John McCusker worked as a photojournalist/writer/editor at the Times-Picayune and the New Orleans Advocate for three decades. 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.
