ABSTRACT
Why did violence occur in New Orleans and not in other cities? Several different kinds of explanations could be made. First, there is the “national climate” theory—that southern school integration took many communities to the brink of violence, and that, as school integration moved into the Deep South, some school system would go over the edge—if it had not been New Orleans, it would have been somewhere else. The three major crises—Little Rock, New Orleans, and Birmingham—were neatly spaced at three-year intervals. Does this suggest that 1960 was a year for trouble, and that New Orleans happened to be unlucky?
