administration, and
for the entirety of Schiro's, the city was at the center of the Civil Rights
struggle. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was founded in the city,
lunch counter sit-ins were held in Canal Street stores, and a very prominent
and violent series of confrontations occurred when the city attempted school
desegregation, in 1960. That episode witnessed the first occasion of a black
child attending an all-white elementary school in the South, when six-year-old
Ruby Bridges integrated William Frantz Elementary School in the city's Ninth
Ward. The Civil Rights Movement's success in gaining federal passage of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 provided enforcement of
constitutional rights, including voting for blacks. Together, these resulted in
the most far-reaching changes in New Orleans' 20th century history. Though
legal and civil equality were re-established by the end of the 1960s, a large
gap in income levels and educational attainment persisted between the city's
White and African-American communities. As the middle class and wealthier
members of both races left the center city, its population's income level
dropped and it became proportionately more African American. From 1980, the
African-American majority has elected officials from its own community. They
have struggled to narrow the gap by creating conditions conducive to the
economic uplift of the African-American community.
New Orleans became increasingly dependent on tourism as an
economic mainstay, by the administrations of Sidney Barthelemy (1986–1994) and
Marc Morial (1994–2002). Relatively low levels of educational attainment, high
rates of household poverty and rising crime threatened the prosperity of the
city in the later decades of the century. The negative effects of these
socioeconomic conditions contrasted with the changes to the economy of the
United States, which were based on a
