The Historic New Orleans Collection – serie

Raised in a large, loving Creole family, Lawrence Bagneris Jr. knew from a young age that he liked boys. But New Orleans in the 1950s and early 1960s wasn’t an easy place to be out. In high school, he channeled his energies into the Civil Rights Movement. By college, he was exploring the gay bars of the French Quarter— and telling new acquaintances to ask for Larry, not Lawrence, when they phoned him at home. It wasn’t until his 1969 move to Houston that the many strands of his Creole identity—Black, white, Catholic—coalesced into a powerful political force for gay rights.

In this bracing, uplifting, and sometimes laugh-out-loud memoir, Larry Bagneris recalls his activist career: as founder of Houston’s Pride Parade and then, following a return to his hometown, as political organizer and mainstay of the local gay community. He invites us to join him on his travels, as well—from San Francisco to New York, Tel Aviv to Singapore—as he builds community, and finds family, in queer spaces around the world.

For decades, Louisiana has had the highest incarceration rate in the United States. If it were a country, it would have the second-highest incarceration rate in the world. Far from a modern phenomenon, this distinction is rooted in more than three centuries of history—roots that extend out from the principal city of New Orleans, once the epicenter of the American slave trade, to the agricultural fields of the Louisiana State Prison, commonly known as Angola. In its examination of the state’s long march toward confining more of its citizens than almost anywhere on earth, Captive State: Louisiana and the Making of Mass Incarceration arrives at an irrefutable truth: that the institutions of slavery and mass incarceration are historically linked. Adapted from the groundbreaking exhibition of the same name, Captive State traces the evolution of laws and customs that created this carceral system and that, by design, have disproportionately harmed Black Louisianians. Captive State accentuates this narrative with profiles of people impacted by these systems, spotlights on key historical objects, and insightful data visualizations. As the human and financial costs continue to mount, this book details the choices that led us here--and asks whether Louisiana is fated to remain captive to its history.Captive State is supported by a grant from Borealis Philanthropy’s Spark Justice Fund. Distributed for the Historic New Orleans Collection

Fiendishly creative, sharply observant, and deeply devoted to his city, Bunny Matthews was among the most influential cartoonists and writers in New Orleans. Matthews obsessed over his native city, and throughout the four decades during which his art and writing appeared in almost every local magazine and newspaper, he revealed that city through his work, teaching New Orleans new ways to listen to itself and laugh at itself. Along the way, he helped found or influence some of the most important local cultural entities invented by his generation: Jazz Fest, Tipitina's, and WWOZ.

Matthews is best known for his cartoon characters Vic and Nat'ly, two irreverent bar owners from the Nint' Ward who rank alongside Ignatius J. Reilly and Blanche DuBois in the pantheon of fictional New Orleanians. Although best known as a cartoonist, Matthews was also a musician, arts journalist, and promoter who helped create the visual culture of the 1970s music scene in New Orleans through posters, calendars, and fliers for clubs like Tipitina's and Jimmy's.

As a critic, Matthews earnestly pursued authenticity. In his later years, he spilled thousands of words articulating what he saw as the depreciation and corruption of New Orleans's cultural capital. He eventually gave up the city for a perch on the North Shore, across Lake Pontchartrain, from which he sparred with local right-wing politicians and started fights on social media. He died in 2021, but his legacy lives on in the young writers he helped mentor, the cartoonists he inspired, and in the yellowing clippings of Vic and Nat'ly still found taped to refrigerators throughout New Orleans.

Matthews once wrote, "Be witty. Be nasty. Be silly. Don't be boring." That ethos animates the pages of Bunny Matthews: His Life, Art, and Obsessions, the first monograph of his work.