has been hailed as critical in building New Orleans' Central Business District as well as its reputation as an event city, because it’s within walking distance of hotels, bars, restaurants and the French Quarter.

“The Superdome was the perfect anchor,” DuBos said. “It was economically transformational because it kept downtown from collapsing.”

“If we didn’t have it on Poydras, that area would be dead,” Lorio said. “His name should be on there somewhere.”

Landrieu also promoted tourism with projects such as renovations of the French Market and Jackson Square. A preservation study he authorized in 1972 led to the creation of the Historic District Landmarks Commission, extending architectural design review beyond the French Quarter. And while his name doesn’t adorn the Superdome, the Mississippi River promenade across Decatur Street from the French Quarter is now known as the Moon Walk.

In the years since Landrieu left the mayor’s office, many younger New Orleanians take his achievements for granted, said Judge Edwin Lombard of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeal.

“Back then, nobody took them for granted,” said Lombard, who called Landrieu a "once-in-a-lifetime" public official. "He went well beyond what would have been expected during that time."

A year after Landrieu left City Hall, President Carter, in a reshuffling of the Cabinet, appointed him as secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Although Carter praised Landrieu’s achievements in New Orleans at his swearing-in, the principal reason the president summoned him to Washington was to bolster Carter’s sagging popularity, said Larry Kullman, Landrieu’s executive assistant at HUD.

“He did a lot of traveling around the country to get publicity for HUD housing, for housing for the elderly, for subsidized housing, to show that HUD was doing a lot of good things in a lot of places,” Kullman said.

Despite the prestige of being a Cabinet member, Landrieu chafed at the sluggish federal bureaucracy. In an interview with The Times-Picayune, Landrieu acknowledged the importance of the federal job, but, he said, “It’s like driving a huge ship at sea: You can steer it well and see that it doesn’t get into trouble, but it doesn’t move very fast.”

Landrieu left Washington in January 1981, when Ronald Reagan succeeded Carter. Eleven years later, he ran and won a seat on the 4th Circuit Court, filling the unexpired term of Jim Garrison.

For Patricia Rivet Murray, who took a seat on the appellate court in 1994, Landrieu was a mentor. “He was a wonderful sounding board,” she said. “He certainly had opinions. You could argue with him, and he loved to argue.”

He was re-elected in 1996 and retired in 2000.

Although his campaigning days were over, Landrieu still had political advice for his children.

Before Mitch Landrieu took office as mayor in May 2010, his father told him, “On May 3, you own every pothole in the city.”

And Madeleine Landrieu said her father told this to her, Mitch and Mary before they ran for office:

“You are not elected to be re-elected; you are elected to serve. Exercise your best judgment. If that means you won’t get re-elected, I’ll still love you. Your mother will still love you.

“You’ve got to pick your battles and negotiate what you can negotiate. You want to live to fight another day because you believe in the fight.”

Survivors include his wife, Verna Satterlee Landrieu; four sons, Mark, Mitch, Martin and Maurice Landrieu Jr. of New Orleans; five daughters, Shelley and Madeleine Landrieu of New Orleans, Mary Landrieu of New Orleans and Washington, D.C., Melanie Cook of Mandeville and Melinda Seiter of Mobile, Alabama; 37 grandchildren; and 16 great-grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements are incomplete.