Queer Places:
Cypress Grove Cemetery, 120 City Park Ave, New Orleans, LA 70124, United States

Louise Jonas “Mother” Nixon (August 15, 1856 – June 16, 1947) was a prominent cultural fixture in early 20th-century New Orleans, best remembered as a foundational force behind the city's legendary community theater movement and a central matrix point for the bohemian, literary, and queer circles of the French Quarter.

Born Louise Jonas in August 1856, she belonged to an established, well-connected local family with deep roots in Louisiana. She married James Oscar Nixon II, embedding herself further into the social and civic networks of New Orleans. By the time she was widowed, she commanded significant social capital, using her status, charm, and organizational drive to shape the city's cultural landscape.

In 1916, amidst a burgeoning revival of arts in the French Quarter, Nixon joined with other local culture patrons (including Helen Pitkin Schertz) to establish Le Petit Théâtre du Vieux Carré. What began as intimate amateur productions in private drawing rooms grew into one of the nation's most celebrated community playhouses. Nixon's leadership solidified her as the matriarch of the institution; she was affectionately dubbed "Mother" Nixon and served as the theater's president-for-life until her death.

Beyond theater, Nixon was deeply integrated into the glittering, non-conformist literary community that flourished in New Orleans during the 1920s. She rubbed shoulders with luminaries such as William Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson, Lyle Saxon, Natalie Scott, and William Spratling. Her home and social circle bridged the gap between old-line New Orleans society and the radical, avant-garde artists and writers who gravitated toward the French Quarter.

Nixon remained an active and formidable presence in New Orleans arts well into her later decades. She passed away in June 1947 at the age of ninety in Pass Christian, Mississippi, leaving behind a legacy as one of the chief architects of New Orleans' modern cultural identity.

While Louise Jonas Nixon was a traditional society widow by background, her historical significance is profoundly intertwined with early 20th-century queer history through the social ecosystem she fostered and protected:

The artistic bohemian community of 1920s and 1930s New Orleans—centered around Le Petit Theatre, the Arts and Crafts Club, and local literary salons—acted as a vital haven for gay, lesbian, and gender-nonconforming artists, writers, and photographers seeking refuge from rigid American moralities. As the permanent head of Le Petit Theatre, Nixon presided over an institution that heavily employed and served as a sanctuary for prominent queer creatives.

Nixon is historically documented alongside the famous network immortalized by William Spratling and Sherwood Anderson in Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles (1926)—a satirical yet affectionate portrait gallery of the French Quarter's bohemian elite. This tight-knit circle included numerous foundational queer figures, expatriates, and modernists (such as photographer William “Cicero” Odiorne and designer/artist Louis Andrews Fischer).

Though operating from a position of respectable upper-class widowhood ("Mother" Nixon), her alliance with avant-garde artists, cross-dressers, gay literati, and bohemian rebels demonstrated a radical tolerance and active support for counter-cultural expressions that defied the heteronormative expectations of the Jim Crow-era South.

In 1926 Pelican Bookshop Press, New Orleans, published "William Spratling and William Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles: A Gallery of Contemporary New Orleans", issued in 250 copies. The “Famous Creoles” (with ages in 1926) were

References:


Dixie Bohemia: A French Quarter Circle in the 1920s (Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures in Southern History) Paperback – September 8, 2014
by John Shelton Reed

Other references:

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