ABSTRACT
Harnett Kane was the guest speaker when the Young Men’s Business Club (YMBC) met on September 9, 1970, at the Fairmont Roosevelt Hotel. He was there to defend the legal boundaries of the French Quarter from city council members and developers who would “strip away” the valuable riverfront. But before Kane spoke, the YMBC had some other business to conduct. They passed a resolution opposing the use of student, state, or federal funds to pay “leftist revolutionary speakers” on local college campuses. Visits to New Orleans by Yippie leader Jerry Rubin, Black Panther leader Bobby Seale, and attorney William Kunstler did not, they said, reflect the desires of the majority of students, and, they stressed, “laid a foundation for radical activity this fall.” 1 Two shootouts at the Desire Housing Development the next week between New Orleans Police (NOPD) and the National Committee to Combat Fascism (NCCF), the vanguard of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and another confrontation at Desire on November 19 were among the more spectacular events confirming the YMBC’s fears. But not everyone believed these events corroborated the YMBC’s analysis of where the foundation of violence lay. When NCCF member Tim Pratt spoke that fall at Louisiana State University of New Orleans, he sited the cause for confrontation in the city itself rather than in incendiary outsiders. “Wherever black people are oppressed in the city of New Orleans, there will be a chapter of the NCCF.” 2
