Race, Sex Work, and Spatial Segregation In Storyville, New Orleans

Storyville, New Orleans, operated as a legalized vice district from 1897 to 1917. This 38-block area facilitated sex work and prostitution “across the color line,” perpetuating and encouraging the practice of white men seeking sexual acts from Black women and women of mixed-race descent. I engage with multiple interacting subsections of historiography within this thesis project. The historiography spans Southern history from the early nineteenth century in the Old Antebellum South until the early twentieth century in the Progressive Era. The broader historiographic dimensions of labor and sexuality were also influential in curating this research project, engaging with the evolving perceptions of black women’s roles in society, both socially and economically, in the South. The first chapter illustrates the influences of Antebellum Society on perceptions of black women and explores how this impacts New Orleans reformers in their creation of the district. The second chapter explores the circumstances surrounding the legal establishment of Storyville, emphasizing the efforts of New Orleans Progressive Era reformers to suppress vice and sex work, alongside the purposeful oppression of Black neighborhoods and business. This oppression and suppression are exemplified in the district’s spatial layout, discussed in chapter three, as these layouts and trends ultimately contributed to the district's social and economic decline in 1917.