Pontchartrain Park receives designation on National Register of Historic Places

By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer

When he was a kid, Marc Morial kicked a field goal of Herculean proportions while playing youth football at what is now Wesley Barrow Stadium.

The longest boot anyone has ever seen around Pontchartrain Park, they say. A kick that rivals Tom Dempsey, the kicker for the New Orleans Saints who nailed a then-NFL record 63-yarder in the ’70s, they say. The most amazing thing anyone’s ever seen on a gridiron, they say.

It’s become the stuff of legend among residents past and present in Pontchartrain Park, the roughly 200-acre planned development in the Gentilly Woods area that decades ago was created as a way to reinforce segregation but eventually blossomed into a rich, vibrant incubator of African-American culture and entrepreneurship.

“The Kick,” that stuff of legend off the foot of Morial, a scrappy kid from New Orleans who eventually became the mayor of the city, a state senator and now the head of the National Urban League, has become part of the deep, ever-growing lore of Pontchartrain Park.

It’s a lore that resonates locally, throughout the state and across the country of a neighborhood that, on June 30, gained the recognition it deserves as an American landmark that represents the determination, resilience and brilliance of the African-American population in New Orleans, a city that had for decades been ruled under the iron grip of bigotry and fear of Jim Crow but now stands as a testament to the city’s multicultural greatness.

In a 90-minute ceremony on the grassy median across the MacBurnett Knox playground, a couple of hundred people celebrated the unveiling of a new national historical marker that officially declares Pontchartrain Park’s status as a historic place on the National Register of Historic Places, a designation it earned in June 2020.

“No matter where we go [in life], no matter who we meet, no matter what accolades we get, it all started here,” Morial, the Pontchartrain Park native with golden cleats and a near-mythic field goal record, told the crowd.

Morial served as the ceremony’s keynote speaker, and during his brief address he noted how the mid-century civil rights leaders of New Orleans demanded better housing options for the city’s Black population when segregation gave middle-class African Americans very few options in places to live.

Morial said the city’s white leaders relented, and Pontchartrain Park was founded in 1952 and built between 1955 and 1961. But, Morial said, those racist white power players were then shown what New Orleans’ Black residents had always known – that African Americans were capable of grandeur and brilliance.

“What [the whites] didn’t know was that they were going to unleash the force that it is now,” Morial said.

“Pontchartrain Park has produced greatness, an incredible legacy, out of disrespect,” he added, “Those [civil rights leaders] built something great for us. Before the Civil Rights Act [of 1964], they had the audacity and the courage to become homeowners and build this neighborhood. That audacity and courage is what this sign represents today.”

Gretchen Bradford, a lifelong Park resident who serves as president of the Pontchartrain Park Neighborhood Association, em-phasized the unity and tight, lifelong bonds that formed in the neighborhood and made it what it is.

“It was our safe haven,” she said. “We lived in one big village. We looked out for each other. We trusted each other to have each other’s back.”

She added that the people who were raised in Pontchartrain Park had vivid, lively childhoods filled with memories that were added to throughout their lives.

“Pontchartrain Park had a very lasting, positive impact on how we live in society today,” she said. I’m always proud to say I’m from ‘The Park.’”

Sybil Morial, a Park resident and Marc Morial’s mother, likened the development to Levittown, the massive, famed planned neighborhood on Long Island created as a way to allow returning GIs from World War II to own their own homes and raise families. Just as Levittown did for white soldiers, Pontchartrain Park offered Black GIs a similar path to homeownership that built the generational equity and prosperity in New Orleans.

Also helping to anchor Pontchartrain Park is the campus of Southern University-New Orleans, the local branch of the historic HBCU of Southern University that offered the possibility of higher education to local young African-American adults.

SUNO professor Clyde Robert-son said he salutes the hard work of the Park elders that created the development, calling them “pioneers who dared to live the American Dream. … They left a legacy with them for every generation that followed.

“Because of Pontchartrain Park, I certainly wouldn’t be here, doing what I do,” he added. “I wouldn’t be the person I am today.”

Also in attendance at last week’s ceremony was Park native and actor Wendell Pierce, who also owns radio station WBOK and has been a leading light in New Orleans’ reemergence following Hurricane Katrina.

Pierce said the ceremony and unveiling of the NRHP sign carried a significance far beyond the brick and mortar of the 1,000 two- and three-bedroom homes that now make up the development.

“This is a sacred event,” he said, “because this is sacred, hallowed ground.”

“This is our Black Mayberry,” he added, referring to the idyllic small town represented on “The Andy Griffith Show.” “It is an incubator of Black talent and one of the first places of Black excellence.”

During his comments, Pierce announced the launch of a new capital project aimed at raising money to acquire the former site of Mary D. Coghill Elementary School – where hundreds, if not thousands, of Black youth of the Park were educated – and build a new community facility containing a fitness, aquatic and computer center that focuses on STEM education for local children. Pierce said the new facility will be modeled after the Jewish Community Center.

Pierce said the proposed facility will hopefully add to the legacy of the Park, which symbolizes the spirit of ambition and achievement of New Orleans’ Black population.

Other historical landmarks are located within Pontchartrain Park that contribute to the neighborhood’s vibrant history by providing recreational opportunities to African Americans, including Wesley Barrow Stadium, Joseph M. Bartholomew golf course and MacBurnett Knox playground.

This article originally published in the July 11, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.

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