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CONGRATULATIONS "DUTCH"

Black Mayor of New Orleans

[[image]]
[[caption]]
Ernest Nathan Morial

Repeatedly climbing to the top of one ladder or another
(Mr. Morial with his daughter Monique in New Orleans yesterday)
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Man in the News

NEW ORLEANS, Nov. 13 - Being "the first black man..." is nothing new to Ernest N. Morial, the first black to be elected Mayor in this Deep South city.

Mr. Morial, 49 years old, was also the first black to be graduated from tht Louisiana State University Law School and the first black to be elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives in this century. Before he resigned as judge of Louisiana's Fourth Circuit of Appeal in order to remain a candidate for Mayor, he was the highest-ranking black official in the state—and the first black elected to the post.

It is, as he puts it, "a record of commitment," one that shows him repeatedly climbing to the top of one ladder or another, then stepping off at the top to clamber onto another and begin an ascent. Security, he has said, is not the most important thing in his life.

His election yesterday, he said shortly after the returns were in, "speaks eloquently for our city and indicates to the nation and to the South in particular that people in New Orleans recognize quality."

Some Find Him Cocky

Quality. It is that kind of confidence, which Mr. Morial's detractors are often wont to call cockiness, that seems to characterize most of what Mr. Morial undertakes.

'He's been white in a black man's world and black in a white man's world," said Dr. Norman Francis, the president of Xavier University and mr. Morial's closest friend. "And he's continually had to prove himself, to be recognized for his abilities and accomplishments. He has constantly had to break through the color barrier."

Driving, intelligent, unrelenitng, he has the kind of aggressive personality that propels him over one racial barrier after another, but that also rubs some people, even among his supporters, the wrong way.

"I'll vote for him," said one backer, 'but personally he's a little hard to take."

Throughout his campaign, for example, Mr. Morial took pains to make it clear that he wanted white votes, but emphasized his independence by declining meetings with white business groups or others he felt might compromise his "hang-tough" image among blacks.

Sued Former Candidate

Before the primary in October, his ability to get along with people was questioned by a former mayoral candidate, Guy LeMieux, who endorsed an opponent. Mr. Morial promptly sued him for $1 million in damages.

He also has a habit of emphasizing his points by jabbing his finger into the chest of whomever he is talking to, a habit that once prompted Moon Landrieu, the present Mayor and a Morial supporter, to grab his hand and point the finger in another direction.

At the same time, he has a reputation for seeking workable solutions to problems in the spirit of compromise. In announcing his candidacy, for example, he promised to attempt to "lead our city not into an era of radical change, but of evolution."

Ernest Nathan Morial was born Oct. 9 1929, the youngest of six children of French-speaking middle-class parents in New Orleans. His father, Walter, was a cigar maker, and his mother, Leonie, a tailor. He was born to the New Orleans class known as "black Creole," which describes descendants of "free men of color," as differentiated from slaves.

Picked Up a Nickname

Creole also connotes light-skinned and European antecedents, and as a boy Ernest Morial quickly picked up the nickname "Dutch," although he says that he does not know its genesis—"just something I picked up." His parents spoke French at home, "until I came along, then it was mostly American."

He attended public and parochial schools—he is Roman Catholic—distinguishing himself academically, and was graduated from Xavier in 1951, then from the Louisiana State University Law School in 1954.

For two years he served with the Army intelligence corps, and upon returning to civilian life dedicated himself to civil rights causes, becoming president of the New Orleans chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1962 and holding the office until 1965, when he was appointed an assistant United States attorney.

In 1967, he took his first serious plunge into politics, becoming the first black elected to the Louisiana House in modern times. His legislative record, according to The States-Item, New Orleans's afternoon newspaper, was "little different from the average white urban lawmaker of the day," and Mr. Morial himself, contrary to fears that he might be a disruptive force, "adopted a 'one of the boys' style that set the pattern for future black lawmakers."