The Deep South has always taken great pride in its reputation for “Southern Hospitality”. Yet  Jefferson Parish, a suburban bedroom community of New Orleans, Louisiana, harbors a dark and shameful culture of racism. Throughout its history, from the prolific lynchings in the 1890's to the senseless diatribes of its extremist politicians in the 1980's, Jefferson Parish is gifted with the ignoble distinction of “America’s Johannesburg.”

In days of old, the parish was a largely rural area of farms, horses, and tipping of brims. Yet the flash of money in the 1950's and the civil rights marchers prompted many white households to move from New Orleans, a city fraught with racial tension and a rising crime rate. The white, middle-income, city dwellers of New Orleans faced with the prospect of sharing their seat on a bus with an African-American fled for the swamps. They drained the surrounding marshlands, built a new interstate highway system and segregated themselves from New Orleans.

In the 1980's the numbers of black residents of Jefferson Parish began to climb.  The white residents of Metairie in Jefferson Parish built a wall along the parish line to keep out the predominantly black population. After government intervention with bulldozers, the barricades were torn down – much to the chagrin of Jefferson officials. At the same time, Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee ordered routine stop-and-searches of any black person traveling in white neighborhoods: “It’s obvious”, he said, “that two young blacks driving a rinky-dink car in a predominantly white neighborhood... they’ll be stopped.”

In 1994 two black men died while hog-tied in Sheriff’s Lee’s custody within a week of each other.  Following protests by members of the local black community, Sheriff Lee simply withdrew his officers from a predominantly black neighborhood, declaring, “To hell with them.  I don’t need that.  I haven’t heard one word of support from one black person.”

Back in 1991, the federal court had ordered the creation of the first African-American voting district, the local white Civic Association instantly sued.

A few years earlier, while Jefferson Parish exploded into the white ‘burbs, a young student from Louisiana State University had protested in his monthly publication “Racialist” that white heritage was being lost to racial mixing. The young academic, David Duke, would later become one of the most powerful far-right extremists in American political history. After graduating from LSU, his nonsensical rants continued and he formed the Louisiana-based Knights of the Ku Klux Klan - conveniently appointing himself as Grand Wizard. In 1991, Duke took off his white cap and sheets and emerged in Louisiana politics to be elected and serve a term in the Louisiana House of Representatives for none other than Jefferson Parish. Duke then ran against incumbent Edwin Edwards for Governor of Louisiana – a man riddled with scandal.  While the rest of Louisiana pasted their bumpers with stickers reading "Vote for the Crook, It's Important", Jefferson Parish voted for Duke to be Governor, only to be disappointed when the Grand Wizard did not get the numbers.

The African-American population of Jefferson Parish has grown 75% since 1980, rising now to make up 22.9% of the Parish in the 2000 US Census.