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Sit-Ins and Marches at City Hall
During the 1960s, Jim Crow laws confined Black New Orleanians to second class citizenship: white owned businesses, restaurants, hotels, and other establishments denied accommodations for Black…
New Zion Baptist Church
On February 14, 1957, New Orleans' New Zion Baptist Church hosted a meeting of local pastors. The Reverend Martin Luther, Jr. was in attendance, and by the end of the day, the Southern Leadership…
A. L. Davis Park
Civil Rights activists used African American purchasing power to press equality.
Maroons in Antebellum New Orleans: Independence at Any Cost
The term ‘Maroon’ refers to enslaved people who ran away from slave owners and remained in the south to join or establish independent, hidden settlements. Maroons utilized the area’s topography to…
The Levee: Gateway to Uncertainty
During the mid-1800’s ships tightly packed the port of New Orleans, according to historian Walter Johnson, “one could walk deck to deck from one end of the city to the other.” All along the docks,…
Henry Bibb and The Slave Pens of New Orleans
During the major slave-trading season, September through May, yards surrounded by high brick walls called slave pens bustled with activity in the areas surrounding the French Quarter. Slave traders…
The Beaurepaire Family: Freedom to Slavery and Back Again
The house today marked 727-729 Burgundy Street, relatively unchanged since the early 1800s, has a history that reflects the tricky navigation of enslavement and freedom by a family called the…
Civil Rights Activists Protest Woolworth’s Department Store
On September 9, 1960, seven local university students staged a sit-in at Woolworth’s department store located at 1031 Canal Street to protest the store’s refusal to serve Black people at the lunch…
McCrory's Five-and-Dime
The former McCrory's lunch counter at 1005 Canal Street was a site for protest during the New Orleans civil rights movement.
Knights of Peter Claver
The NAACP Youth Council organized its 2-year stand-off with Canal Street businesses at The Knights of Peter Claver Headquarters during the Civil Rights Movement in New Orleans.
Dooky Chase's Restaurant
Dooky Chase's Restaurant provided a space for activists to come together over what New Orleanians know best: food.
McDonogh 19: Desegregation of the New Orleans School System
On November 14, 1960, three African American girls Leona Tate, Tessie Prevost, and Gail Etienne walked into McDonogh 19 Elementary School to attend their first-grade classes, integrating the…
Exchange Alley at Canal Street
This block on Canal street was the hangout spot for non-union white jazz musicians and the site where the Original Dixieland Jazz Band was discovered in 1915.
Dorothée Lassize's Family Business
Harriet Martineau, Saxe Weimar, and numerous other antebellum writers described New Orleans free women of color as promiscuous, seductive characters who sought partnerships with wealthy white men so…
The Cazelars: Wealth Preservation in a Racially Mixed Family
Jean Pierre Cazelar, a white man of French descent, was the wealthy patriarch of a prominent multi-racial family in 19th-century New Orleans. Though Cazelar intended his children to inherit his entire…
Louis Armstrong Park
Armstrong Park honors the local jazz legend and features public art works and historic sites related to the earliest development of jazz in New Orleans..
Danny Barker’s Birthplace
Musician, educator, author and storyteller Danny Barker was born in 1909 in the rear building at 1027 Chartres Street. At the time of Barker's birth, the lower French Quarter community was home to a…
The Dolliole Family: Builders, Architects, Patriots, and Community Leaders
A prominent family of free people of color, the Dollioles made a name for themselves as prolific builders, civic leaders, and savvy businesspeople integral to the development of New Orleans. Through…
The Tio Family's Resilience
The Tio family is best known as a prominent contributor to early jazz of the 20th century, notably the addition of a “Mexican Tinge” to the genre. However, the Tios were, in fact, native New…
Romance or Power Imbalance? The Hazeur Family
A wealthy man, Louis Hazeur De Lorme (ca. 1760-1828) was a highly respected man in his community. He shared a large indigo plantation with his brothers-in-law, Francois and Louis Xavier three and half…
The Lyric Theatre
New Orleans' largest African American vaudeville theater in the 1920s hosted many jazz, blues and vaudeville stars, and featured the John Robichaux Orchestra.
The Tango Belt
This entertainment district in the Upper French Quarter was a center of music and theater performance in the 1920s for both black and white patrons.
Preservation Hall
Preservation Hall - a concert hall in the French Quarter that began as a jazz performance space supported by artists, musicians, and civil rights activists in 1962.
Storyville District
A legalized prostitution district associated with the early development of New Orleans-style jazz existed from 1897-1917. Romanticized by early historians as the birth-place of jazz, this red-light…