Stories tagged "Race and Ethnicity": 132
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The Story of Fanny: Escaping Bondage in New Orleans
There were times when enslaved people in New Orleans could no longer bear the intense burden that came with the constant suffering of bondage. Escape became the last hope for some of these slaves…
St. Louis Hotel & Exchange: Auctioning Off Lives
Numerous 19th-century travelers who frequented New Orleans for business and pleasure described the slave auction block in St. Louis Hotel. Sensationalism aside, visitors recorded their surprise at the…
Dryades Street Library and YMCA
Today home to the Dryades YMCA, this beautiful building, erected in 1915, was the first New Orleans Public Library created to serve black New Orleanians and had the capacity to hold 10,000 books.
White Supremacist Presence During Integration of UNO
Looking north from the library commons towards Lake Pontchartrain, you can spy the old brick smokestack near the edge of the campus. The smokestack is the only original structure remaining from the…
Louise Williams Arnolie Deck at the University Center
Enter the University Center at the top of the horseshoe driveway. To your left is the university cafeteria, renamed in 2014 for Louise Williams Arnolie, one of the original 55 African-American…
UNO Administrators and Integration
Head back toward the bus stop, passing the amphitheater on your right and the administration building on your left. The administration building is a rather nondescript edifice, reflective of the role…
Recollections from 'The 55' on Segregation and Harassment at UNO
Facing the bus, turn right and walk around the back of the bus stop to explore the campus, as you learn more about the rough road to integration. The giant statue of King Lear in front of the…
Hostility Towards Black Students During the First Day of Classes at UNO
Just after Robert E. Lee Boulevard, the bus will turn left into the Lakefront Campus of the University of New Orleans (the university was renamed in 1974), where the battle for acceptance began one…
Passing Gentilly Boulevard on the Bus to UNO in 1958
Gentilly Boulevard crosses the Elysian Fields bus route at the next traffic light after passing under Interstate-610. When the bus passed this stop on that Monday morning in 1958, it suddenly became a…
Congo Square: Mythology and Music
For many Congo Square is the site that inspires the most fantastical images of enslaved life in New Orleans. From the 1840s to the 1880s, intellectuals and artists like George Washington Cable, Louis…
Integrating Ben Franklin High School
In the fall of 1963, Ben Franklin High School became the first New Orleans public high school to integrate. Fourteen African American students, all of whom met Franklin's stringent admissions…
Segregation in Palmer Park
Though designated for public use, Palmer Park was segregated until the 1970s. The park’s namesake, Benjamin Palmer, was a staunch defender of slavery and leading segregationist, set a tone of…
Buffalo Soldiers at Greenville Encampment
The Greenville encampment is a notable site for African-American military history. In 1866, Major General Phillip Sheridan, commander of the Department of the Gulf, organized a regiment of African…
Camp Parapet: The Union
After the Confederate retreat and Admiral Farragut's capture of New Orleans and the surrounding area by May 1, 1862, federal forces continued to use the fortifications and even improved them…
Palmer Park: The Name
Hamilton Square was renamed Palmer Park as a “testimony to the honor of the late B. M. Palmer” through a city ordinance on July 1902. Benjamin Morgan Palmer was pastor of New Orleans First…
Valena Cecelia MacArthur Jones: New Orleans Educator 1872-1917
Valena Cecelia MacArthur Jones is a notable Louisiana educator. Born in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi in 1872, MacArthur Jones moved to New Orleans to attend Straight College is 1892. [1] Straight…
St. Augustine Catholic Church
Founded in 1841 by free people of color, St. Augustine is the oldest African-American parish in the United States. Civil Rights activists Homer Plessy and A.P. Tureaud were parishioners of St.…
Integrating UNO: Legal and Political Actions
Ironically, for Joseph Narcisse (one of the 55 black students to first integrate LSUNO in1958) becoming part of history started right after his graduation from St. Augustine High School, when he…
Taking the Elysian Fields Bus to UNO in 1958
Begin this tour by climbing aboard the 55 Elysian Fields bus, just as many black students did on their first day of classes in September 1958. The bus runs from Canal Street, through the French…
Joseph Guillaume's Audacious Ride
On May 4, 1867, Guillaume acted. What happened next is open to some debate. According to the New Orleans Times, at 11:30 a.m. Guillaume hailed a “Whites Only” car number 148 on Love Street, now known…
Previous Protests of Streetcar Segregation
No doubt Guillaume had heard of Dr. R. I. Cromwell, who had forcibly been thrown from a non-star car by five or six men who kicked him and tore his clothes. Cromwell noted the inequity of the star…
The Star Car
Joseph Guillaume had had enough. The Civil War was over, Reconstruction was in full swing, yet the practice of segregation on the streetcars of New Orleans continued. Every third streetcar—although it…
WWII Conductorettes and Motorettes
During the Second World War, a labor shortage developed as men began to serve in the armed forces. Women were increasingly encouraged to take over responsibilities on the home front. Women took jobs…
1892 General Strike
Shortly before the arrest of Homer Plessy in June 1892, a successful streetcar strike initiated a wave of union organizing that culminated in what has been called the first biracial general strike in…