By the 1870s, steamboats carried passengers up and down the Mississippi River, docking in the ports of major cities like New Orleans. Here, in July 1872, Captain John Benson denied Josephine Decuir née Dubuclet entry into the women’s cabin on the steamer Governor Allen explicitly because she was a woman of color, and the women’s cabin was reserved white women only. She was also not allowed to take her meal at a table until all white passengers finished first. Madame Decuir sued Captain Benson for racial discrimination, joining a legacy of women of color who used litigation in the courts to gain rights denied to them during the Reconstruction era. Madame Decuir’s lawsuit against Captain Benson was the first legal case to challenge segregation after the Civil War. Madame Decuir spent the entirety of the American Civil War in France, living in a social environment where she was treated as equal to white women. She came from a family of Black Creoles who spoke French, enslaved others, and owned plantations. Her brother, Antoine Dubuclet, had political influence and served as the Louisiana State Treasurer after the Civil War. In 1866, when she returned home to Louisiana, Decuir boarded the main cabin of the Lafourche, but Captain Barranco denied her access, explaining that segregation was the custom on all steamships. Her prior experiences in France, pride in her family’s status, and Creole identity inspired her to affirm her right to equality. When Madame Decuir boarded the Governor Allen with her lawyers seven years later, she understood the power of them bearing witness to this practice of segregation that directly violated her rights guaranteed under the Louisiana State Constitution of 1868.  Decuir’s legal case began in the New Orleans courts and progressed to the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) in 1877, at the end of Reconstruction. Her lawyers argued that Article 13 of Louisiana’s 1868 State Constitution as well as an 1869 statute afforded her equal access to all modes of transportation regardless of race. Madame Decuir never attended court, but her testimony demonstrated a level of intent equal to other women of color who did. Thirty-one women of color, like Madame Decuir, challenged segregation on common carriers from 1855-1914. Decuir relied on her gender and social class to demonstrate that she was a well-respected woman and therefore deserved access to the women’s cabin. At the local courts, other steamship captains testified as witnesses on behalf of Captain Benson to affirm the practice of segregation. In response, Decuir’s case called upon Creole men of color to describe the conditions of the segregated ships. After these testimonies, the judge awarded Decuir $1,000 in damages at which point Captain Benson appealed to the State Supreme Court which upheld the local decision. As a result, Captain Benson’s lawyers requested that SCOTUS add this case to the docket. By the time the case reached SCOTUS, the dynamics had changed. First, Captain Benson died and his widow, Eliza Jane Hall, became the administrator. As a white woman, she represented the institution of segregation that justified racial separation for the protection of white women. The court was more concerned with Decuir’s race than her gender. Additionally, R.H. Marr, a staunch white supremacist who defended the Colfax Massacre and instigated the Battle of Liberty Place, joined as co-counsel for the defense. In Hall v. Decuir (1877), the Supreme Court overturned the Louisiana Supreme Court’s ruling. Even though Decuir’s stint on the Governor Allen remained within the state of Louisiana, the court made a decision on intrastate affairs--because the boat traveled to other states after Decuir disembarked--fell under the jurisdiction of Congress. Therefore, Louisiana’s civil rights laws protecting Black citizens from racial segregation were nullified by federal powers. This ruling demonstrates how SCOTUS intentionally dismantled Black citizenship rights and rolled back federal protections. Hall v. Decuir set the stage for the doctrine of separate but equal by nullifying civil rights laws against segregation. As a Creole woman of color, Decuir’s protest against racially discriminatory practices foreshadowed the arguments of the Comité des Citoyens. Years before the Comité, she fought for public rights to guarantee her dignity and status. Justice Harlan also cited the Hall v. Decuir ruling in his lone dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson. Hall v. Decuir demonstrates how Black women like Decuir were a part of the legacy of defying and challenging the practice of segregation and their involvement in racial justice movements.

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Louis A. Martinet was a key player in the fight for civil rights in New Orleans. Born December 28, 1849, his multiracial identity as the son of a free woman of color and a Belgian man placed him within the community of Creoles of color in Louisiana. Joining other Black men elected to political office during the Reconstruction era, Martinet represented his hometown of St. Martinville in the state legislature at the age of twenty-three. He later earned his law degree from Straight University Law School in 1876 as its first Black graduate, setting a precedent for people of color to follow. 

In 1889, Martinet founded The Crusader newspaper in New Orleans to report on racial violence and civil rights issues in Louisiana. Shortly after the 1890 Separate Car Act (SCA) was introduced in the state legislature, he wrote in protest of the law and vowed a legal challenge. The next year, Martinet, joined by Rodolphe Desdunes and other Creole leaders such as Aristide Mary and C. C. Antoine, and formed the Comité des Citoyens (Citizen’s Committee) to mount the legal challenge to the SCA. The Crusader became the megaphone for the Comité’s politics and ideas about public rights. 

Albion Tourgée, a white northerner, learned about the SCA and the work of the Comité by reading Black newspapers including The Crusader. Tourgée had dedicated his life to civil rights as a lawyer, legislator, and writer, specifically using his writing to advocate for Black rights. In his column, A Bystander’s Notes, he criticized the SCA as a violation of the 14th amendment and praised Martinet and the Comité for their protests. Martinet offered Tourgée the entire Comité’s fund of $1,412.70 to take the case to the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS), but Tourgée refused to take the funds and offered his legal services pro bono. 

In their correspondence, Tourgée and Martinet devised a legal strategy. Originally, Tourgée proposed that a woman of color who could pass as white board a train car reserved for white travelers. He deliberately wanted a white-passing person to highlight the arbitrary nature of racial classifications because the SCA allowed train conductors to determine a person’s race to enforce the law. Martinet, however, worried that the local context of racial fluidity in New Orleans might foil the plan. “People of tolerably fair complexion, even if unmistakably colored, enjoy here a large degree of immunity from the accursed prejudice,” Martinet wrote Tourgée. Nevertheless, he agreed to Tourgée’s plan and enacted a first attempt that failed after Judge John Ferguson ruled the SCA did not apply to interstate travel. For the second attempt, he selected Homer Plessy, a shoemaker of a fraction of African descent, to board a train traveling within Louisiana. Martinet also convinced the railroad company to cooperate with the plan and hired a private investigator to ensure Plessy’s safe arrest within the racial tensions and violence in Louisiana. 

The strategy succeeded, and Plessy was arrested on June 7, 1892 for violating the SCA. Judge Ferguson upheld his conviction in the New Orleans court, and the Comité’s lawyers appealed the case through the Louisiana Supreme Court, housed in the Cabildo where you are standing, until it reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896. A miscommunication caused Martinet to miss the oral arguments in Washington D.C., but his influence was evident in Tourgée’s radical argument. He asserted that the 14th Amendment extended citizenship, guaranteed due process and equal protection under the law, and nullified states’ legal authority to define citizenship. His arguments also emphasized that racial categories are arbitrary and therefore cannot be a sound reason for legal discrimination. Finally, Tourgée asked the justices how they would feel as Black people subject to the SCA: “What humiliation, what rage would then fill the judicial mind!” Through these comments, Tourgée reflected the ideas of dignity central to public rights and citizenship that Martinet and Desnudes held and expressed in The Crusader. 

In a 7-1 decision, the Supreme Court upheld precedents established during the last three decades that narrowed the scope of federal protections of the rights of Black citizens. It ruled that citizenship and racial segregation fell under the authority of the state, ultimately deciding that segregation was legal as long as the accommodations were equal, codifying the doctrine of “separate but equal” that ushered in an era of Jim Crow rule. After this decision, the Comité dissolved and Martinet closed The Crusader offices for lack of funding that same year, turning to a career in medicine. 

The blow to civil rights in Plessy v. Ferguson did not end racial activism or Martinet’s influence, however. The sole dissent by Justice John Marshall Harlan asserted that the U.S. Constitution was “color-blind,” providing activists with judicial backing to work toward federal civil rights protections. Today, a group of African American attorneys make up the Greater New Orleans Louis A. Martinet Legal Society, devoted to honoring Martinet’s legacy through support for Black lawyers, pro bono work, and community service. Martinet understood the long-term impacts of his efforts and that it was up to those who followed him to continue fighting for civil rights. Writing to Tourgée in 1893, he said, “you may not live to see the fruit of your labors and sacrifice, or to receive the gratitude of those benefitted by them. It will be reserved to future generations to properly and justly estimate them.” 

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In 2019, the New Orleans City Council launched a city-wide effort to change the names of streets honoring white supremacists. While the city implemented its renaming efforts, a clear need for an educational component to give context to the changes presented itself. Filling the gap, public history graduate students at the University of New Orleans created projects to illuminate the work of the Street Renaming Commission.

Produced by the Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies, Streets on the Table is a podcast that reflects on the historical relevance of both the old and new street names. Hosted by two UNO graduate students, the podcast highlights the lives and histories unrecognized in the commemorative landscape. Listeners will learn about artists, self-liberating people, educators, scientists, and many others underrepresented in street signs, public memorials, and historical narratives.

Episodes were released on a rolling basis throughout the summer of 2022. Scroll to the bottom of the media list to listen to the introduction episode. 

For more resources, visit From Robert E. Lee to Mama D.

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Shirley Thompson, the youngest of the Thompson sisters,  joined the New Orleans Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Freedom Rides as they tested the Interstate Commerce Commission’s desegregation of bus transit. At eighteen years old, and just a few days after graduating from George Washington Carver High School, Shirley boarded her first Freedom Ride on June 6, 1961, to Jackson, Mississippi. [1]  The previous Freedom Rides into Mississippi were met with violence, an increase in jail penalties from two months to four, and a request from President John F. Kennedy to the Freedom Riders for a “cooling-off period.” However, CORE leaders remained diligent in their protests and continued ahead with their Freedom Rides and sit-ins across Mississippi. [2] Because of CORE members’ vigor and determination to fight white supremacy, police jailed activists for their continued acts of civil disobedience, imprisoning Riders in the Parchman State Penitentiary when local jails exceeded capacity. Police arrested Shirley Thompson for “breach of peace” while attempting a sit-in within a waiting room. Given the increased sentence of four months, police took Shirley to the Parchman State Penitentiary. [3] While there, Shirley stated that “she was slapped by police officers.” [4] CORE activist Abdul Aziz Khaalis documented the brutalities at Parchman State Penitentiary in his diary, later published online as a series entitled Letters to My Children. Khaalis stated: 

"Yes, they took our mattresses from us. We still sang freedom songs. Yes, they took our clothes. Yes, we froze when our bodies touched the steel bunks with the air turned on high. Yes, we were eaten by insects released from jars into the cell block with the air turned off and the windows closed to make it hot like hell as we were bitten and eaten everywhere. Yes, they dragged a screaming white Freedom Rider past our cells. They had a wrist breaker attached to his right arm. It was a handcuff with big screws that hit the nerve points in his wrist. It was attached to a chain with a wooden handle. They dragged him, flipped the chain, making his body flip like a fish from the agony he experienced, and I felt it In my cell and still hear his screams when I have the memory. Yes, they put stuff in our food to give us the runs. Yes, they were devil-mean hateful jailers." [5]  While newspapers reported one piece of Shirley’s testimony from within the walls of Parchman State Penitentiary, Shirley likely faced other violence as well. Jean Thompson posted a bond for her sister and the prison released her. Shirley’s release date is unknown.  Before her death at age 47, Shirley also participated in the 1962 Louisiana Freedom Summer, 1962 Mississippi Freedom Summer, and 1963 March on Washington alongside her sister Alice Marie Thompson. 

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On May 24, 1961, Jean Thompson, at age 19, participated in the Freedom Ride from Montgomery, Alabama to Jackson, Mississippi as civil rights activists tested the Interstate Commerce Commission’s desegregation of bus transit. Jean’s bus was the first to make it safely to its destination in Mississippi. Previously, white groups acted violently to activists and burned Freedom Ride buses. [1] This safe arrival was short-lived. According to the Times-Picayune, city police arrested Jean along with eleven other riders “moments after they alighted from their buses and set foot in a white waiting room at the bus terminal.” [2]  Jean and the other Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Freedom Riders refused to move from the white waiting room after police ordered them to leave. The police then immediately booked the riders on “two counts of refusing to move on when ordered by police and causing a breach of the peace.” [2] The following day, Jean appeared in front of the municipal court led by Judge James L. Spencer. CORE’s attorney advocated for the riders stating that all people have the right to travel. Judge Spencer did not alleviate the penalties and charged Jean and the other riders with the maximum penalty of a $500 fine and up to six months in jail. [2] 

On November 1, 1961, Alice Marie Thompson joined other New Orleans Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) members to test the Interstate Commerce Commission’s new policy of bus desegregation at the New Orleans Trailways bus terminal located on Loyola Avenue. [1] Information regarding the test’s impact on Riders or the New Orleans community has little documentation. However, according to Julia Aaron-Humbles, another New Orleans activist, some locals regularly took care of the New Orleans CORE members, providing housing, food, nurturing, and training to prepare those like Alice for the violence ahead. [2]  On November 14, Alice Marie Thompson and other CORE members tested bus desegregation in Hattiesburg and Poplarville, Mississippi. The police arrested Alice and charged her with a “breach of peace.” [3] The mayor of Poplarville, Pat Hyde, fined Alice Thompson $250.00 and sentenced her to two months in jail. The police released Alice, along with two other activists, Frank Nelson and Patricia Smith, through a paid bond. [4] On November 29, 1961, Alice also joined in the testing of bus desegregation in McComb, Mississippi along with her sister, Jean. While there, a mob of white people attacked Alice and other CORE members, shouting “Kill ‘em! Kill ‘em.” [5] According to the New York Times writer Claude Sitton, Alice and the other CORE members fled the bus terminal, rested for the evening, and then attempted a sit-in at a local cafe after a reported gas leak at the bus terminal. White men attacked the CORE members, kicking and shoving them through the cafe door onto the street. [6]  Though the Freedom Ride to McComb was the last for Alice Thompson, she continued to engage in other civil rights activism including the 1962 Louisiana Freedom Summer, the 1962 Mississippi Freedom Summer, and the 1963 March on Washington, known for Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech.” [7]  

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In 1924, journalist and political activist Dorothy Day lived in an apartment at 520 St. Peter Street while writing for the New Orleans Item. During her short time working at the newspaper, Day wrote articles generally concerned with the culture of dance halls, alcohol, and gambling in the city. Day also conducted interviews with personalities like Italian actress Eleonora Duse, Governor Henry L. Fuqua, and boxing legend Jack Dempsey. [1]  Before her arrival in New Orleans, Dorothy Day was a political activist. Day was a suffragette, arrested for picketing the Wilson White House, and went on a hunger strike while imprisoned. In 1927, Day converted to Catholicism and later founded the Catholic Worker Movement in New York with Frenchman Pierre Maurin. [2] The Catholic Worker Movement is an organization dedicated to aiding the poor by engaging in labor organizing, nonviolent protests against war and violence, establishing cooperatives, and advocating for human rights. [3] In 1933, Day co-founded Catholic Worker, a radical Christian newspaper covering workers’ rights and social issues, and served as its editor until her death in 1980. 

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Aimée Potens was the mother of Louis Charles and Jean Baptiste Roudanez, the founder and publisher of  L’Union, the South’s first black newspaper, and the New Orleans Tribune, America’s first black daily newspaper. She was born to an enslaved woman in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) in the late eighteenth century. [1] Aimée eye-witnessed the long arc of Atlantic and Carribean world history: slavery; the Haitian revolution; exodus to colonial Louisiana; the Louisiana Purchase; territorial plantation life; all things de couleur libre in antebellum New Orleans; the Civil War; emancipation; the birth of the South’s first Civil Rights movement via her sons’ activism; and in her final years the triumph and failure of Reconstruction.

Soon after Union forces seized New Orleans from the Confederacy in 1862, calls for equality reverberated among free people of color. Hundreds assembled at frequent mass meetings and rallies at Economy Hall in the heart of Faubourg Tremé. There, boisterous crowds listened to speakers advocate for racial democracy and the enfranchisement of all men of African descent. The newspapers L’Union, and later the New Orleans Tribune, frequently promoted and reported on these dramatic gatherings. “Grande Assemblée à L’Économie, Immense Enthousiasme,” recounted L’Union in 1863. [1] “A vast and enthusiastic assemblage met last evening at Economy Hall,” reported the Tribune in 1864. [2] “One of the most largely attended assemblies ever held in this city met last night at Economy Hall,” declared the Tribune in 1865.

Jean Baptiste Roudanez (1815-1895), a free man of color, served as publisher of L’Union, the South’s first black newspaper, and the New Orleans Tribune, America’s first black daily newspaper. Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez, the Tribune’s founder, was Jean Baptiste’s younger brother. Jean Baptiste Roudanez’s home still stands on Dumaine Street in the Faubourg Tremé. 

Jean Baptiste Roudanez, publisher of L’Union, the South’s first black newspaper, and the New Orleans Tribune, America’s first black daily newspaper, is entombed alongside his mother Aimée Potens, a free woman of color, in Square 3 of St. Louis Cemetery No. 2. This section of St. Louis Cemetery No. 2 honors many civil rights pioneers of African descent, including Henriette Delille, Rodolphe Desdunes, Arthur Esteves, André Callioux, Jordan Noble, Marie Couvent, P.B.S. Pinchback, Oscar Dunne and many others. Square 3 has been described as “the greatest collection of memorials to African-American achievement in the world.”  

Roudanez and fellow activist Arnold Bertonneau delivered a historic petition to President Lincoln on March 12, 1864, demanding the right to vote. Signed by almost 1,000 free men of color from New Orleans, the document righteously proclaimed “WE ARE MEN, TREAT US AS SUCH!” For the first time, Louisianans of African descent boldly entered the whitest house in America, the inner sanctum of the country’s authority. They were frustrated with Lincoln’s gradualism and general failure to support the growing national movement for racial equality. [1]

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Faubourg Tremé is home to the oldest existing cemetery in the City of New Orleans, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez, founder of the New Orleans Tribune, America’s first black daily newspaper, is entombed in the Roudanez family tomb located in Alley 9. The doctor’s wife, Célie Saulay, and several of their children are also in this tomb. Access is permitted only with approved tour guides. When in the cemetery, be sure to ask your guide to see the Roudanez tomb.

Like many free people of color in New Orleans, Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez was wealthy, grew up with the French language, attended Catholic Church, and received much of his education in Paris. Roudanez’s parents were racially mixed refugees from the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti), leaving after the island’s successful slave rebellion began in 1791. [1] 

On July 30, 1866, black Republicans attempted to reconvene the Louisiana constitutional convention in an effort to secure voting rights. Held at the Mechanics' Institute, a large crowd of black spectators was present as well. The gathering was attacked by an angry white mob that included police and firemen. [1] According to the Tribune, "black men were assassinated by scores. They fell inside of the hall, outside of the building, in the neighboring streets, and even in distant parts of the city, where they were tracked like dogs." [2] Tribune editor Jean-Charles Houzeau witnessed the bloodbath and heard the assassins shout "To the Tribune!" He claimed the newspaper was saved by a detail of black soldiers. [3]

In November 1866, the Tribune moved from its offices on Conti Street to 122-124 Exchange Alley. These new digs were in the shadow of the St. Louis Hotel (site now occupied by the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel). The St. Louis Hotel housed a large antebellum slave exchange. As free men of color, the men of the Tribune had witnessed the horror and degradation of the city's many slave pens and auction blocks, where over the years over 100,000 souls were stored, assigned a price, and sold as living property.

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You are standing in front of the L’Union and the New Orleans Tribune building, the birthplace of civil rights history in the Crescent City. Here, surrounded by the howling madness of the Civil War, these two radical journals condemned slavery and fought for the rights of all of African descent. The black community rallied around the Tribune and organized one of the most important freedom movements in American history. The Tribune’s crusade led to black enfranchisement, integrated public schools, the creation of a groundbreaking state constitution with strong equal rights provisions, and the election of many black state representatives.

The New Orleans Tribune (la Tribune de la Nouvelle Orléans) proclaimed itself an “organ of the oppressed” and defiantly vowed to “spare no means at our command” to promote equality for all people of African descent. [1] Bravely challenging the very foundations of white supremacy, the Tribune was in the vanguard of a monumental struggle for racial democracy. 

Both newspapers were founded by Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez, a free man of color. L’Union was unleashed in 1862 soon after Union forces seized the city. The New Orleans Tribune debuted on July 21, 1864. Publishing over 1,300 issues in the five years of its existence, the Tribune concentrated on matters of central importance to all of African descent: suffrage; an equitable labor and land system to replace slavery; the condition of the emancipated; the creation of integrated public transportation and school systems; the black military; Union policies of accommodation with planters; Louisiana’s constitutional conventions; local and national elections; Reconstruction politics and legislation; and much more. 

The Tribune arose from les gens de couleur libres, the community of free people of color who lived in the Vieux Carré and the Faubourgs Tremé and Marigny. Racially mixed, French-speaking, and Catholic, this prosperous, politically astute and assertive group was one of the largest of its kind in the United States. [2] Of African, Caribbean, European and First Nations ancestries, free people of color resulted from unlawful but tolerated inter-racial relationships during the colonial and antebellum periods. Their very existence contradicted the foundational idea of slave society, that racial inferiority was part of the natural order. Moreover, white elites worried that free people of color offered the enslaved hope for their own liberation.

The Tribune was bilingual from the start, two pages in English and two in French. The English-language section was a strategic effort to expand the journal’s message outside of the francophone community of free people of color that had been served by the newspaper’s predecessor, L’Union. That new audience grew to include those who had been enslaved, with whom the Tribune identified. “They are of us, and we love them as we do ourselves. We are the organ of the oppressed, without distinction.” [3]

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Starting in the 1920s and increasing exponentially in the 1930s, and onwards, the urban landscape of New Orleans, like many urban municipalities across the country, began to change as a result of a series of racially restrictive covenants and zoning ordinances, New Deal housing policies, local government blight and slum clearance initiatives, and real estate and banking practices. These changes took root with the passage of several federal and state acts, key among them was the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation Act of 1933, the National Housing Act of 1934 that established the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and the Housing Act of 1937, also known as the Wagner-Steagall Bill, which created the United States Housing Authority. The formation of the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) established by Congress to refinanced mortgages in default to prevent foreclosures, and HOLC’s subsequent color-coded Residential Security Maps, or redlining maps, to measure real estate risk assessment of neighborhoods based on the racial demographics set up a discriminatory practice of urban divestment and exclusion. Outlined in the lending protocols of the FHA’s Underwriting Handbook, the practice of redlining institutionalized racial residential segregation, discriminatory housing practices in mortgage lending, and divestment in urban communities. The establishment of the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) by the Louisiana Housing Act of 1936 coupled with the passage of the federal Housing Act of 1937, charged with coordinating and financing the construction of public housing developments in urban settings, set the stage for the displacement and relocation of low-income Black residents in public housing in the city.

In 1938 New Orleans became the first city in the country to receive federal funding under the Housing Act of 1937, codifying racial residential segregation in public housing and the social positioning of black residents, particularly low-income black women, in the city for decades to come through the public demonization of their subsidy-status and punitive socials policies that justified their mistreatment. For decades, nearly all mortgages underwritten by the FHA supported white families, while private banks frequently discriminated against Black households seeking mortgage assistance in the neighborhoods in which they resided. Slum clearance and urban renewal projects disproportionally uprooted black communities, and the locations chosen for public housing developments both displaced and confined black people to racially and economically segregated neighborhoods. Within its first three years, HANO secured $30 million in federal loan contracts for the construction of public housing, and by the time the U.S. entered World War II in 1942, the first six public housing developments in the city were completely occupied.

Four developments were reserved for Black occupancy

— the Magnolia (1941) Lafitte (1941), Calliope (1942), St. Bernard (1942) and the two developments for white occupancy — the St. Thomas (1941) and Iberville (1941).

By 1957, HANO was the fourth largest public housing authority in the country managing over 10,000 units or public housing, with Desire (1956) being the biggest development. Low-income black women found it difficult to find places to live in this continually changing housing landscape as racial and gender stereotypes, biases, and fears combined in insidious ways rendering public housing, for many, their only ‘choice.’ Public housing became sites of housing security, contradictions, activism, demonization, violence, community, poverty, and isolation.

Hidden within the history of public and subsidized housing in New Orleans are narratives of black women who engaged in a movement without demonstrations.

Circumscribed by opportunity and discrimination, possibilities and restrictions, affordability and surveillance, low-income black woman organized to improve the lives of public housing residents, transform housing policies, advance tenant rights, encourage resident engagement, support policy changes, and participate in community building efforts through partnerships and collaborations.

With the formal incorporation of The New Orleans Public Housing Tenants, Inc. in 1972, and the establishment of the Community Services Department at HANO in 1974, public housing residents significantly increased involvement in shaping management decision-making affecting their communities.

Through resident councils, the New Orleans Citywide Tenant Council, and interactions with housing officials, black women challenged poor maintenance policies, fought against illegal and unfair evictions, sponsored neighborhood clean-ups, created programs for senior citizens, developed recreational and after school enrichment programs for youth, organized against police brutality, established community centers and resident management corporations, formed non-traditional resident councils, created work opportunities for residents, partnered with local groups establishing child care centers and health clinics, hosted cultural events, advocated for safe and healthy housing conditions, and worked daily to address the impact of economic and housing-related poverty, violence, and substance addiction. Black women challenged dominant stereotypes purported by the media, elected officials, and others that criminalized their poverty, family size and composition, and residential neighborhoods. Resident leaders engaged with and reshaped housing institutions as they fought to improve the living conditions of their families and communities. Unable to actualize rights gained during the Civil Rights Movement, low-income black women in New Orleans, like many of their counterparts in urban cities across the country, developed mechanisms to address the harsh circumstances of the everyday violence of racist and sexist housing policies and the irresponsibility of government actions that accompanied living in public housing. Although limited by their housing options, the biographies, political agency, activism, struggles, triumphs, setbacks, experiences, and advocacy efforts of low-income black women—and the communities that supported them—is often invisible or marginalized in historical narratives of black freedom struggle and women’s liberation movements.

Here we acknowledge some of the women who transformed public housing in New Orleans:

Ursula Spencer, Mildred R. Taylor, Dorothy Allen, Lolita King, Hilda LeBlanc, Viney D. Reynolds, Donna Johnigan, Yvonne Marrero, Augusta Kerry, Barbara Villere, Debra Davis, Kathleen Matthews, Desiree Williams, Cynthia Wiggins, Leah Green, Birgil Green, Dianne Lee, Angela Winfrey, Lillie Clark,

Constant Haynes, Christopher Homes, Karen Johnson, Marla Taylor, Demetria Farve, Barbara Jackson, Fannie McKnight, Helen Lane, Crystal Jones, Barbara Carter, Beverly Magee, Yvonne Miles, Laura Johnson, Irene B. Griffin, Cynthia Doughty, Laura French, Delores Morrel, Sharon Jasper, Theresa Nicholas, Kim Piper, Stephanie Mingo, Kawana Jasper, Julie Andrews, Jessie Brock, and Ollie Pendleton.

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For decades, residents of Gordon Plaza engaged (and continue to engage) in political activism to spread public awareness about toxic contamination in their neighborhood. Residents hope to achieve fair and just relocation from their tainted properties. Recently, the New Orleans People's Assembly partnered with Gordon Plaza residents to organize several events to increase public awareness of these injustices.

On September 8th, 2018, the Gordon Plaza neighborhood hosted “RISE for Cancer Alley,” a political rally tying together issues of environmental racism faced by the people of Gordon Plaza and residents living near petrochemical plants along the Mississipi River. Later that day, the rally made its way to St. James where toxic pollutants produced by petrochemical plants are destroying the health and wealth of black homeowners.

On October 26th, 2018, activists staged "Asphyxiated: Exposing Gordon Plaza" in front of St. Louis Cathedral. Some actors coughed and wheezed, while others wore signs with the names of past politicians who turned a blind eye to the injustices faced by residents of Gordon Plaza. Performed in the heart of the French Quarter, this protest demanded residents and visitors alike to recognize the plight of community members residing just three miles away.

In 2024-2025, the City of New Orleans completed a voluntary buyout of residential properties. But for some former residents the fight is still not over. A federal lawsuit, filed in May of 2026 alleges that the city is prioritizing other payments over millions owed in a class-action lawsuit for compensation for emotional distress and property damage.

As of 2025, the houses and buildings of Gordon Plaza no longer exist. They were torn down to make way for a a solar farm. In the videos below, longtime Gordon Plaza resident Shannon Rainey shares her decades of political activism.

To support the residents of Gordon Plaza:

Follow New Orleans People’s Assembly for more details on how to get involved on their website https://gordonplaza.com/

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By 1985, just four years after the first residents moved into Gordon Plaza, state environmentalists recommended testing soil and air in the Gordon Plaza subdivision to determine the extent of hazardous wastes underneath the houses that were built over an old landfill. Testing performed at the site of the new Moton Elementary School in 1983-1984 revealed high levels of toxic chemicals in the soil. Due to their proximity to the contaminated school site, Gordon Plaza residents demanded the testing of their own soil. It was at this point that residents discovered their homes were built on the former Agricultural Street Landfill, where many of the growing industries of New Orleans dumped their toxic chemicals and garbage for over fifty years. [1] A Times-Picayune article from October 3, 1986, states that “residents and local environmentalists were still concerned with the toxic chemicals after Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials told them that lead was the only one in over 130 toxic chemicals discovered in levels high enough to generate health concerns.”

Following a sewage leak in 1993, concerns over the toxicity of Gordon Plaza land surfaced once again. Despite earlier assertions that the pollutant levels were not dangerous, the EPA designated the Gordon Plaza subdivision as a Superfund site in 1994. The initial reaction of the community was positive because they believed they would be able to get access to funding for relocation, however, this would not prove to be the result. The EPA encouraged people not to dig in their yards or gardens. Relocation of Gordon Plaza residents was not considered as a solution by the EPA. In 1994, the first class-action lawsuit was filed by Press Park and Gordon Plaza residents against the city of New Orleans, the New Orleans school board, and two unnamed construction companies, for knowingly putting their houses in a contaminated area. In 2001 the EPA oversaw the installation of a layer of topsoil on Gordon Plaza properties to form a barrier from the toxic land. This soil was washed away by flooding during Hurricane Katrina.

In the videos below, longtime Gordon Plaza resident Shannon Rainey discusses the impact that toxic chemicals buried underneath Gordon Plaza have had on her, her family, and her neighbors.

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In the 1970s, under the administrations of Mayors “Moon” Landrieu and his successor “Dutch” Morial, the city planned and built housing for elderly and low-income families on the former site of Agriculture Street Landfill (ASL).

The city of New Orleans was able to fund this development with federal money available through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) via Community Development Block Grant Program (CDBG/CD Grant) under the auspices of improving Desire Community Housing, a public housing complex build near ASL in the 1950s. Throughout the nation, low-income public housing complexes like Desire were created by the federal government beginning in the 1930s. Although they alleviated the housing shortage created by the depression economy, these complexes were segregated by design, ushering in a new era of systematic racial segregation in the United States. [1]

Federal policies of developing segregated housing while simultaneously refusing to ensure home mortgages in racially mixed areas, a policy known as redlining, made rentals in public housing like Desire Projects one of few options for African-American households until the Fair Housing Act of 1968. [2] By 1975, Press Park and Gordon Plaza Apartments for the Elderly expanded these public housing options. Gordon Plaza was designed as a residential development for low-income homebuyers in areas directly adjacent to Desire Housing Project, which, because of the segregated history of public housing, was primarily African-American.

Construction of single-family homes, apartments in Press Park, and the Senior Center in Gordon Plaza began in 1978. On August 26, 1979, an advertisement listed in the Times Picayune alerted the public that “applications are now being accepted for 128 units of Gordon Plaza Elderly and Handicapped Complex… All apartments will be under the Section 8 Subsidy Programs.” Advertisements for Gordon Plaza properties clearly targeted low-income families and senior citizens. By 1981, residents begin to move into the Gordon Plaza neighborhood.

Soon after the development opened, city officials began to receive complaints concerning deficiencies at Gordon Plaza and Press Park. In a letter to the mayor's office and Community Improvement Agency dated June 26, 1980, Philip C. Ciaccio, Councilman of District E, stated:

"I attended a ceremony at the Gordon Plaza Apartments for the Elderly at the end of May and observed that the meeting room was extremely warm because several of the air-conditioning units were inoperative...I took the time to discuss the existence of various deficiencies in the building...I am particularly disturbed by the apparent run-around they are getting, particular the brand new air-conditioning units that are inoperable." [3] Enclosed with this letter was a list of complaints about the development, five pages long.

In the videos below, longtime Gordon Plaza resident Shannon Rainey shares her experiences purchasing a home in Gordon Plaza.

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Throughout the 1950s, the local community suffered from horrible stenches, pest infestations, and smoke emanating from Agriculture Street Landfill (ASL). Spontaneous combustion commonly occurred at the site when incompatible wastes came in contact underground, garnering ASL the nickname “Dante’s Inferno.” [1] In October of 1950, police guided motorists through the streets surrounding ASL at 10 miles per hour due to low visibility caused by smoke emanating from the landfill. [2] In October of 1956, eight public schools stopped serving hot lunches due to a severe fly infestation at the dump. [3]Residents near ASL began to make public complaints and eventually organized legal and political action against the landfill. One resident quoted in a local newspaper article said “the cost in depreciation of land in the close proximity of this landfill has been tremendous.” [4] In 1951, neighborhood residents made a failed attempt to sue the City for its negligent operation of the landfill. [5] In 1955, residents of the Eighth and Ninth Wards picketed the landfill. Residents quoted in local media coverage of the protest condemned ASL's "menacing operations" and "the deplorable conditions it inflicted upon the neighborhood." [6] City officials responded to these protests with a plan to construct a supposedly odorless and smokeless incinerator on Florida Avenue just ten blocks from ASL. [7] Community members, outraged that the incinerator would remain so close to their homes, circulated a petition to bar its construction. [8]  In 1957, the City closed the landfill because it could not accommodate any more trash. City officials celebrated the closure of ASL and called for the redevelopment of the blighted site. Councilman Glenn P. Clasen asserted that the land would be “restored and developed to provide additional housing within a very few years,” aiding in the “progress and growth [of] the rest of our city.” [9] While overlooking mounds of rubbish during a landfill inspection, Councilman Victor H. Shiro proclaimed: “I’d like to see the day when this is a beautiful subdivision.” [10] In September of 1965, following the destruction wrought by Hurricane Betsy, the City temporarily reopened ASL to accommodate excess trash produced by the storm. [11] The City did not place any restrictions on these deposits and every day trucks delivered 300 loads of hurricane debris and trash to ASL. Much of this refuse contained high levels of toxic lead and arsenic. [12] Though sanitation officials stated that “emergency burning of garbage in long-unused landfill locations [would] cease as soon as practicable,” ASL did not close again until the summer of 1966. [13]

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In 1909, Agriculture Street Landfill (ASL) opened to accommodate trash produced by half of New Orleans residents. ASL occupied 95 acres of previously undeveloped swampland surrounded by Abundance Street, Industry Street, and the Northeastern Railroad Company tracks. The new landfill received trash via train cars. Employees either burned the deposits in open fires or buried them underground. [1, 2] By 1912, employees began freely using toxic disinfectants to treat infestations and stenches permeating from the landfill. [3] In 1914, landfill operators oversaw the erection of an incinerator. [4] Through the 1930s, the amount of waste produced in New Orleans dramatically increased. Trash deposits overloaded the ASL incinerator and employees once again burned excess garbage in the open air. In 1939, the Works Progress Administration refurbished the incinerator, tripling its daily capacity. [5, 6]  

City officials did not enforce sanitary regulations at ASL. In 1957, City Sanitation Director George M. Rittiner said it was "only necessary to use six- to 10- inch cover" when remediating the landfill’s trash laden soil, even though he acknowledged the regulations recommended two feet of cover. [7] As garbage mounted at ASL, residents of the surrounding neighborhood expressed growing dissatisfaction with the landfill’s unsanitary conditions.

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Born June 29, 1910 in Terrebonne Parish, Avery Caesar Alexander grew up in a poor family. He entered the workforce as a boy, taking odd jobs until he earned work as a longshoreman. His family relocated to New Orleans and because he was forced to work as a child he was unable to successfully earn his high school diploma until he was 29, which he did by attending night school. He went on to graduate from Union Baptist Theological Seminary and became associate pastor at the Historic Second Baptist Church on Marengo Street.

As a longshoreman, he had became active in the longshoremen’s union and eventually in the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In the NAACP, he developed his organizational skills and led efforts for voter registrations, boycotts, marches and demonstrations.

1963 was an extremely difficult year in the Civil Rights movement on both the national and local levels. The interracial and inter-denominational Citizens’ Committee of Greater New Orleans, led a march against racial discrimination on September 30, 1963 to the steps of New Orleans City Hall. Following the march an 18-point petition was presented to Mayor Victor H. Schiro, the City Council, various business & civic leaders and to all of the local news media outlets. The protesters waited weeks for an official response from City Hall. But they were ignored.

On October 31, 1963, Rev. Alexander launched a direct action campaign aimed directly at City Hall. African American protesters held sit-ins in the mayor’s reception area, the City Council chambers and the John Lynne Cafeteria located in the basement of city hall. They were asked to leave, and told that if they did not, they would be removed by force.

Rev. Alexander, Sandra Nixon and two other young ladies held their sit-in at the cafeteria by asking to be served. When the employees refused to serve them, they refused to leave, and the young ladies were carried out of the cafeteria on their chairs which were removed while they remained seated in them. Rev. Alexander, however, was dragged by his feet out of the building. He was abused and beaten as his head hit the marble steps and floors, and was forced into a police wagon.

28 African American protesters were arrested that day. Eight African American employees who worked at the cafeteria walked off their jobs and the images of Rev. Alexander dragged out of City Hall by his feet made local, state & national news.

The images of Rev. Alexander ignited a wave of protest, demonstrations and sit ins around the city. The 1963 City Hall Cafeteria Sit in was one of the catalysts that led to the final and complete desegregation of the city of New Orleans.

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Most famous for being the group that organized member Homer Plessy's violation of railroad segregation laws on a train in 1892, the Comité des Citoyens was a group founded by Rodolphe Desdunes and Louis Martinet, with aid and advice from Aristide Mary. Each of these men was engaged in the intellectual work and activism required to resist dangerous forces afoot in the late nineteenth century, forces that would (further) diminish the full humanity of black citizens in the post-Reconstruction period.

The Comité des Citoyens was a voice in support of an empowered form of Black identity that its members felt was slipping away as Americanization gained a firmer grasp on postbellum New Orleans. As current New Orleans activists battle to remove monuments that empower the legacy of enslavement, and that memorialize direct action by Redeemers against the Reconstruction government in Louisiana, perhaps we can memorialize instead the collective effort of people who resisted the reductive thinking that is at the heart of American white supremacy.

Members of the Comité des Citoyens were militant, recalcitrant, and defiant. In their newspaper, the Crusader, Desdunes speaks to these values of the Comité as he addresses these words to Judge Ferguson and his allies in 1893: “No theory of white supremacy, no method of lynching, no class legislation, no undue disqualification of citizenship, no system of enforced ignorance, no privileged classes at the expense of others can be tolerated, and, much less, openly encouraged by any citizen who loves justice, law, and right."

In his 1911 book presenting prominent Creole residents of New Orleans, Desdunes makes clear the radicalism of his people and his history—of our people and our history—when he says: “It is more noble and dignified to fight, no matter what, than to show a passive attitude of resignation. Absolute submission augments the oppressor’s power and creates doubt about the feelings of the oppressed." Our monuments should celebrate the Creole radicalism that is a fundamental part of our history.

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