History of New Orleans

ed New Orleans in population. Construction of railways and highways decreased river traffic, diverting goods to other transportation corridors and markets. From the late 1800s, most 10-year censuses depicted New Orleans sliding down the list of largest American cities. Reminded every ten years of its declining relative importance, New Orleans would periodically mount attempts to regain its economic vigor and pre-eminence, with varying degrees of success. In 1950, the Census Bureau reported New Orleans' population as 68% white and 31.9% black.

By the mid-20th century, New Orleanians saw that their city was being surpassed as the leading urban area in the South. By 1950, Houston, Dallas and Atlanta exceeded New Orleans in size, and in 1960 Miami eclipsed New Orleans, even as the latter's population reached what would be its historic peak that year. Like most older American cities in the postwar period, highway construction and suburban development drew residents from the center city, though the New Orleans metropolitan area continued expanding in population – just never as rapidly as other major cities in the Sun Belt. While the port remained one of the largest in the nation, automation and containerization resulted in significant job losses. The city's relative fall in stature meant that its former role as banker to the South was inexorably supplanted by competing companies in larger peer cities. New Orleans' economy had always been more based on trade and financial services than on manufacturing, but the city's relatively small manufacturing sector also shrank in the post–World War II period. Despite some economic development successes under the administrations of DeLesseps "Chep" Morrison (1946–1961) and Vic Schiro (1961–1970), metropolitan New Orleans' growth rate consistently lagged behind more vigorous cities.

During the later years of Morrison's