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In 1943 Ellis Louis Marsalis Sr. converted a chicken barn at 110 Shrewsbury Road at the river (across the street from what is now The Rivershack) into the 40-room Marsalis' Motel complete with a swimming pool, restaurant, and lounge.  Also known as Marsalis Mansion, and Marsalis Tourist Home, from 1943 to 1986 it was one of the only motels open to African Americans traveling to New Orleans.  Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Ray Charles, and other prominent civil rights activists, politicians, and musicians stayed there along with thousands of  lesser known Black travelers.  Marsalis was, himself, active in promoting equal rights in his community and served as president of the Nationwide Hotel Association.

In 1933, he  married Florence Robertson, whom he had met while enrolled in night school.  They had two children, .Yvette Washington and Ellis Jr.  In 1936, Ellis Sr. and William Wicker's Esso gas station at Eighth Street and Howard Avenue was the first African American-owned station in the area.  While managing the hotel he promoted positive change in the community by organizing the Boosters Club, which registered African American voters throughout New Orleans.  He was an active member of the local Republican Party who was elected in 1967 (the year he also expanded the motel and added The Broaster House restaurant to it) to serve on the Republican Executive Committee and served as its treasurer.  He wasa delegate to The Republican Presidential Convention of 1964.  .In 1969 he was a a member of the Advisory Committee of the Social Welfare Planning Council.   He assisted David Treen's successful 1982 campaign for Louisiana Governor. . He helped finance the education of Ernest Nathan Morial ("Dutch"), the first Black student to attend the Louisiana State University Law School, and who became the first Black mayor of New Orleans. Marsalis also played a role in the election of Judge Lionel Collins, the first Black Judge of the 24th Judicial District Court, in Gretna, Louisiana.

His daughter Yvette Marsalis Washington helped him run the motel after her mother's death in 1973.  Ellis Jr. become an excellent jazz pianist and music professor who mentored gifted young New Orleans musicians including Harry Connick Jr.. His grandsons trumpeter Wynton, saxophonist Branford, trombonist Delfeayo, and drummer Jason are renowned musicians.

The achievements earned by Ellis Marsalis and like-minded civil rights activists led to the demise of the hotel -- which was no longer needed as a haven for black travellers.  Marsalis's Mansion Motel closed on September 25, 1986,  demolished in July 1993, and its property sold in July 2006.  It remains an empty lot across the street from The Rivershack. 

 Sculptor Angela Gregory is Nationally Recognized 

 

Sculptor Angela Gregory was born in New Orleans on October 18, 1903.  Strongly influenced by her mother, Selina Bres Gregory, who was an early Newcomb potter who studied at Newcomb College with William Woodward and Ellsworth Woodward, Angela was also a student of Ellsworth Woodward and she graduated from Newcomb in 1925 with a Bachelor of Arts in design.  She became one of the few women of her era to be recognized nationally in a field generally dominated by men. Her first major commission was at the age of 25 and was for the architectural sculpture on the façade of the New Orleans Criminal District Courts Building. Upon completion, news reached as far as New York; the headline in the September 25, 1930 issue of the New York Sun read: "Prison Walls Made Less Grim by Girl Sculptor, Who at 25 Executes Many Important Commissions".  In 1931, Gregory worked on a team of sculptors who executed historical panels for the façade of a new state capitol building in Baton Rouge built during the administrations of Governor Huey Long. Other work from this period includes a head of Aesculapius on the Hutchinson Memorial Building in Tulane Medical Center, sculpture for Tulane University’s McAlister Auditorium and many portrait busts. From 1934 to 1937 she returned Newcomb College to teach ceramics and later was an artist-in-residence and sculpture professor there.  Gregory was involved in federal arts programs during the Depression. As part of that work, she created a monumental bust of John McDonough that was installed in City Hall's Duncan Plaza. In 1941, she became state supervisor of the Federal Works Progress Administration arts program in Louisiana. During World War II she served as an assistant architectural engineer for the Army Corps of Engineers in New Orleans and designed camouflage. Later in that time period she served as women’s counselor for Pendleton Shipyards, and as a consultant to the Celotex Corporation. After the war she returned to sculpture. Commissions included bas-relief murals for the Louisiana National Bank in Baton Rouge. She also restored sculptures on New Orleans’ Gallier Hall.  In the 1950s, she devoted five years to the creation and casting of the bronze Bienville Monument, which stood outside the New Orleans train station on Loyola Avenue for many years. It now stands in a small park near the French Quarter, at the intersection of Decatur and Conti Streets. The monument portrays the first French governor and founder of New Orleans, a priest, and an Indian. Gregory spent two years in France supervising the casting of the monument. Gregory was a professor and sculptor-in-residence for two decades at the St. Mary’s Dominican College in New Orleans, and was named professor emerita when she retired in 1976. During her years at Dominican, she created a series of aluminum and walnut panels tracing the life of Pope John XXIII at the Dominican College library. Other work of that era included a statue of St. Louis for the Archdiocese of New Orleans’ Notre Dame Seminary, and a statue of St. Fiacre in the garden of Christ Church Cathedral. In the early 1960s, she sculpted the monument to Henry Watkins Allen in Port Allen, Louisiana. Gregory is often credited with being one of the few women sculptors of her era to complete three public monuments. Gregory’s Pine Street studio was a “meeting place for musicians, diplomats, distinguished guests from France, writers like close friend Thornton Wilder, and actors like Kirk Douglas, whose wedding reception was in her studio.” She died in New Orleans on February 13, 1990.

 

September 25, 1906

 

During his twenty-two-year tenure as Superintendent of New Orleans Public Schools, Warren Easton launched classes in calisthenics, drawing, and music.  He submitted the first typewritten superintendent's report on January 11, 1889. On November 2, 1905, forty young men enrolled in public schools' first short-hand, typing class. On October 15, 1894 Easton inaugurated fire drills in schools, and on September 25, 1906 he required compulsory smallpox vaccinations of students. 

 

He served as a private in Captain Greenleaf's Company (Orleans Light Horse Louisiana Cavalry, Confederate) and died in New Orleans on May 16, 1868.  He is buried in St. Louis Cemetery III.  Source: http://lahistory.org

 The Long and Winding Road Back Home to the Dome