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S at u r d ay, au g u S t 22, 2026
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National Guard to withdraw from N.O. City officials confirm soldiers will roll out soon
BY MISSY WILKINSON, RICH COLLINS and WILLIE SWETT Staff writers
STAFF PHOTOS By ENAN CHEDIAK
Deputy Mayor Michael Harrison, right, and City Council member Freddie King III, center, speak with vendors about new enforcement rules on the Claiborne corridor in New Orleans on Friday.
New Orleans leaders eye expanding Claiborne corridor Officials discuss redevelopment with green space, vendors, performances BY VIOLET BUCARO and SOPHIE KASAKOVE
Staff writers
Under the Claiborne Expressway, food vendors in RVs, trailers and tents show up for another long night to sell barbecue, tacos and cookies as cars zoom and clack loudly overhead. Six days a week, the two-block hot spot between Columbus Street and Kerlerec Street brings in hundreds of people to the underpass — and the city says it wants to redevelop it. Officials with Mayor Helena Moreno’s administration say that they hope to move forward with a plan to redevelop the 19-block North Claiborne Avenue corridor into a walkable green space with room for vendors and performances. Two years have passed since the city completed its first phase of that plan: a revitalized three-block stretch between
ä See PROJECT, page 5A Food trucks line the Claiborne corridor in New Orleans on Thursday.
The Louisiana National Guard will leave New Orleans starting next week, ending a nearly eight-month deployment that featured federally funded soldiers on patrol in downtown areas as part of an effort by state and city leaders to prevent crime. City Hall spokesperson Jonah Gilmore confirmed Friday that the troops’ official orders end Monday and that they would begin rolling out Aug. 31. Louisiana National Guard director of public affairs Lt. Col. Noel Collins said more information would be available next week. “We are incredibly grateful to the men and women of the Louisiana National Guard,” Mayor Helena Moreno said in a Friday statement. “While this deployment is ending, our partnership is not. The guard has always been an integral part of major events like Mardi Gras, working alongside our public safety agencies to keep our city safe.” The National Guard arrived on a federally funded deployment in late December after President Donald Trump approved a request from Gov. Jeff Landry to send hundreds of troops to the city to tamp down crime and assist with security for major events, including New Year’s Eve, the Sugar Bowl and Mardi Gras. Before that, Landry in September 2025 requested federal support to activate up to 1,000 Louisiana National Guard troops statewide. Though they were initially scheduled to remain through February, the operation was later extended through August. In a statement on Friday afternoon, Landry credited his administration for the troops’ presence in the city. He criticized Moreno for thanking “everyone for the National Guard’s presence in New Orleans — except the two people responsible for it: President (Trump) and me.” “I will continue doing everything within my authority to help keep New Orleans safe, but there are clear
ä See GUARD, page 5A
Jerome ‘Big Duck’ Smith, civil rights activist, dies at 87 New Orleans advocate participated in sit-ins, Freedom Rides
BY JOHN POPE
Contributing writer When he was a boy in the 1940s, Jerome Smith climbed aboard the St. Claude Avenue streetcar in New Orleans and sat down in a section reserved for White riders. Smith was Black, and segregation was the rule. White riders and the White conductor “went crazy,” he said in an interview, and told him he de-
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served a beating. An elderly Black woman intervened, slapping Smith and dragging him off the streetcar, apologizing to everyone and promSmith ising to see that he got the thrashing they had threatened. But once she walked him around the corner, she
kissed and hugged Smith and told him he was a man, Smith recalled. “I never did forget that,” he said in a 1988 oral history interview for the Amistad Research Center. “She was crying and trembling and said she was afraid for me, but she made me know then … that I can never, ever stop.” He never did.
STAFF FILE PHOTO By RALPH URIBE
An unidentified New Orleans police detective stands behind Jerome Smith, from left, Ruth Despenza, Joyce Taylor, Hugh Murray Jr., Archie Allen and William Harrell at a Congress of Racial Equality sit-in lasting almost five hours at the segregated Woolworth’s department store lunch counter ä See SMITH, page 4A in New Orleans on Sept. 9, 1960.
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