Dozens of Black women transformed public housing in New Orleans.
Women, such as Irene Griffin, Barbara Jackson and Helen Lang, “challenged dominant stereotypes purported by the media, elected officials, and others that criminalized their poverty, neighborhoods, family size and composition,” Paper Monuments states.
The Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) was created by the Louisiana Housing Act of 1936. New Orleans was the first city to receive federal funding for public housing in 1938 under the Housing Act of 1937. According to Paper Monuments, these acts led to “the displacement and relocation of Black residents with low incomes into public housing.”
By 1942, New Orleans had four public housing developments for Black families – the Magnolia (1941), Lafitte (1941), Calliope (1942) and St. Bernard (1942). Two developments – St. Thomas (1941) and Iberville (1941) – were for white families.
Faced with violence, racist and sexist housing policies and poor building maintenance, Black women formed resident councils and the New Orleans Citywide Tenant Council.
“They engaged in decades-long advocacy and organizing practices that stood on the margins of traditional Civil Rights and social justice activism,” Paper Monuments states. “Theirs was a movement without marches.”
The march-less movement improved public housing residents’ lives, changed housing policies and strengthened tenant rights.
For instance, Lang pushed residents to vote, to start their own businesses or pursue more education, a 2010 Times-Picayune article states.
Jackson and her friend, Fannie McKnight, led a successful yearlong rent strike against HANO in 1982. According to a 2014 Times-Picayune article, the strike ended when HANO agreed to modernize apartments and reduce utility fees.
In addition to instituting programs to help women, children and elderly residents, Griffin “secured funding for community programs … and lobbied for jobs and workforce development,” her 2020 obituary states.
“Unafraid to take risks,” Paper Monuments states, these women “reshaped housing institutions.”
For more tales from New Orleans history, visit the Back in the Day archives.
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