John McCusker has been a photojournalist in New Orleans since 1983, working at the Times-Picayune and the New Orleans Advocate. McCusker was part of the team awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of Hurricane Katrina and he was named a fellow with the DART Society in 2009. He is the author of “Creole Trombone: Kid Ory and the Early Years of Jazz” (2012) and co-author of “Jockomo: The Native Roots of Mardi Gras Indians,” (2019) both published by the University Press of Mississippi. McCusker founded the Cradle of Jazz Tour in 1994 with a goal of protecting and marking structures associated with the birth of jazz in New Orleans. After leaving newspaper work in 2016, he worked as a volunteer for ToolBank USA, aiding in the recovery from Hurricane Harvey. In 2019, John founded the 1811 Kid Ory Historic House, a museum telling the story of the 1811 slave rebellion and the early life of jazz pioneer Kid Ory.