Originally written for www.blackatlas.com. View original article here.
New Orleans conjures up images of gumbo, jazz and, of course, Mardi Gras and the ever popular Essence Music Fest. But there’s much more to the city than good food, good music and good times: it’s full of culture and is rich in African-American history. The next time you’re in the Big Easy to party, take a moment and visit a few of the city’s historical sites that mark our important contributions to society.
Treme is one of New Orleans’ oldest neighborhoods – not too far from the French Quarter – and, in the 19th century, was home to the city’s free people of color. There sits Congo Square, located on the south end of Louis Armstrong Park. The Square was a place where both slaves and free blacks came together to socialize, dance and play music.
St. Augustine’s Church, also in the Treme neighborhood, was founded by the city’s free people of color in the early 1840s. Free blacks began to purchase pews in advance of the church’s 1842 dedication. Whites organized and attempted to out buy black worshippers. When they learned about this, black church members pooled their resources and ultimately purchased three pews for every one purchased by whites. They also bought the church’s outer aisle pews and donated them to slaves, creating the nation’s first Catholic Church where slaves had an exclusive area for worship. The church built a memorial, The Tomb of the Unknown Slave, in 2004 to honor those slaves buried beneath the grounds of the neighborhood.
The Backstreet Cultural Museum is located in a cottage in the Treme neighborhood. It houses New Orleans’ largest collection of Mardi Gras Indian costumes. These gorgeous, hand sewn and beaded costumes are true works of art…and part of a unique history. The Mardi Gras Indians got their start over a century ago, when poor blacks wanted to develop a way to participate in Carnival. They took on tribal names and costumes as way to pay tribute to Native Americans who helped runaway slaves. Visitors can also find information on Traditional Jazz Funerals, unique to New Orleans and rooted in African culture.
Amistad Research Center. The Center is located in Tulane University’s Tilton Hall and is home to over 800 works of African and African American art. In addition, the Center houses more than 200,000 photographs dating from 1859, as well as manuscripts from prominent Harlem Renaissance writers and poets. Public tours are free but a reservation is required.
St. Louis Cemeteries # 1 and # 2. A trip to a cemetery may strike you as morbid but, if you’re up to it, you can find both history and beauty in these two famous burial grounds. Located near the French Quarter, the cemetery’s graves are above ground vaults, something you don’t often see in the U.S. Homer Plessy, the plaintiff in the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court case that upheld legal segregation, is buried in Cemetery #1, as is “Dutch” Morial, New Orleans’ first black mayor and father of Marc Morial, also a former mayor of New Orleans and current President of the National Urban League. Captain Andre Cailloux, one of the first black men to become a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army, is buried in Cemetery #2. Cailloux, who was born a slave, was a member of the first black regiment to fight a major battle in the Civil War and was one of the first blacks to die while fighting for the Union.