They Keep Attacking Black Leadership . . . We Will Keep Defending It

As New Orleans approaches the pivotal 2025 municipal election, the city finds itself at a crossroads that is both familiar and fraught with historical significance.

We have had some internal and even external discussions about our leanings when it comes to the upcoming elections. When we hear utterances such as “We can’t keep doing the same thing” or “It’s time for a new direction”, we know that it is coded and loaded language to suggest that the next mayor should not be Black.

We are not going to tiptoe through the tulips on this one. Here, at The New Orleans Tribune, we believe in Black leadership. We support Black leadership. For anyone still unclear about who we are and where we stand, let’s just say that we are Issa Rae on the red carpet at the 2017 Emmys.

We are rooting for everyone Black!

Whenever qualified, viable Black candidates offer themselves for public service, we, here at The Tribune, are predisposed to believing in and supporting them.  We support and defend Black leadership because we are keenly aware of the historical and systemic efforts to castigate Black leadership and marginalize political power in our community. It’s a practice that dates to Reconstruction, when violence and intimidation were used against Black elected officials and the Black electorate to undermine Black political activity. Today, instead of the KKK and poll taxes, the weapons are targeted disinformation campaigns, negative media portrayals, and personal attacks magnified by social media, which operates with little regard for ethics and veracity.

It is essential to recognize that the efforts to undermine Black leadership are not accidental. They are part of a longstanding strategy to maintain existing power structures and to sow doubt among voters. The consequences are profound. When Black elected officials and Black candidates are unfairly maligned, it not only reduces their individual prospects but also erodes the collective confidence of the community. It sends a message that, regardless of credentials or achievements, Black leaders must work twice as hard to earn half as much respect. And any and every little so-called misstep is dealt with as though it is the biggest crisis ever.

We are tired of seeing Black leadership attacked in ways and for reasons that leaders of other races do not experience. So yes, we have come to the defense of Mayor LaToya Cantrell because we recognize that she has been scrutinized and targeted for every little thing she does or says. Between social media and mainstream media, she can’t turn left or go right without being criticized, causing us to wonder how she is able to do anything. And we know that it has never really been about her, but about attacking and weakening Black leadership to pave the way for the powerful and elite to place a candidate of their choosing in City Hall. In fact, a prominent mayoral candidate practically launched her campaign for mayor nearly four years ago by ridiculing the mayor’s every step and joining a faction hellbent on usurping her power. We don’t believe in coincidences. We do know a calculated move when we see one, though.

The mayor is not the only Black leader under attack these days.  Susan Hutson, the duly elected sheriff, is facing contempt charges, perhaps jail time, for not bringing inmates to court on holidays and weekends. That is insane, because her not ferrying inmates to the courthouse is not out of spite or willful dereliction of duty. As she explains it, her office’s already limited resources are too stretched to allocate time and deputies to transport inmates on weekends and holidays. In other words, OPSO can’t afford it from a financial or staffing standpoint, according to Hutson. Whether one agrees with her assessment, who can argue with her ability to run her office in the manner she believes best balances her duty with the resources at her disposal? If the Sheriff says her office doesn’t have the resources, we are inclined to believe her. We have had many conversations with Sheriff Hutson before. She is an educated woman, an attorney by training and the former Independent Police Monitor. We find it incredibly hard to believe that she would risk contempt charges for refusing to do something that she could feasibly do.

We bet that if Charles Foti had told the court system, the city and the local media that he  lacked the money and manpower to bring inmates to magistrate court on weekends and holidays, his proclamation would have been followed by silence and possibly a mad scramble to allocate the needed resources. It’s not at all lost on us that Sheriff Hutson was held in contempt by a court presided over by a Black judge. That fact, in our estimation, only shows just how entrenched the bias against Black leadership is. It’s built into the system. The counter argument, of course, is that Hutson is just being called out to do her job. They argue that she's not doing her job. But by whose standard? Who says she isn’t doing her job to the best of her ability with the resources she has? Why does she not have the ability and the right to say that the office is too underfunded and understaffed to perform the task at question? Somebody has to say it: Charles Foti would have never been summoned to court – not over a decision like this. That’s the inherent bias in the system. He would have never been treated the way Susan Hutson has been handled by both the media and the power structure. This is what we mean when we talk about the unfair targeting of Black leadership. Again, they might argue that Foti would have never claimed his office was too strapped for money or staff to handle the task. We agree! OPSO was flush with cash under his watchful eye. That’s because the jail population exploded from 800 to over 8,500 as he housed as many state prisoners as local inmates, collecting the per diem costs to maintain those prisoners and turning what was supposed to be a parish lock-up into something more akin to a full-scale state penitentiary.

And that’s just one case. The story of former sheriff Marlin Gusman is a classic example of a Black leader getting pounced and trounced for no reason – scratch that – for trying to do his job. Gusman repeatedly explained that the Phase III jail expansion he supported was necessary to serve inmates with mental health needs and vulnerable populations. Clashes with so-called activists and reformers amplified by distorted media coverage of his assessment of the jail’s needs were arguably what led to his defeat in 2021. We suspected back then that Hutson was the candidate anointed to challenge Gusman. Gusman lost; and just a few months after the election, the Fifth District Court of Appeals ruled that the mental health annex and infirmary were necessary to ensure the jail meets constitutional standards for inmate care.  

Note to Black people: Have we not learned anything from the cautionary tale of former mayor, Ray Nagin? You can be somewhere minding your own Black business and these folk will come get you, use you and sacrifice you like a chessboard pawn the nano-second you no longer serve their needs. It’s all good until you mess around and talk about making sure Black New Orleanians can return home after one of the deadliest hurricanes in history or, even worse, select two Black-owned firms as prime contractors for multi-million city contracts. Do that and see how fast they turn granite into a federal case. Meanwhile, white elected officials remain in office for decades – unchecked, unchallenged, barely scrutinized. The size of the parish jail ballooned under Foti, and after 30 years as sheriff, the voters of the state, including Orleans Parish, promoted him to state attorney general. Yet, Marlin Gusman lost his re-election bid for standing on business when he told y’all that an entire federal consent decree requires a jail expansion to appropriately serve mentally ill and other vulnerable inmates.  Bottom line: Black elected leaders are not measured or treated the same as their white and other counterparts – not even by Black people, and most definitely not by the mainstream media.

For those of you who still don’t believe that two separate sets of rules – one for Black and another for White elected officials exists, we have yet another example. Former DA Eddie Jordan was nearly burned at the stake and somehow successfully sued for having the gumption to hire and fire ADAs so that the office, under his leadership, might better reflect the city’s demographics. Under his predecessor, Harry Connick, the DA’s office was predominantly white in a city where most of the residents were Black for much of his 30-year tenure. By the way, in another glaring case of “we are our own worst enemies”, somehow, Connick still managed to build strong support from the Black community, election after election, despite the lack of representation in his office and growing data that pointed to racial bias that ultimately led to wrongful convictions that sent hundreds of Black men from our community to prison. Assistant district attorneys historically serve at the pleasure of the elected DA. Instead of suing Eddie Jordan, folks should have been questioning why, in 2003, there were so many white prosecutors working in an office responsible for administering justice in a city where the Black population approached 60 percent at the time.

In fact, data from various sources, including the Innocence Project, detail that Black defendants were disproportionately represented among Connick’s wrongful conviction statistics by rates as high as 96 percent. Still, Harry Connick did not face any real criticism for the way he ran his office until it was too late. The man was retired before some mainstream media sources dared to unravel the truth. Hell, if we are going to keep it 100, some waited until he died. Meanwhile, Eddie Jordan barely had time to hang a picture on the wall before he was drug through the mud, sued in federal court, driven to resignation . . . and succeeded by Leon Cannizzaro. Wake up Black people! They love it when a plan comes together. Meanwhile, we’re scratching our heads, trying to figure out what happened. And what happened was New Orleans went from having its first Black district attorney to having a white DA for 12 full years before another Black man was elected. No accident, we say. By the way, Cannizzaro’s time in office, which ended because he chose not to run for re-election after three terms, was marked with allegations of prosecutorial misconduct stemming from the use of fake subpoenas and other aggressive tactics to elicit witness testimony.

The events we are reminding readers about are not factoids from ancient history. We’re talking about happenings that transpired, unfolded or that have only fully been examined within the last 20 to 25 years. Some of y’all have furniture older than that. And to make matters worse, the same things are happening right now. So yes, you better believe we will speak up for and defend Black leadership with every stroke of every computer, laptop and smartphone keyboard we own because the double standard is real and because we (yes, Black folk) are too often easily persuaded that white is right even when it’s doing us wrong.

And this brings us to where we are right now – a few months away from a pivotal municipal election. The field of candidates for mayor includes one prominent white contender and several highly qualified Black candidates, each bringing a wealth of experience, vision, and commitment to the city’s future. This moment calls for a thoughtful examination of the role of Black leadership in New Orleans—a city whose identity, culture, and population remain predominantly Black.

New Orleans has long been celebrated for its vibrant Black heritage. According to the most recent census data, Black residents make up more than half of the city’s population. This demographic reality is not merely a statistic; it is a testament to the enduring influence of Black communities in shaping the city’s character and priorities. Yet, despite this majority, Black leadership in New Orleans has often been subject to undue scrutiny, skepticism, and, at times, outright disparagement.

But the reality is that the city’s history is replete with examples of Black mayors, council members, and community leaders who have steered New Orleans through crises, championed social justice, and fostered economic growth. Yet, the narrative that Black leadership is somehow less capable or less legitimate continues to surface, often fueled by coded language in media coverage, campaign rhetoric, and public discourse. We refuse to buy into that narrative . . . and we will call it out when we see it is at play.

If that makes us outsiders or a lone voice, so be it. We’ve been there before. We were there when we warned about the wholesale dismantling of public housing without a genuine plan to help residents that relied on assistance even as housing costs began to skyrocket in a city where too many residents teeter on the poverty line. We were there when we cautioned that our public schools were being sold off to the highest bidder under the guise of “reform”. We were there again when we called out the attacks, including the ill-fated recall effort, against the current mayor for everything from her travel schedule and beyond as part of a much bigger plot to diminish Black leadership. In short, yelling the unfettered truth from the rafters is what we do. And we will do it even if we must do it alone.

To us, believing in Black leadership is not an act of charity or symbolism; it is a recognition of the talent, dedication, and lived experience that Black candidates bring to the table. It is an affirmation that the city’s leadership should reflect the people it serves, and that diversity in government is a strength, not a liability.

The challenges facing New Orleans—ranging from economic inequality and affordable housing to public safety and climate resilience—demand leaders who understand the complexities of the city’s neighborhoods and who are deeply invested in their well-being. Black candidates in this race have demonstrated their capacity to address these issues with nuance and empathy, informed by both professional expertise and personal experience.