Storyville, New Orleans was a legalized red-light district that existed for two decades, between the years of 1897 to 1917. This Capstone project has the ambition of providing a more in depth look into the lives of the prostitutes who called Storyville home. Comprised of three chapters, which focus on health, race, and class, this project aims to use these metrics to better understand the lives of these women as Storyville acted in many ways like a vacuum, containing its own culture and norms. The erasure of history as it relates to the prostitutes of Storyville leaves a gap in both womenâÂÂs history and black history, and it is the goal of this project to fill in the gap, if only partially.
Over the course of researching for this project, it was made clear that there is a severe lack of primary resources due to neglect and purposeful destruction. Despite this, I was able to pull from norms and more from local areas in the same time period to fill in blanks that were left open. In addition, I was fortunate to have secondary sources from individuals such as Al Rose, Pamela Arceneaux, and Emily Landau to build my research upon. Without their works, mine would have been impossible.
