When it comes to colorful governors, the competition in Louisiana is pretty stiff. From Huey “the Kingfish” Long, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s firebrand populist Southern rival, to Edwin Edwards, the Las Vegas casino devotee who joked about his extramarital affairs and won his final term in 1991 by defeating former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David…
It’s not every day that a Voodoo priestess kicks you out of her temple for asking about the lost books of Moses. But as we stood in Miriam Chamani’s Voodoo Spiritual Temple in New Orleans, asking about the connection between Voodoo and Judaism, she grew more and more agitated. “Would you go up to the…
1) Louisiana is home to 10,675 Jews, which is 0.2% of the state’s total population. 2) The first king of New Orleans’ popular Rex Carnival Mardi Gras parade in 1872 was Louis Solomon, a local businessman. 3) Judah Benjamin was a U.S. Senator from Louisiana from 1853 to 1861. After that, he became the Attorney…
I wandered the aisles of the Ace Hardware store in downtown Donaldsonville, La. (population 7,473), trying vainly to discern anything that suggested the building’s unique provenance. But I could detect nothing among the paints and nails and garden supplies that overflowed on the shelves and walls to reflect that this building had been Congregation Bikur…
Driving west on I-10 out of New Orleans, you plunge almost immediately into a world made more of water than of land. First you cross the Bonnet Carre Spillway, which channels overflowing river water into Lake Pontchartrain. Later, in Baton Rouge, you rattle 175 feet above the Mississippi on a rickety cantilever bridge. And then,…
A field crowded with governors, senators and a past speaker of the house may be welcoming a man with a more unique qualification: David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Duke is embarking on a tour of 25 states to see whether he could go all the way to the White…
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