Vol. 8 No. 1 (2022): Africana Studies Review - Summer 2022 (Special Issue)

In 2019 the Center for African and African American Studies at Southern University at New Orleans (SUNO) launched the Pontchartrain Park Pioneers: An Oral History of New Orleans' Civil Rights Era Segregated Black “Suburb in the City.” This innovative endeavor, which is funded by the State of Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism office of Cultural Development and Historic Preservation, utilizes oral histories of New Orleans African Americans who achieved the “American Dream” of homeownership in the second oldest American all-black “suburb in the city” in the 1950s and early 1960s and the first in New Orleans to tell a larger story. The oral histories of the original settlers, or Pioneers, reflect what was happening to African Americans nationally, and this issue outlines 10 such histories. Even as the country moved painfully toward integration, Pontchartrain Park created a haven for Black people. This vital oral history initiative exposes the broader significance of the interviewed persons and the neighborhood they helped build.