James Gill > Quotes

“The League's platform, published that day, stated: "Where the white race rules, the negro is peaceful and happy; where the black rules, the negro is starved and oppressed." But it was no use explaining this to black people. "They have become maddened by the hatred and conceit of race, and it has become our duty to save them and to save ourselves from the fatal probabilities of their stupid extravagance and reckless vanity by arraying ourselves in the name of white civilization, resuming that just and legitimate superiority in the administration of our State affairs to which we are entitled by superior responsibility, superior numbers and superior intelligence.”
― James Gill, Lords of Misrule: Mardi Gras and the Politics of Race in New Orleans

“Well into the 1980s, New Orleans restaurants continued to list "wop salad" on their menus and a glass of Chianti could be had by calling for a "dago red.”
― James Gill, Lords of Misrule: Mardi Gras and the Politics of Race in New Orleans