LOS ANGELES — Mayor LaToya Cantrell, a Los Angeles native, arrived in her birth city Friday to celebrate Juneteenth and the dedication of a stretch of L.A.’s Jefferson Boulevard as the “New Orleans Corridor.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass will join Cantrell there for a special event Saturday that focuses on the strong ties between the two cities. So will former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.
And the headlining musical act from New Orleans? Convicted felon Irvin Mayfield.
Cantrell’s spokesman said the mayor and her administration had nothing to do with inviting Mayfield to perform. But she has a history of giving Mayfield her full-throated support, even after he was convicted of federal crimes for stealing more than $1.3 million from the city’s public library foundation.
Mayfield, a Grammy-winning trumpeter and the Cultural Ambassador for the city under former Mayor Ray Nagin, plead guilty to federal mail and wire fraud charges in November 2020, along with his longtime business and musical partner Ronald Markham. While they waited to be sentenced, Cantrell got up at a packed concert in May 2021 and introduced Mayfield by asking the crowd to support him.
“And more importantly, let’s continue to support a true son of the city of New Orleans, Irvin Mayfield,” she said to applause.
WWL-TV’s exclusive investigation in 2015 and 2016 exposed how Mayfield and Markham used the library donations on their own salaries, a gold-plated trumpet, luxury travel for Mayfield, a concert at Carnegie Hall, a shopping spree at Saks Fifth Avenue and more.
Mayfield and Markham each got 18-month sentences for defrauding the libraries and trying to cover it up, but Mayfield served just nine months in a federal prison and completed terms in a halfway house and under home confinement in January 2023, less than a year after he first reported to jail.
Cantrell spokesman Gregory Joseph said Mayfield was invited to the Los Angeles event by its organizers. The Los Angeles Jazz Festival Foundation is planning to launch a new Los Angeles Jazz Festival in 2024.
Joseph said the New Orleans Culture Fund was paying for some performers to attend the event, including Second Line Shorty, but he said the mayor and the city had nothing to do with Mayfield’s travel to L.A.
“We are not providing any funding to him at all,” Joseph said.
A news release from the mayor’s office outlined Cantrell’s plans for the event, including panel discussions marking the migration of large numbers of Louisiana’s Black residents to Southern California between 1940 and 1970. The mayor’s release does not mention Mayfield. However, fliers and announcements of the event in California do tout Mayfield’s participation without noting his criminal record.
