Entergy is proud to support programing on LPB and greener practices that preserve Louisiana.

The goal of our environmental and sustainability initiatives really is to ensure that our kids and future generations can be left with a cleaner planet.

Additional support provided by the Fred B. and Ruth B. Zigler Foundation and the Zigler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana.

And the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting with support from viewers like you.

I wanted my children and my students to learn from it, not make the same mistakes that I did.

A political memoir with a message.

It's really a paradigm shift, if you will.

Pandemic induced car shopping.

I do want this word to get out.

I wanted to save as many lives as possible.

A grandmother's plea for more vaccinations if these walls could talk.

If these walls could talk, I wonder what they were saying.

They'd have a hell of a story to tell.

Taking you back in time to one of the most popular clubs in the 1940s.

Hi, I'm Kara St. Cyr, and I'm Andre Moreau.

Forty six percent of Louisiana's population is fully vaccinated.

But new data shows despite a slow increase in demand, about two hundred and twenty four thousand doses have been thrown away at vaccine sites around the state.

We're projected to lose another 50000 doses by the end of this month.

It's a simple matter of too much supply for very little demand.

In other Covid news, LSU Health Shreveport is the first sequencing lab to discover a new variant in the state.

The samples of the new variant came from two people in Baton Rouge.

It's called B one six three zero.

But there's no evidence right now that this strain is more dangerous than the Delta variant.

LSU is also taking measures to track Covid cases and exposure on campus with a new app go ptrace.

That's a UCCS.

Trace uses Bluetooth to gauge the distance between cell phones.

Now, if someone comes close to another person who has recently tested positive for Covid, the app will notify you with an alert.

And now let's check on other news headlines from across the state.

Ascension Parish is the site of a planned four point five billion dollar clean energy facility.

Industrial gas supplier air products will produce blue hydrogen.

It uses natural gas to make an alternative fuel with the carbon dioxide emissions captured and stored underground.

The company says it will create almost 200 permanent jobs and thousands of construction jobs.

The plant should be up and running by 2026.

New Orleans is a site for a new video game development project.

Possibility Space will create 75 new jobs with an average salary of one hundred thousand dollars and add to the state's portfolio.

A video game development Senator Bill Cassidy pitched the infrastructure bill to central Louisiana's Regional Chamber of Commerce in Alexandria this week.

Among the benefits is the construction of Interstate 14, which would run from Texas to Georgia and through Leesville and Alexandria.

The bill would also pour money into the region for flood mitigation and high speed broadband internet.

The average act score for the state's high school seniors fell for a fourth year in a row and remains among the nation's lowest.

Our composite scores went down from eighteen point seven to eighteen point four percent this last year.

The national average also fell from twenty point six to twenty point three out of a possible score of thirty six.

Letter grades for public schools will likely be shelved this year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Bessey, the board of Elementary and Secondary Education, signed off on the change.

At least 45 other states have already won federal approval to cancel school reading procedures.

FEMA money could help pay for the reburial of aboveground cemeteries damaged by Hurricane Ida.

There are twenty five parishes in southeast Louisiana designated for the help.

As long as certain criteria is met.

Since the first weeks of Covid, the way we buy cars has dramatically changed.

Inventory is low at dealerships and prices for new and used cars.

Well, they're at record highs.

A new start up claims to be a cut above in the online shopping marketplace.

But how I got in touch with the CEO of Road Oakum to find out their sales pitch.

Ro-Ro offers a an end to end transaction.

So instead of a consumer going into a local car dealership or going to multiple car dealerships, they can shop for and place an order for a new car completely online on Roto Dot or on the Roto app.

And the car gets delivered to them.

And it's it's really a paradigm shift, if you will, from other online platforms of the last 20 years or so.

Other online platforms traditionally are listing sites.

You know, they show pictures of vehicles with Masaaki, you know, the manufacturer's suggested retail price.

And ultimately, it's a lead to the dealership.

The dealer wants you to come into the store, quote unquote, with roto.

We want to do the exact opposite.

We still want dealers to be showing their inventory, but we want the transaction to happen completely online.

And we do that by showing consumers actual prices or payments and then the actual ability to place an order and complete the transaction.

How were you able to do that differently than the others do it?

Sure.

So it's it's technological advancement, the ability to.

Well, that's one part of it.

There are a few others.

So the first is we built an engine that is capable of pricing new and used cars, every single make model and trim in every region, everywhere in the country.

And for a specific consumer, a specific dealer, including all of the discounts, rebates, incentives, taxes, et cetera, and we get all of this data, we put it into this machine.

So when you come on to Rhode Island, you see a Toyota Camry for one hundred and ninety nine dollars a month.

Two thousand dollars due at signing.

That's what it is.

It's not an advertised price.

And then when you come into the dealership, they tell you, well, it's subject to this subject to that you don't qualify for this.

We already know everything you qualify for.

We know everything that needs that is needed for the consumer to see a transactional version.

And if for a lot of people, it's hard to even fathom not going in and looking at touching and feeling and driving a car that you're going to buy.

But there has been a significant shift in the way people are buying cars, and it's gradually moving more toward this an online platform.

Indeed, I think it's a confluence of a bunch of factors, and Covid certainly helped.

In fact, there were many states, including New York, where we are based, where if you needed a vehicle in the first four months of Covid, the state mandated, the only way you were able to get it was through a digital platform to avoid the interaction at the dealership.

So, you know, that obviously immediately moved the industry forward in some of the larger states in the country where the most vehicles are sold.

In addition to that, it's this overall enhancement of e commerce, whereas up until five or six years ago, consumers were comfortable buying small things online, you know, for reasonable dollars.

And then the fintech revolution really started to take hold.

The real estate tech industry really started to to gain traction.

And people were more comfortable renting space online and Airbnb and other platforms, which cost in some cases thousands of dollars that people got comfortable buying homes or apartments.

And then came the auto transaction.

So by the time we came along, consumers were comfortable in doing this large transaction online.

And finally, where we are today, where there's limited new car inventory, used vehicle pricing has increased, as has new.

So in online marketplace, that can offer consumers broad inventory inventory.

That's more than what their local dealers may have.

But maybe a dealer 200 or 300 miles away and competitive pricing and home delivery is where we find ourselves today.

He grew up the son of a preacher in Texas, in Beaumont, but was fascinated by politics and read everything about politics he could.

Robert Manne holds the massive chair of journalism at Lisieux School of Mass Communications and is here to discuss the subject you love and your latest book, Backrooms and Values My Life in Louisiana Politics.

So Louisiana politics that you've observed versus generations ago, what would you say?

Well, it was it was less partizan, maybe certainly less partizan.

And today different because in the you know, in the 30s and 40s, it was long versus a.. Long, which was the politics that really characterized the state for generations.

Yeah.

By the time I got involved in politics, working for Russell Long and John Breaux and Kathleen Blanco, it was more Republican and Democrat, more conservative, liberal.

And toward the end of my time in politics, it was much more partizan, you know, much more personal than it was when I started out.

This is something you couldn't have imagined probably doing when you were a kid, but is what you wanted to do.

And there you found yourself in Washington with Senator Russell Long.

Yeah, I dreamed of working in politics, but I never thought I would be something I could do or work at the politics at that level.

And then I find myself in Washington working as press secretary to Russell Long.

And the first thing that I'm doing for him really is helping him write the speech that he gave in the Senate on the fiftieth anniversary of his father, Ulong, the assassination.

So I get they're paying me to spend hours and hours and hours talking with Russell Long about about Huey Long.

And it was just a dream come true.

And I never told them, but I would have paid them to let me do it from from Mr Long to John Breaux.

And what was the difference between them?

Well, when I was working, you know, I spent the last two years of Long's service in the Senate working for him , and it was really, really kind of closing down a Senate office.

I mean, this had been senator almost 40 years, and we were kind of shutting things down.

It was kind of like going out of business sale.

Breaux is a start up.

You know, he was a young guy really ready to go take on the world.

He was, you know, he would do any and everything.

It was very busy time for me because there was no reporter that he wouldn't talk to.

And I was as his press secretary, I really had to up my game a lot because he expected to be on every show.

And luly and everybody was there.

And he did.

He really did.

So you did your job, apparently?

Yeah.

You know, I worked for him for 17 years.

He was the he was the best boss because he was just he'd been a staffer like me.

He knew what it was like to work.

You know, he'd work for Edwin Edwards.

So he knew what it was like to work for a demanding boss.

And he I think he resolved not to be that kind of person, not that Edwards was a bad boss necessarily, but he never asked us to do anything improper.

He never asked us to do personal tasks for him.

He really, I think, never forgot what it was like to be a staffer.

So as far as being an aide to a senator or to a congressman to a major politician, you couldn't have found anybody better than John Breaux.

You were in the center of it all when Kathleen Blanco was governor and you were her press secretary.

So describe that for me and how that worked out.

Well, you know, working for it was it was so different because I'd never worked for a female politician before and I'd never worked for a governor before.

So it was a it was a steep learning curve.

Those first this first year that I was working for her.

She became governor and then Katrina hit.

And then it was, you know, multiply that by, you know, a thousand.

The pressure, just the you know, having to learn to do my job in the midst of a of a, you know, a lot of disaster, but a catastrophe.

It was really right at the time I thought, this is I'm so miserable.

I mean, we were all miserable.

But what I realized as one was writing this book that I had a front row seat and some of the most important history in in the state, that it was the kind of stuff that my children, my grandchildren and great grandchildren will read about.

And I had a front row seat to it.

You knew Buddy Roemer, too?

I knew Betty.

When I want to hear what you told your class when you.

Your friendship came about again, I guess, with Buddy Roemer.

I had attacked Roemer a lot.

I was working on a campaign against him.

I'd said some really unkind, unfair, really awful things about him that I felt bad about.

And, you know, out of the heat of the campaign, I decided that it was really I needed to apologize to him.

So I invite him to come speak to my class.

And before I introduced him, he was gracious to come.

And for I introduced him, I apologize to him and said I was wrong.

I shouldn't have said all these things.

And he was.

And we became very good friends.

Yeah.

Look, you're you're very brutally honest with yourself and things you did, mistakes you say you made.

I don't want to be the hero of the book.

I wanted to be you know, I wanted my children and my students to learn from it, not make the same mistakes that I did.

So I just had to be honest.

And you had him come into your classroom as a sort of to show your students that you need to own up maybe just something you were feeling.

You shouldn't be afraid to apologize to people that you've hurt, that you've wronged.

You shouldn't be embarrassed to do it in public.

You should you should own it.

And I try and I've tried the whole book for me is trying to own my mistakes and and not and not pretend they didn't happen and all but also share what I learned from them.

Yeah.

Good ask you a million more questions about this, I'll ask you one more, though, if you could, in a sentence describe Louisiana politics.

What would you say?

Unique.

Just, you know, every every every state thinks it knows politics.

But, you know, you spend it, you spend a lifetime or a few years in Louisiana politics.

You really kind of earn a Ph.D. in it because we just play it differently.

But we enjoy it more, I think, too.

So it's just different.

It's just really it's like I think this one that's saying about the FCC, it's just different.

It should be like a sport, I guess.

It's just different here.

It's just different here.

Broadband, it's so great to talk to you.

Thanks so much.

She was blessed to have you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Tonight, we visit the dewdrop in a legendary nightclub in New Orleans that hosted famous musicians and oftentimes off color entertainment.

Tonight, we'll take you back to nineteen forty seven, where many wild nights unfolded with our second episode of Safe Haven.

It's hard to believe if I were to travel just 70 years ago, this little guide could potentially save my life.

I'm Kara St. Cyr and this is Safe Haven.

Louisiana's green book in 1947, traveling through the Jim Crow South was difficult and dangerous for African-Americans.

Yet musicians were spreading great music everywhere, thanks to the chitlin circuit and infrastructure of venues that cater to traveling black musicians.

And in New Orleans, one of the most iconic of any nightclub was the Dew Drop.

It opened in 1935 and nicknamed the Groove Room.

Just about every famous black musician you can think of walked through these doors.

James Booker, Joe Turner, Earl Keen, Allen Toussaint, James Brown, Ray Charles, Little Richard Deacon, John, Etta James and Aretha Franklin.

And that's just to name a few.

But the legend of this establishment lies in the endless wild stories that definitely broke the status quo of the time, like the drag performances.

Ventriloquist's snake charmers.

They even let white people in.

I'm driving through Central City, a culturally rich and historic neighborhood at the heart of New Orleans.

Once upon a time, black businesses prospered here.

It's still largely an African-American neighborhood, but there's not much for a commercial district.

We're meeting Kenneth Jackson at the dew drop in his grandfather, Frank Penya, who's the owner.

Hey, hey, how are you doing?

My name's Cara.

How are you doing, Ken Jackson?

Ken Jackson.

All right, Ken Jackson, where are we at right now?

We are in Central City, New Orleans, standing in front.

The dewdrop in this actually was a preschool for me.

My grandmother came down here every day.

So when she came to do her shift, we would ride with her.

You come down here.

While she was doing her work around, we'd be in a bar playing with the different no instruments on the stage.

We'd be going behind a bar and eating the cherries and going over there where my uncle was getting some heat.

Just like a fun place.

You know, everybody was just happy.

You know, it was just never a whole lot of negativity around here.

You know, it was always peaceful.

Everybody just kind of enjoy themselves, kind of mood in the green book.

It was listed as a nightclub, but Kenneth tells us it was also a hotel, barbershop and a restaurant.

You could come here and enjoy a show, could have a meal, you could drink if you got too drunk, you could spend the night going, get your shoes, sharing your haircut, you perm your process.

They used to call them back in the day.

So that's back when people had the cocks and the zoot suits and the big purple jumpsuits.

That's what they call them.

I can't.

I can't.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

A lot of places, you know, back then we couldn't go, you know, due to segregation and, you know, the way that the towns were.

This was the place where you didn't have to worry about any of that.

It was a place where anybody could come regardless of race, you know.

My grandfather got in big trouble as a result of that.

You know, there was several times where he actually went to jail because he would allow white people to come in to the hotel, come in for the bar or restaurant.

No problem.

I have no idea as a kid that it was against the law for white people to be in here, because it was but it was always white people here.

You know, they would just like everybody else.

You know, it wasn't no big deal for anybody around here.

But my grandfather actually had a battle that there were times where the police would come up during the Middleville show, come in and raid the place.

And everybody who was in there, they would take and put them outside, come out and put them in what they called paddy wagons back there and charge them with racial mixing.

This is where all of the math shows took place in this area here.

Back in the days, there was a whole nother section behind here that was called a groove.

Or you would come here and you didn't have to worry about nobody hitting you because of the way you dressed or who you liked.

So, you know, that was also a part of the dewdrop arm.

That brought a lot of people to this place, I can hear the music.

I can see the vibrant characters that probably came through here.

These walls could talk.

If these walls could talk, I wonder what they were saying.

They'd have a hell of a story to tell.

After 31 years in business, the dewdrop been closed down in 1970.

Kim says a developer is planning to reopen it, similar to what it once was.

And I think that's a great idea.

I think there's a strong chance that it'll be back on the map before too long and people will be pulling up here the way they were back in the days.

ExxonMobil, Baton Rouge is proud to support Safe Haven.

Louisiana's Green Book For more than 100 years, ExxonMobil has made a commitment to workforce diversity and the belief that reflecting on historic race relations is key to shaping a better future.

The dew drop in is in the process of being renovated.

The developers are planning to build 17 rooms with a music venue and a swimming pool that's accessible to the public.

We'll be showing two more episodes of Safe Haven on the state we're in.

If you'd like to watch all eight, you can head to our YouTube channel.

That's the link right there on your screen.

And now some personal news from our LPB family, LPB president and CEO Beth Courtney has announced her retirement effective the end of January.

Twenty twenty two.

Beth has been with LPB from its beginning and became CEO in 1985.

It's impossible to list all of her many achievements over the decades.

But here's a look at some of the highlights.

A pioneer and a leader help President Beth Cortney's decades in broadcasting and public service are unparalleled.

She began her career in 1976 as capital correspondent for Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

And soon after, began anchoring what is now the state's longest running broadcast program, Louisiana.

The state ran over its history and under her leadership.

This award winning program has explored controversial subjects in depth and highlighted Louisiana's people, places and history.

By 1982, she was LPBs executive producer, and by 1985, she became one of the first women in the nation to serve as general manager and president of a public television agency, where she continues to break new ground with innovative programing.

Her impact has been felt on a national stage.

Having served on boards and commissions leading the way in demonstrating the value of educational television and journalism across America, she's a respected voice among her peers, and she served an important public media position throughout her career, making her an effective advocate for content and educates and informs.

Beth has been remarkable these these decades that she has been in charge of the Louisiana Public Broadcasting and done such incredible work.

So I just have my hat off to her as a woman of incredible substance and style.

In the 1980s, she served as chairman of the American public television stations.

The Organization of State Broadcasting executives.

In 1988, she was the first woman to be named vice chairman of PBS's board of directors.

And in 2003, she was appointed by President George W. Bush to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, where she was elected vice chairman.

I know her to this day as she worked harder than ever.

Still a champion of journalism and public affairs, the very lifeblood of democracy.

Beth Courtney is the embodiment of the integrity we need in the media at a time like this.

If you look at LPB and LPB story, it's basically best vision of what public broadcasting can be in Louisiana and what she is able to bring to public broadcasting and telling the story of our state to the people of our state.

Under her direction, LPB programs have garnered the most prestigious honors in broadcasting, including the DuPont Columbia Award for Excellence in Journalism.

Emmy Awards.

Edward R. Murrow Awards.

International.

Seany Golden Eagle Awards.

And Silver Gavel Awards from the American Bar Association.

And a Louisiana conservationist of the year from the National Wildlife Foundation for her distinguished work in years of volunteer service.

She was honored as Communicator of the year, broadcaster of the Year, volunteer activist of the year, John W. Barton Excellence in Nonprofit Management Award from the Baton Rouge Area Foundation and received a lifetime achievement award from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.

Beth Cortney's contributions to broadcasting in Louisiana are truly exceptional.

She is truly amazing and she is a trailblazer, she was one of the first women to get a general management position at an LPB, PBS station.

So she's really inspirational to a lot of women in this company.

A wealth of knowledge also.

And in the coming weeks and months, we will have more on this legacy.

And though she's retiring now, she plans to volunteer, she says, in any way she can to continue to advance the mission of public broadcasting.

And everyone, that is our show for this week.

Remember, you can watch anything LPB any time, wherever you are with our LPBapp.

You can catch LPB News and public affairs shows, as well as other Louisiana programs you've come to enjoy over the years.

And please like us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

For everyone here at Louisiana Public Broadcasting, I'm Andre’ Moreau.

And I'm Kara St. Cyr.

Until next time.

That's the state where.

Entergy is proud to support programing on LP and greener practices that preserve Louisiana.

The goal of our environmental and sustainability initiatives really is to ensure that our kids and future generations can be left with a cleaner planet.

Additional support provided by the Fred B. and Ruth B. Zigler Foundation and the Zigler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting with support from viewers like you Thank you!