re: Latoya At It Again - Pontalba Apartment During Essence Fest

Friend,

The narrative that Houston grew at New Orleans’ expense and negligence and corruption is overly simplified.

Houston was destined for growth the moment oil was discovered in Beaumont in 1901. The Texas oil bonanza begun, production shifted westward to Humble. By 1912 Humble Oil set its offices in Houston, arguably what led to Houston’s rapid succession. Houston’s population, a measly 44,000 at the turn of the century, essentially doubled every decade until passing New Orleans in 1950, more than a decade before integration, putting to rest the false racial narrative that it was integration and Black politicians that destroyed New Orleans. New Orleans fell on hard times and stopped growing due to its natural geography — having surrounding land limited in size and very difficult on which to build. Perhaps more importantly, its chief geographic and economic advantage, the Mississippi River, became less and less important in shipping. The Midwest created other routes to the sea, such as through man made canals, and rail allowed any port in America to be able to cheaply send goods anywhere on the Continent. These changes came well before 1950, but the New Orleans port had centuries of momentum, and it took several decades for these advancements to slow that momentum.

The biggest boom for Houston came in 1959 when Jersey Oil merged with Humble Oil and moved its corporate offices to Houston. 13 years later it was renamed Exxon, the largest energy company in the world at the time. It chose Houston for multiple reasons. Primarily, Texas was America’s top producing crude oil state and by a large margin. To be at the center of production was natural for an oil company. New Orleans was not and the Louisiana Gulf reserves did not match those in Texas, where it was also cheaper to drill. One can give politicians credit or blame one way or the other, but I have little doubt that if you swapped Houston and New Orleans’ politicians from the 40s to today, both cities would look quite similar to today. Houston became America’s energy capital and the strongest economy in the South not because of local populace and politician genius. It was mostly, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait, due to geography.

Yours,
TulaneLSU