deLesseps Story "Chep" Morrison (18 January 1912 – 17 July 1961) was Mayor of New Orleans (D) from 4 April 1946 to 17 July 1961, succeeding Robert Maestri and preceding Victor H. Schiro. Morrison was elected on a liberal platform, only to become a conservative, a segregationist, and a friend of South American dictators such as Rafael Trujillo and Juan Peron.
Biography[]
deLesseps Story Morrison was born in New Roads, Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana in 1912, born into a political family. He gained his law degree from Louisiana State University in 1934 before moving to New Orleans, where he became involved with Democratic Party politics as an attorney for the New Deal. From 1940 to 1946, he represented the 12th ward in the State House of Representatives, and he served in the US Army during World War II while a sitting state congressman, rising to the rank of colonel and receiving the Bronze Star. After the war, he became a lawyer, and he was elected Mayor of New Orleans in 1946 as a liberal Democratic Party politician; he was seen as a dynamic reformer and the father of a progressive New Orleans. Morrison created the image of New Orleans as a thriving and progressive Sun Belt metropolis, and he supported international trade, becoming friends with South American dictators Rafael Trujillo and Juan Peron. Morrison was privately racist and opposed to segregation, but he built public housing for low-income African-Americans, playgrounds, swimming pools, and recreational centers, and he hired the first black policeman in the city in 1950. In 1959, however, he rebranded himself as an enemy of desegregation, and he lost the 1960 election. On 22 May 1964, Morrison and his son died in a plane crash in Ciudad Victoria, Mexico at the age of 52.