533 Baronne St. (current address is 510 O’Keefe Avenue, which was originally the rear of the building), New Orleans 70113
Built as the Shubert Theatre in 1906, the theater hosted many types of entertainment. On May 24, 1961, it hosted New Orleans’ premiere of the 1960 film Exodus, which chronicles the founding of Israel.
Onscreen, Paul Newman’s character guided Jewish refugees through various perils. Outside, another drama was unfolding. Days earlier, George Lincoln Rockwell, the self-styled “führer” of the American Nazi Party (ANP) notified the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) that he and his “storm troopers” planned to picket the screening and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) local office.
Rockwell timed his “hate ride” to coincide with the Freedom Riders’ arrival (See Xavier University). Word spread about Rockwell’s plans and potential riots.
Twenty Holocaust survivors, called New Americans, gathered outside the theatre that night armed with pipes and baseball bats.
Rockwell’s “hate bus” plastered with the messages “We Do Hate Race Mixing” and “We Hate Jew-Communism” was incendiary. The sight of the American Nazi stormtroopers in khaki uniforms and swastika armbands was an affront to the city’s Holocaust survivors, some of whom bore numbers tattooed on their arms by Nazis. As the New Americans prepared to charge Rockwell’s group, the NOPD arrested Rockwell and his followers. Another ANP group amassed outside NAACP headquarters, was ordered away by police and headed to the Civic Theatre, where they were arrested.
Following the protest, Holocaust survivors incorporated the New Americans Social Club as a formal organization and established an annual Holocaust remembrance ceremony to commemorate the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The ceremony is one of the longest-standing in the country (See New Orleans Jewish Community Center).
To Learn More
- “Agitators Face Non-Stop Order,” Times-Picayune, May 26, 1961.
- Lawrence Powell, Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke’s Louisiana. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
- “Strife Feared, Say Witnesses,” Times-Picayune, June 13, 1961.