Changing social conditions nationally and locally greatly altered patterns of, and legal reactions to, homicide in New Orleans from 1920 to 1945. The city’s homicide rates ranked among the highest in the nation in the early 1920s. Homicides were concentrated among poorer citizens. Although few whites were convicted of murder, the criminal-justice system reacted with even greater indifference to African-American killers. Homicides rates fell precipitously in subsequent years, but African Americans were increasingly seen as criminal threats deserving of harsh sanctions. Adler’s carefully crafted microhistory focuses on the social, economic, and demographic forces underlying the changing patterns of homicide and racialized social control. This study relies on a multisource data set containing extensive information about every homicide that occurred in New Orleans during the quarter-century under consideration.
The analysis reveals that spousal homicides in particular rose dramatically in the early 1920s. Young male migrants from the surrounding regions inundated New...