Thereafter, he became a law partner with his brother Jacob Morrison and Thomas Hale Boggs Sr., a future Democratic U.S. Representative and House Majority Leader.

[10] The International Women's Organization, (IWO) under the leadership of July Breazeale Waters (1895–1989), registered voters, became poll watchers, canvassed, distributed literature and signs and got out the vote on election day on behalf of Morrison.

The IWO and the Broom Brigade were key to Morrison's victory, with the Christian Science Monitor stating, "The women of New Orleans elected deLesseps S.

[citation needed] As mayor, Morrison put together a strong public relations team, which helped him cultivate an image as a dynamic reformer and of the city as a progressive one.

[12] A later 1993 survey of historians, political scientists and urban experts conducted by Melvin G. Holli of the University of Illinois at Chicago ranked Morrison as the sixteenth-best American big-city mayor to have served between the years 1820 and 1993.

[13] Morrison marketed the city effectively, and was instrumental in creating the post-World War II image of New Orleans as a growing and progressive Sun Belt metropolis.

He created a new city planning commission and moved to make administration more efficient by firing many of Maestri's patronage appointments (though some were replaced with Morrison's own supporters).

The widened Basin Street was, from 1957, developed as the Garden of the Americas and outfitted with monuments to Simón Bolívar, Benito Juárez, and Francisco Morazán.

A statue of Bolívar was prominently sited at the corner of Canal and Basin streets, and a new circulator in Central City was renamed Simon Bolivar Avenue.

[14] Despite running on a platform stressing the elimination of the Old Regular machine, after his election Morrison quickly built his own political organization, the Crescent City Democratic Association.

After assuming office in 1946, Morrison appointed Adair Watters superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) in an effort to eliminate corruption.

[citation needed] In 1952, the Metropolitan Crime Commission of New Orleans was established as an independent monitor of the NOPD and the Morrison administration's approach to vice.

State Police Colonel Francis Grevemberg, later a two-time gubernatorial candidate, led a series of high-profile raids on New Orleans gambling establishments that embarrassed Morrison and the NOPD for its inactivity.

Historian Adam Fairclough interprets Morrison's building programs for blacks as a way of "shoring up segregation" by defusing dissatisfaction with inferior facilities.

In his 1959 gubernatorial runoff contest, Morrison proclaimed his support for segregation and noted that New Orleans was at that time the least racially mixed of the large southern cities.

The NOPD passively stood by while mobs heckled parents bringing their children to school, but at the same time, police arrested civil rights activists holding lunch counter sit-ins in the city.Citation Needed Morrison's lack of action stemmed from his political need to avoid alienating black supporters while publicly retaining a segregationist stance to satisfy whites.

[citation needed] Ultimately, his fence-straddling on civil rights contributed significantly to the fatigue and disenchantment with which the citizenry received his administration's actions in its final years – a sharp contrast with the comparatively ebullient 1950s.

This resulted in New Orleans being more poorly positioned socially and economically for the post-Civil Rights era than its (at that time) peer cities such as Atlanta, Houston, and Dallas.

[18] In an appearance in Shreveport, Country music star Minnie Pearl campaigned for Morrison, rather than fellow entertainer Jimmie Davis.

[19] Morrison carried the endorsement of three of the four Louisiana Teamsters Union chapters, with only the Lake Charles branch remaining neutral in the runoff election against Davis.

He moved surprisingly slowly to construct a more modern terminal for Moisant International Airport; for its first thirteen years of operation New Orleanians departed from a glorified barn, in contrast to its regional economic rivals.

[citation needed] Seeking a political base from which to stage another run for governor, he approached the John F. Kennedy administration and was appointed Ambassador to the Organization of American States on July 17, 1961.

In a further sign of his declining political fortunes, his chosen candidate for mayor in the New Orleans election of 1962 – State Senator Adrian G. Duplantier – lost the Democratic runoff to Victor Schiro.

[citation needed] Four months after his final election defeat, Morrison and his son, Randy, died on May 22, 1964, in a plane crash in Ciudad Victoria, Mexico.

Their elder son, deLesseps Story Morrison Jr. (1944–1996), who like his father was elected to the state house, ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 1977.

[22] In 1995, the senior deLesseps Morrison was inducted posthumously into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield, the home base of the Longs.