Junkies and Jim Crow: The Boggs Act of 1951 and the Racial Transformation of New Orleans’ Heroin Market

Abstract

This article details the origin and passage of the Boggs Act of 1951, as well as a similar drug law passed at the state level in Louisiana. Both laws featured strict mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes, which led to a demographic transformation of New Orleans’ heroin markets in the early 1950s: As New Orleans’ Italian-American Mafiosi retreated from the lower echelons of the heroin economy, entrepreneurial African Americans took their place. In turn, many black leaders came to support both stricter drug laws and increased police focus on crime in black neighborhoods. This demand was rooted in African Americans’ frustration with the New Orleans Police Department and its Jim Crow practice of ignoring intra-racial black crime. It also became important for black leaders to distance themselves from the “criminal element”—an otherwise potent political symbol for white segregationists.