Tulane University's
Louisiana Research Collection

LaRC Manuscripts Collection 929 is the Radlauer and Caire Advertising Agency records, 1947-1969.  This collection is quite unusual in that the records are not primarily related to the finances or daily business dealings of the company.  Instead, it’s composed of samples of finished advertising artwork and printed items of various types, including posters, leaflets, politicians’ custom stationery, a 1962 banquet program and menu, newspaper sections and clippings, newsletters, and political ephemera supporting campaigns and causes of the era.   The ad agency worked simultaneously during the 1940s-1960s for both types of clients—those wanting to publicize products, and those running for public office.     Louisiana political figures represented in this collection include Hale Boggs, Sam Jones, Russell Long, Victor Schiro, Charles Zatarain, Preston Battistella, and many others.   A few of the commercial clients are Autin Packing Co., Came...

Archival collections created within the last hundred years are often especially appreciated by present-day researchers, as they may contain the personally selected daily-life papers, family photographs, and other mementos of recent lifetimes, set in a recognizable time and place.  Manuscripts Collection 915 in the Louisiana Research Collection, the Nathan Cohen Papers ,  provides rich insight into twentieth-century New Orleans. Nathan Simon Cohen (1931-1993), usually called Nate Cohen, was a New Orleans journalist, sportswriter, and public relations writer. He was affiliated with the Tulane Hullabaloo , the Times-Picayune , the West Bank Guide , and the New Orleans Recreation Dept. (NORD). As sports publicity director for NORD in the early 1980s, Nate Cohen wrote a newsletter, Say What! , to publicize local youth events such as the annual Louis Armstrong birthday party. He was active in Congregation Beth Israel and the B'nai B'rith Youth Council of New Orleans. Inc...

Union postal cover from the Alfred S. Lippman collection In 1862, Union forces made their way past Forts St. Philip and Jackson to capture the city of New Orleans on April 25, with General Benjamin Butler's troops arriving the following week. The city would remain occupied through the remainder of the American Civil War. The Louisiana Research Collection contains a wealth of archives, maps, ephemera and printed materials related to the Civil War. In recent years, we have made a special effort to acquire letters and documents from Union soldiers who were stationed in the Gulf South, as these items shed an enormous amount of light on the Civil War experience in Louisiana. To mark the sesquicentennial (150th) anniversary of the capture of New Orleans, LaRC is pleased to highlight some excerpts from our archives. In the spirit of the unique challenges of working with archival documents, we have reproduced text exactly as it appears in the document. B.B. Smith diary, Manuscrip...

The Louisiana Research Collection was pleased to welcome Swedish legal scholar Kjell Å Modéer during his recent trip to New Orleans. Dr. Modéer, Senior Professor of Legal History at Lund University in Sweden, gave a talk entitled “’Young Man Go West!’ The Brethren Carl and Gustavus Schmidt as Examples of Legal Transfers Between Sweden and Louisiana in the Nineteenth Century” at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law on Thursday, April 12, 2012. Gustavus Schmidt was a central figure in the nineteenth-century legal history of Louisiana. He emigrated from Sweden to the United States, where he became a prominent lawyer and legal scholar. A protégé of Chief Justice John Marshall in Virginia in the 1820s, Schmidt later moved to New Orleans in 1829. Gustavus’s brother, Carl Christian, remained in Sweden, and rose to become a Justice of the Swedish Supreme Court. The two brothers maintained an extensive trans-Atlantic Swedish-language correspondence between 1830 and Carl Christia...

Dick Clark (Nov. 30, 1929-Apr. 18, 2012). This is one of the numerous collected "8x10 glossies" sent to New Orleans journalist Maud O'Bryan Ronstrom, during the 1960s and 1970s. This one is dated 1965, Maud O'Bryan Ronstrom papers, 1915-1979, Manuscripts Collection 903 (903-2-8). Please do not re-publish without permission. Posted by Susanna Powers

Cory MacLauchlin’s critical biography of John Kennedy Toole will be released on March 26, 2012, and Cory will be in New Orleans to mark the occasion. Butterfly in the Typewriter: The Tragic Life of John Kennedy Toole and the Remarkable Story of A Confederacy of Dunces gives readers the benefit of MacLauchlin’s in-depth research, in archival resources as well as by finding and interviewing many people who knew Toole during his lifetime. In Special Collections, we have had the pleasure of meeting and working with Cory MacLauchlin during his many research trips, over the last several years. His primary resource in learning about Toole’s life and writing has been LaRC’s Manuscripts Collection 740, John Kennedy Toole Papers ; his research also led him to the staff and collections of Tulane University Archives, Rare Books, and other New Orleans libraries and archives. We’ve also enjoyed learning about the book’s progress over time, by following his blog, which has now been incorporated into...

The Louisiana Historical Association held its 54 th annual meeting at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in the French Quarter, March 1-4, 2012. We all enjoyed hearing the lively presentations, and seeing so many familiar faces of visiting researchers. Thematic sessions of several short talks were guided along quickly—these emphasized racial and gender issues in 19 th century Louisiana, 20 th century politics, and other wide-ranging topics. Octavia Books arranged tables displaying their Louisiana literature for sale, including an appealing array of many of the scholarly monographs of the conference speakers. Featured above is Professor Arthé Anthony, of the American Studies Program, Occidental College, delivering her talk, “ The Photography of Florestine Perrault Collins: From Downtown to Midtown .” Professor Anthony’s research and teaching interests include an interdisciplinary examination of the American South, a socio-historical view of 20th-century African-American literature, ...