Moon Landrieu

Moon Edwin Landrieu (born Maurice Edwin Landrieu; July 23, 1930 – September 5, 2022) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 56th mayor of New Orleans from 1970 to 1978. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented New Orleans' Twelfth Ward in the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1960 to 1966. He served on the New Orleans City Council as a member at-large from 1966 to 1970, and was the United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under U.S. president Jimmy Carter from 1979 to 1981.

He was the last white mayor of New Orleans until 2010, when his son Mitch was elected mayor.

Landrieu was born in Uptown New Orleans to Joseph Geoffrey Landrieu and Loretta Bechtel. Bechtel was of French and German descent, with grandparents who came to Louisiana from Alsace and Prussia. Joseph was born in 1892 in Mississippi, the son of Frenchman Victor Firmin Landrieu and Cerentha Mackey, the out-of-wedlock child of a black woman and an unknown father.

Landrieu went to Jesuit High School and received a baseball scholarship to Loyola University New Orleans, where he played college baseball as a pitcher. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in business administration in 1952 and a Juris Doctor in 1954. As an undergraduate, he was elected the student body president at Loyola. In 1954, he joined the United States Army as a second lieutenant and served in the Judge Advocate General's Corps until 1957. Upon completion of army service, he opened a law practice and taught accounting at Loyola.

In the late 1950s, Landrieu became involved in the youth wing of the mayor deLesseps Morrison's Crescent City Democratic Organization. Running on Morrison's ticket, Landrieu was elected by the 12th Ward of New Orleans to the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1960. There he voted against the "hate bills" of the segregationists, which the Louisiana State Legislature passed in the effort to thwart the desegregation of public facilities and public schools.

In 1962, Landrieu ran for New Orleans City Council and lost. In 1966, he was elected councilman-at-large, defeating incumbent Joseph V. DiRosa. In 1969, he led a successful push for a city ordinance outlawing segregation based on race or religion in public accommodations, an issue that had been addressed nationally in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As councilman, Landrieu also voted to remove the Confederate flag from the council chambers and voted to establish a biracial human relations committee. He succeeded with both votes.

Landrieu was elected the mayor of New Orleans in the election of 1970 to succeed fellow Democrat Victor Schiro. His opponent in the Democratic primary runoff was the Louisiana lieutenant governor, Jimmy Fitzmorris. In the general election, Landrieu defeated Ben C. Toledano. In that contest, Landrieu received support from 99 percent of the black voters.

On May 3, 1970, the day before he took his oath of office as mayor, Landrieu received a death threat by telephone, but authorities quickly caught the culprit. During his tenure as mayor, Landrieu oversaw desegregation of city government and public facilities and encouraged integration within business and professional organizations.