Ernest Nathan Morial
Morial in 1985
57thMayor of New Orleans
In office May 1, 1978 – May 5, 1986
Preceded by	Moon Landrieu
Succeeded by	Sidney Barthelemy
43rdPresident of the United States Conference of Mayors
In office 1985–1986
Preceded by	Hernán Padilla
Succeeded by	Joseph Riley Jr.
Member of theLouisiana House of Representatives for District 20 (Orleans Parish)
In office 1967–1970
Succeeded by	Dorothy Mae Taylor
Personal details
Born	(1929-10-09)October 9, 1929 New Orleans,Louisiana, U.S.
Died	December 24, 1989(1989-12-24) (aged 60) New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.
Resting place	Saint Louis Cemetery No. 3 in New Orleans
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Sybil Haydel
Children	5, includingMarc Morial
Military service
Allegiance	United States
Branch/service	United States Army
Years of service	1954–1956
Unit	Intelligence Corps
Battles/wars	Korean War

Ernest Nathan "Dutch" Morial (October 9, 1929 – December 24, 1989) was an American politician and a leadingcivil rights advocate. He was the first blackmayor of New Orleans, serving from 1978 to 1986.^[1] He was the father ofMarc Morial, who served as Mayor of New Orleans from 1994 to 2002.

Morial, a New Orleans native, grew up in theSeventh Ward in a French-CreoleCatholic family. His father was Walter Etienne Morial, a cigarmaker, and his mother was Leonie V. (Moore) Morial, a seamstress. He attendedHoly Redeemer Elementary School andMcDonogh No. 35 Senior High School. He graduated fromXavier University of Louisiana inNew Orleans, Louisiana, in 1951. In 1954, he became the first African American to receive a law degree fromLouisiana State University inBaton Rouge.

Morial came to prominence as a lawyer fighting to dismantlesegregation and as president of the local NAACP from 1962 to 1965. He followed in the cautious style of his mentorA. P. Tureaud in preferring to fight for Civil and political rights in courtroom battles, rather than through sit-ins and demonstrations.

After unsuccessful electoral races in 1959 and 1963, he became the first black member of theLouisiana State Legislature since Reconstruction when he was elected in 1967 to represent a district in New Orleans'Uptown neighborhood. He ran for an at-large position on New Orleans' City Council in 1969 and 1970, and lost narrowly. He then became the first black Juvenile Court judge in Louisiana in 1970. When he was elected to theLouisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal in 1974, he was the first black American to have attained this position as well.

In theelection of 1977 he became the first African American mayor of New Orleans by defeating City Councilman Joseph V. DiRosa, a fellow Democrat allied with former MayorVictor Schiro, by a vote of 90,500 to 84,300. Morial won with 95 percent of the black vote and 20 percent of the white vote, which came mainly from middle and upper classUptown precincts. He won this election without the support of major local black political organizations, like SOUL and COUP. During most of the election campaign, Morial was viewed by most commentators as a spoiler candidate with little chance of victory. Morial was a polarizing figure as mayor of New Orleans.

Morial waged long-standing political battles with the City Council, led by his archrivalSidney Barthelemy, and with COUP, Barthelemy's political organization. He spent much of his time as mayor trying to increase the strength and influence of the mayor's office over independent, state-chartered governmental bodies, like theSewerage and Water Board and the Dock Board (the supervisory body for thePort of New Orleans), an effort he described as a democratization of city governance. He built a powerful patronage machine using unclassified city employees and used it to defeat opponents in thestate legislature—includingHank Braden, Louis Charbonnet, and Nick Connor—by personally sponsoring little-known challengers. In 1978, Braden and Charbonnet competed over a vacant state senate seat, which Braden claimed by a 14-vote margin.^[2]

In his first term, Morial faced a sanitation workers’ strike and a police strike which led him to cancel the 1979Mardi Gras parade season. The police union wagered, among its membership, that a strike coinciding with Mardi Gras would force the city to grant many of their demands, but Morial refused to give in and was supported by leaders of many of the city's Carnivalkrewes. The New Orleans krewes either canceled their parades that year or moved them tosuburbs in other parishes. Emblematic of Morial's hard-line stance toward the police strikers was theNapoleonic gesture he made by placing his arm inside his coat and striking a characteristically pugnacious pose at the announcement that he was canceling Mardi Gras^{[citation needed]}.

Most of Morial's achievements occurred in his first term as mayor. Expanding upon the efforts of his predecessorMoon Landrieu, Morial redoubled the city's commitment to affirmative action in hiring city workers and introduced minority hiring quotas for city contractors. The proportion of black employees on the city's workforce increased from 40% in 1977 to 53% in 1985 under Morial's tenure. Under Morial's administration the number of black officers in the NOPD was increased to make up one third of the force. But continued incidents ofpolice brutality—most notably the police killing of four blacks inAlgiers in 1980—damaged Morial's reputation in the black community.

Morial was responsible for getting federal Urban Development Action Grant (UDAG) funding for several major projects, including Canal Place and theJax Brewery development in the French Quarter. He continued to support previous mayorMoon Landrieu’s emphasis on tourism and tried to diversify the economy by developing the Almonaster-Michoud Industrial District inNew Orleans East, now called the New Orleans Regional Business Park.Downtown New Orleans underwent an impressive building boom, withmultiple office towers constructed to house the headquarters, or large regional offices, for companies such asFreeport-McMoRan,Pan American Life Insurance,Exxon,Chevron,Gulf Oil,Amoco,Mobil,Murphy Oil andTexaco. By the mid-1980s these firms, with other large employers, such asRoyal Dutch Shell,Louisiana Land and Exploration and McDermott International, employed thousands of white collar workers downtown, with thousands more employed by others providing services to them. Due to a multitude of factors, including theOil Bust (1986), inexorable corporate mergers and downsizings, and less-than-effective support from subsequent administrations' economic development departments, none of these firms, or their successors, maintain a large presence in New Orleans today—apart fromShell and Pan American Life Insurance.

Morial won his second term in a March 1982runoff election with fellow Democrat,Ron Faucheux, a young white Democratic member of theLouisiana House of Representatives from New Orleans East. Morial prevailed, 100,703 votes (53.2 percent) to Faucheux's 88,583 (46.8 percent). Faucheux later became a nationally knownpolitical consultant andpundit.^[3]

By Morial's second term the city's economy was slowing and increased conflict with the City Council led to a decrease in the ability of the Morial administration to govern effectively. The1984 World's Fair, which transpired midway through Morial's second term, was an embarrassing financial debacle that was negatively remarked upon nationally. The World's Fair declared bankruptcy while still operating and failed to pay many contractors, mortally wounding numerous New Orleans–based design and construction companies. More generally, the financial failure of the World's Fair severely undermined the community's morale and ominously presaged the hard times of 1986's Oil Bust.

After serving two terms as mayor, Morial was prevented by the city charter from seeking a third term. He twice tried to convince voters to change the charter to allow him to run again, but both proposals were soundly defeated.

Morial's political strength did not end after he left City Hall in 1986. He considered running for mayor again in theelection of 1990, and his sudden death in 1989 of aheart attack^[4] during the election campaign influenced Mayor Barthelemy's re-election, since Morial died before he could endorse an opponent. Morial was 60.

New Orleans renamed its convention center, which spans over 10 blocks, theErnest N. Morial Convention Center in 1992 for the late mayor. The convention center has been a major economic engine for the city's large tourist industry and, in 2005, became a highly publicized national symbol when it served as a makeshift evacuation center in the aftermath ofHurricane Katrina.In 1997, the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center posthumously honored Morial with the dedication of the Ernest N. Morial Asthma, Allergy and Respiratory Disease Center. The facility is Louisiana's first comprehensive center for the education, prevention, treatment and research of asthma and other respiratory diseases. "Dutch" suffered and eventually died from complications associated with asthma.Morial was the 23rd general president ofAlpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiateGreek-letterorganization established for African Americans. Morial was also a member of theKnights of Peter Claver.^[5] In 1993, Morial was named one of the first thirteen inductees into theLouisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame inWinnfield, the first African American so honored.^[6]

Apublic school in New Orleans East was named after him: Ernest N. Morial Elementary.^{[citation needed]}

• List of African-American jurists

• Biographical Dictionary of American Mayors, 1820–1980. Greenwood Press, 1981.
• DuBos, Clancy. "As an opponent, he had no equal."Gambit Weekly, January 1, 1991.
• Hirsch, Arnold and Joseph Logsdon.Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization. LSU Press, 1992.
• Hirsch, Arnold. "Harold and Dutch Revisited: A Comparative Look at the First Black Mayors of Chicago and New Orleans." inAfrican-American Mayors: Race, Politics, and the American City. Edited by David Colburn and Jeffrey Adler. University of Illinois Press, 2001.
• Hirsch, Arnold R. "Fade to black: Hurricane Katrina and the disappearance of Creole New Orleans."Journal of American History 94.3 (2007): 752–761.https://doi.org/10.2307/25095136
• Johnson, Allen Jr. "The Morial Years: Highs and Lows."New Orleans Tribune, May 1986.
• Piliawsky, Monte. "The impact of black mayors on the black community: The case of New Orleans’ Ernest Morial."Review of Black Political Economy 13.4 (1985): 5-23.
• Whelan, Robert K., Alma Young, and Mickey Lauria.Urban Regimes and Racial Politics: New Orleans during the Barthelemy Years. UNO, 1991.
• Mason, Herman (1999). "Ernest Nathan Morial".The Talented Tenth: The Founders and Presidents of Alpha (2nd ed.). Winter Park, FL: Four-G.ISBN 1-885066-63-5.

• Speech by Ernest Morial at the annual region 7 Newsmakers conference of theNational Association of Black Journalists onKUT's "In Black America" radio series, August 1, 1989, at theAmerican Archive of Public Broadcasting

• 1929 births
• 1989 deaths
• 20th-century mayors of places in Louisiana
• African-American mayors in Louisiana
• African-American state legislators in Louisiana
• Activists for African-American civil rights
• Louisiana Creole people
• Mayors of New Orleans
• Democratic Party members of the Louisiana House of Representatives
• Xavier University of Louisiana alumni
• Louisiana State University alumni
• Louisiana state court judges
• Alpha Phi Alpha presidents
• Deaths from asthma
• 20th-century American lawyers
• 20th-century American judges
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• African-American Catholics
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• Knights of Peter Claver & Ladies Auxiliary
• 20th-century members of the Louisiana State Legislature

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