The residents of New Orleans have a history of creating unusual pronunciations of words. Local street names provide common examples of New Orleanians’ inventive pronunciations, such as Burgundy Street (pronounced bur-GUHN-dee, not BUR-guhn-dee) and…

McDonoghville Cemetery is a burial site of enslaved and formerly enslaved people. This cemetery was once a part of enslaver John McDonogh’s plantation. According to a 1915 interview with Jacob Dinckel, then sexton of the McDonoghville Cemetery, this…

“Many of the places and locations known to tourists and travelers worldwide, such as the Port of New Orleans, the French Market, and Congo Square, served as thoroughfares for trade and culture long before the arrival of whites.” -Bulbancha is Still…

Big Oak and Little Oak Island are some of the most important archaeological sites in Orleans Parish. Excavations at the sites helped to define the chronology of Indigenous occupation of Louisiana, and they are some of the most thoroughly…

The people of the Tchefuncte culture were one of the first Indigenous groups to make pottery in significant quantities. Tchefuncte pottery has sometimes been described as poorly made: it is low-fired, with clay that is little-prepared in advance,…

Big Oak Island and Little Oak Island are camps and habitation sites associated with the people of the Tchefuncte culture of the Lower Mississippi Valley, dating from as early as 800 BCE to as late as AD 200. The sites are located in the marshes of…

Dorothy Mae Taylor, born on August 10, 1928, is known as “The First Lady of 1300 Perdido Street” due to her years of service in New Orleans City Hall, located at 1300 Perdido Street, from 1986 to 1994. (1) In 1971, Taylor became the first woman of…

Growing up in New Orleans during the 1930s and 1940s, Sybil Haydel-Morial wondered why she could not go to certain places like other people. Reflecting on her childhood in her memoir, Witness to Change, Haydel-Morial stated “why I wondered, should…

Rosa Freeman Keller used her influence to mold the world around her and change the unfair practices she saw daily due to white supremacy and segregation. Keller, born in 1911, was the daughter of a successful Louisiana Coca-Cola tycoon, A.B.…

As a teen, Doratha “Dodie” Smith-Simmons entered the Civil Rights Movement in New Orleans, following in the footsteps of her older sister, Dorothy Smith Venison. Simmons’ activism began as a means to gain access to The Golden Pheasant Social Club.…

On the morning of November 14, 1960, Ruby Bridges, a six-year-old Black New Orleanian, took her first steps through the front door of William T. Frantz Elementary School (now Akili Academy). A mob of white people greeted Bridges with jeers and…

In the 1954 Supreme Court Case Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment prohibiting states from denying equal protection of the laws to any…

Marie Galatas Ortiz, born in New Orleans in 1939, participated in many demonstrations, marches, boycotts, and founded Grass Roots Organization for Women (GROW), an organization once housed at 1610 Basin Street. (1) Ortiz became increasingly involved…

In 1819, President James Monroe commissioned Fort Pike’s construction alongside six other forts on the Louisiana coast. [2] Originally known as Fort Petites Coquilles, Monroe commissioned the fort with the intention of protecting the city of New…

The excavations at the Cabildo represented a rare opportunity to recover archaeological evidence of Colonial era governance, particularly in the realm of punishment. Modern conceptions of the prison as a place of confinement and correction were…

Today, the Cabildo is a facility of the Louisiana State Museum, but the courtyard of the Cabildo was the location of a city prison complex for nearly two hundred years, across French, Spanish, and American rule. Constructed in 1730, the prison and…

Very few well-preserved archaeological sites dating from the French Colonial era have been excavated in New Orleans. As most of these are located in areas that have been developed continuously since the early eighteenth century, many are disturbed…

During the University of New Orleans field schools conducted at 801 Royal Street, students uncovered numerous building features dating to different eras of development at the site, from the wall of a French post-in-ground structure from the…

On October 22nd, 2014, an over-200-year-old building at 810 Royal Street collapsed, presumably a victim of unrepaired termite and moisture damage. The collapse sparked conversations in New Orleans about the importance of historic preservation. The…

In 1997, Dr. Shannon Dawdy directed the second series of excavations at Madame John’s Legacy under the auspices of the Greater New Orleans Archaeological Program, a state program then based at the University of New Orleans. These investigations…