Date of Award
Summer 8-2013
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Degree Program
History
Department
History
Major Professor
Dr. Michael Mizell-Nelson
Second Advisor
Dr. Robert Dupont
Third Advisor
Dr. Connie Atkinson
Abstract
Aaron Kohn’s career as a driven professional crime fighter with the Special Citizens Investigative Committee, and later the Metropolitan Crime Commission, began after the Kefauver Hearings on organized crime, one of the first Senate investigative committee hearings broadcast on the evolving medium of television, gripped the American public in 1950. Sen. Estes Kefauver’s committee visited cities across America, including New Orleans. The hearings’ popularity revealed public thirst for coverage of sensational topics like organized crime, and established how Kohn would soon approach the SCIC job: with force and bombast, featuring flair and sometimes bended truth. Aaron Kohn combined Kefauver’s crusading spirit and media savvy and attempted to apply it to his own long career as a citizen crime fighter in New Orleans, but he met limited success taking on a corrupt establishment in a career that could ultimately be deemed a failure.
Recommended Citation
Willshire, Kyle P., "Aaron Kohn Attacks Corruption in New Orleans: An Intersection of Media and Politics, 1953-1955" (2013). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 1709.
https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1709
Rights
The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.