Monday, October 18, 2021

The Briefing

Huey P. Long

Holes in the Story: Huey P. Long, Carl Weiss, and the American Spectacle of Conspiracy

Featuring exclusive, previously unreleased photographs and reports that have been either buried with time or kept hidden from the public, this sweeping conclusion to the Bayou Brief's trilogy on the assassination of Huey P. Long unpacks a conspiracy theory that has persisted for more than 86 years and challenges the portrayals of his alleged assassin, Dr. Carl A. Weiss, Sr., as an innocent victim of a corrupt cover-up.
Lamar White, Jr. -
13th Ward Rambler

Book Review: Backrooms and Bayous by Robert Mann

Is Bob Mann the Zelig or Forrest Gump of Louisiana politics? Find out in Peter Athas' review of Mann's memoirs.
Peter Athas -
Huey P. Long

The Final Days of the Indefatigable Huey P. Long, Jr.

During the last week of his life, Huey P. Long celebrated the high-life in Manhattan, signed a book deal in Pennsylvania, campaigned like a country preacher in Oklahoma, and commanded Louisiana from his 24th floor private apartment inside of the state Capitol.
Lamar White, Jr. -

WATCH: Power, Politics, and Protests: A Conversation with James Carville

Lamar White, Jr. -
Presented by the Bayou Brief, with host Frederick D. Bell.
Read more
Right here.
Click here to listen.
The Kingfish Compendium

Opinion & Commentary

13th Ward Rambler

The House That Chep Built

13th Ward Ramblings on former Mayor Chep Morrison, and Mayor Cantrell's proposal to relocate New Orleans City Hall to Treme.
Environment

Mayor LaToya Cantrell: New Orleans is the right place, and this is the right time, for infrastructure investment.

On May 3, 1978, New Orleans experienced one of...
13th Ward Rambler

Déjà Vu All Over Again

13th Ward Ramblings on New Orleans elections past and present.
Best of the Brief

The Stupid Party Rages On

Donald Trump didn't create a "new" Republican Party. He just plastered his brand on a faction of the party already dominant in the Deep South. As history reveals and as GOP leaders in Louisiana continue to prove, this isn't the "party of Lincoln." It's a party founded on and animated by the politics of racial segregation.

Criminal Justice

Acadiana

The Scoundrel: Clay Higgins Turned in His Badge, Twice, Before Campaigning for Congress as a Celebrity Cop.

Clay Higgins rose to power by telling a story about personal redemption, but his former boss, the sheriff of St. Landry Parish, now claims he would have never given him a second chance in law enforcement if he'd known what really happened before Higgins resigned from the police force in Opelousas.
Criminal Justice

Grevy: The Life and Times of a Louisiana Iconoclast

Publisher's Note: What follows is an extraordinary portrait of Frances Carroll Grevemberg, the controversial lawman, war hero, and erstwhile gubernatorial...
Civil Rights

U.S. Supreme Court Relegates Louisiana’s Split Jury Convictions to “the Dustbin of History”

State Attorney General Jeff Landry squandered a fortune defending a law that voters had already rejected and a majority conservative Supreme Court found to be racist.
Click here to make a contribution.

Editor Recommends

All
Arts, Culture, and History

‘City of a Million Dreams’ is a Lucid, Lyrical Masterpiece

Award-winning writer Jason Berry's new book is the definitive history of New Orleans, a 300-year-old city that challenges, defies, yet still exemplifies the American mythos. For his final article of 2018, publisher Lamar White, Jr. sat down with Berry for a candid conversation about the past, present, and future of New Orleans.
Arts

Clementine’s Hunters: Chapter 1 | In Her Own Words

The iconic American folk artist Clementine Hunter conducted a series of oral interviews in the 1970s. For the first time ever, a transcript of one of those interviews is being made available to the public on the Bayou Brief, courtesy of LSUA's Sue Eakin Archives.
History

The Kingfish is dead. Long live the Kingfish.

During his brief but extraordinary life, Huey P. Long inspired and enraged, fundamentally reshaping how politics would be defined in his home state for generations. Today, more than 85 years after his death, disagreement about whether this epochal event was an assassination or an accident carries with it assumptions about class and privilege, questions about loyalty versus duty, and competing claims over whom we should entrust to tell historical truths.

How Ya Like Dat? The American Saga of Carlos Marcello

The Godfather Trilogy

The American Saga of Carlos Marcello

The final chapter of the Bayou Brief's "Godfather Trilogy" about the life of Carlos Marcello.
Lamar White, Jr. -

Our Disappearing Coast

Arts

These Last Days of Now: A Virtual Gallery

In their exhibition hosted at Good Children Gallery, Julie Dermanksy and Michel Varisco offer a glimpse of a world slipping beneath a rising tide caused by a warming planet.
Environment

A Trio of Trump Appointees Give Louisiana a Game-Changing Victory in Coastal Damages Suit Against Big Oil

In a terse, five-page opinion, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reject Big Oil's last ditch effort at avoiding accountability in state court.
Environment

As a Divided Committee Advances Bill to Neuter Coastal Lawsuits Against Big Oil, a GOP Legislator Urges the Public to “Raise Hell”

After eight years of legal wrangling, as six coastal parishes stand on the brink of unlocking billions to repair the environmental damages allegedly caused by illegal and largely unpermitted activities of Big Oil, the state legislature considers a bill that would strike down the lawsuits and throw out a breakthrough $100 million settlement already negotiated with one of the companies involved.
CenLa

Baring the Facts on the Dresser Mess

“There is no ‘safe’ dose of a carcinogen.” – Rachel Carson, "Silent Spring"

Lagniappe

Stories about Louisiana, the land and its people

Read on

Civil Rights

Best of the BriefSince 2017
We share the stories of Louisiana

Acadiana

The Brazen Cajun

Louisiana's attorney general is now considered a leading contender in the 2023 governor's race, but while his record of intransigent and pugilistic partisanship may have made him into a force among the far-right, it also threatens to undermine his credibility with an electorate that scrutinizes gubernatorial candidates far more extensively than the electorate that shows up during federal elections. In this sweeping review of Landry's career in politics, we consider the issues most likely to dominate any discussion about whether he is qualified to lead one of the most diverse and most economically disadvantaged states in the nation.
Lamar White, Jr. -
Baton Rouge

The Other General

William Tecumseh Sherman was the school's first superintendent, but "the father of LSU" was a Virginia-born aristocrat who moved to Rapides Parish, earned a fortune through his cotton plantation, and then lost almost everything during the Civil War.
Lamar White, Jr. -
Acadiana

The Scoundrel: Clay Higgins Turned in His Badge, Twice, Before Campaigning for Congress as a Celebrity Cop.

Clay Higgins rose to power by telling a story about personal redemption, but his former boss, the sheriff of St. Landry Parish, now claims he would have never given him a second chance in law enforcement if he'd known what really happened before Higgins resigned from the police force in Opelousas.
Lamar White, Jr. -
Original content. All rights reserved. © 2017-2021 Bayou Brief.