Veteran newspaperman John Rousseau lamented changes that the passage of time brought about on South Rampart Street in a 1965 article, saying in part:

“Rampart Street – long famous over the nation in songs and traditions just as were Beale Street in Memphis and Davis Avenue in Mobile – as the ‘main stem’ or center of Negro sporting and business endeavors, Rampart Street is practically no more.”

The 1938 New Orleans City Guide, prepared by the Works Progress Administration, described the street’s significance even more succinctly: “South Rampart Street is the Harlem of New Orleans.” For nearly forty years, one of the business endeavors that lined Rampart Street was Butler’s Jewelry Store, founded by Mr. Emanuel Chester Butler, Sr.

Members of the Butler Family in the Jewelry Store at 344 South Rampart: Charles Abram Smith (father of Ruth S. Butler); Alan Reid Butler; Emanuel Chester Butler; Ruth Virgie Smith Butler; Jugurtha Clifton “Juggy” Butler; Manfrey Donald Butler. – Courtesy of Keith Eric Butler.

The hustle and bustle of South Rampart Street was a far cry from rural Pecan Grove near Bourg, Louisiana, along Bayou Terrebonne, where Emanuel Chester Butler was born on 24 June 1897. He was one of seventeen children born to Robert Lawson Butler, Sr. (1860-1944) and Laura Poole (1866-1931). He was named for his father’s older brother, Emanuel Butler. Initially, his ever-expanding family lived and worked on land owned by his paternal grandfather, Alexander Butler, but they later moved near Gheens in Lafourche Parish, where his father was a sharecropper.

In 1912, “E. C.” as he was generally called, moved to New Orleans, where he attended Leland University and Straight College. As a young man, he worked as a Pullman Porter as well as working for with and living ‘on premises’ with Mr. Ernest T. George, Vice-President of the Seaboard Refining Company (cottonseed oil) at 1737 Calhoun Street. He was drafted into the Army during World War I, serving just short of three months at Camp Beauregard near Pineville, Louisiana, until he was honorably discharged on 20 December 1918. Two of his brothers, Armstead and Evans, were also drafted. (Armstead served as a ship’s cook in the Navy; while Evans, served overseas in France with his infantry regiment.) In the late 1910s and early 1920s, E. C.’s siblings and parents all made their way to the metropolitan area, settling (as did many migrants from the river parishes and bayou country) in Marrero.

Six months after his discharge from the Army, E. C. Butler married Ruth Vergie Smith (6 November 1899-20 March 1985), on 28 May 1919. Ruth was the daughter of longshoreman Charles Abram Smith and Angeline Collins. By 1920, E. C. was listed in the city directory as operating Butler Brothers grocery with his older brother, Arthur P. Butler, at 2938 General Taylor Street. By the late 1920s, both E. C. and Arthur worked as agents for the Black-owned Liberty Industrial Life Insurance Company. E. C. also worked as a salesman for the Bienville-Jefferson Realty Company led by Maurice Brierre, Jr. On Wednesday, 23 October 1929, the day before “Black Thursday” (the start of the Stock Market Crash), E. C. sold his 6000-square-foot lot at the Uptown, riverside corner of South Claiborne Avenue and General Taylor Street to Shell Oil, which intended to put a gas station on the site. Shell Oil paid E. C. Butler and Andrew Jenkins, the property’s co-owners, $22,500 cash, then a record-price of $375 per foot frontage on Claiborne.

The Louisiana Weekly, 2 June 1956.

For the next few years, Butler moved to Marrero where his parents and siblings lived. He is listed as a jeweler in the 1932 city directory, with his business located at 1135 Teche Street in Algiers. By the next year, he had moved to 319 South Rampart Street, where Butler’s Jewelry joined the ranks of other Black-owned businesses like Florestine Collins’ photo studio, the Astoria Hotel, the Pelican Club, Wilcox Restaurant, and the office of The Louisiana Weekly. The eight-block stretch between Canal Street and ending at the long-since filled New Basin Canal was teeming with businesses and sporting houses owned by mostly Black and Eastern European Jewish merchants. For the majority of the store’s forty years, it was located at 344 South Rampart. Butler started as an informal apprentice to a white jeweler who taught him watch repair. He was sometimes called “The Black Jew,” for his business acumen and his ability to compete amid his mostly Jewish competitors in the jewelry business. He was serious about business and said on a nearly daily basis, “Never let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.”

Butler’s success was noted by JET magazine in its 7 April 1955 issue, which carried the feature “JET Visits New Orleans.” In the observations on New Orleans, it was noted that E. C. and his son Juggy operated “the only first-rate Negro-owned jewelry store in the south.” He was one of the first licensed Black pawnbrokers in the South.

In addition to his new profession as a jeweler and pawnbroker, E. C. Butler also responded to a call to the ministry. For a time, he accepted an appointment to the Algiers and Gretna mission of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion (A.M.E. Zion) Church. Throughout the 1930s and 40s, he accepted invitations to serve as a guest preacher in various churches, although his primary affiliation was with the historic Amozion Baptist Church in the Lower Ninth Ward, during the pastorate of Reverend Bazile A. Jolicoeur. The church was a few blocks from 1625-27 Lizardi Street, where E. C., his wife Ruth, and their growing family lived.

The Louisiana Weekly, 28 October 1961

In June 1938, they purchased the spacious five-bedroom house at 2606 St. Anthony Street (corner of Law), which would be the family home until it was sold in 1987. In the 1950s, he expanded his business holdings to include Quick Cleaners in the 500 block of South Rampart Street. Responding to the city’s demographic changes, in 1961 the jewelry store moved to 1620 Dryades Street.

Emanuel Chester Butler, Sr. died on 4 May 1972. He was buried from First African Baptist Church and interred in Providence Memorial Park. His death was prominently noted in The Times-Picayune of 6 May 1972 and The Louisiana Weekly of 13 May 1972.

The Louisiana Weekly, 12 March 1966.

Two of his sons, Jugurtha Clifton “Juggy” Butler and Manfrey Donald Butler, were active in the family’s jewelry business and later had distinguished careers with the New York Life Insurance Company and as civic leaders. “Juggy” was the first Black to obtain an M.B.A. from Loyola University in New Orleans. Another son, Dr. Emanuel Chester Butler, Jr., was a Tuskegee-trained veterinarian who practiced in Los Angeles. The elder daughter, Iris Angelyn Butler, was a French instructor at Gilbert Academy and Prairie View A&M University and the wife of Dr. Alvin I. Thomas, president-emeritus of Prairie View. The younger daughter, Cynthia Thais Butler, was a longtime educator in the Orleans Parish Public Schools, as was her husband, Robert J. Denley. The youngest and only surviving child, Dr. Alan Reid Butler, is a retired neuroradiologist.

The Butler family, while perhaps not as well-known as some others, believed in maintaining good reputations in the community, in maintaining good business practices, and in obtaining education as a path to success.

Lolita Villavasso-Cherrie and Jari C. Honora

– Special thanks are extended to Mr. E. C. Butler’s son, Dr. Alan R. Butler; grandson, Keith E. Butler; and longtime family friend, Hon. Harold E. Doley, Jr., for sharing their recollections.

Sources: “Big Price Paid for Avenue Site,” The New Orleans States, 27 October 1929, p. 1; “Butler Rites to be Monday,” The Times-Picayune, 6 May 1972, sec. 1, p.20; “Retired Jeweler, E. C. Butler, Laid to Rest Here,” The Louisiana Weekly, 13 May 1972, sec. 1, p. 6; Dr. Alan R. Butler and Keith E. Butler interview, 20 August 2024. Ambassador Harold E. Doley, Jr. interview, 10 August 2024.

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