Junkies and Jim Crow: The Integration of the NOPD Narcotics Squad

New Orleans’ illegal drug markets underwent a dramatic transformation during the course of the 1950s. From having been controlled by the local Mafia, largely centered in the French Quarter and the downtown area, New Orleans’ heroin markets moved into the hands of African Americans and the city’s segregated housing projects. This move, which was supported and aided by the Mafia, gave rise to New Orleans’ black “heroin kings,” a small number of African Americans who would profit immensely from the city’s drug trade.

The rise of heroin markets in black areas of New Orleans would also create an uncomfortable set of problems for the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD). While the NOPD symbolically hired a couple of African American officers in 1950, the integration process occurred at a glacial speed, and as late as the mid-1950s the Narcotics Squad remained all-white. The presence of heroin markets in segregated black neighborhoods, however, and political pressures to produce drug arrests, actually incentivized the NOPD’s Narcotics Squad to integrate. White faces in New Orleans’ black neighborhoods produced automatic suspicion, and this led to the hiring of the first black narcotics agents in New Orleans’ history.