Featured Stories: 135
Stories
Bridge City Gumbo Festival
For over fifty years, the Bridge City Gumbo Festival has served up a family-oriented and fun-filled weekend at the base of the Huey P. Long Bridge across from New Orleans on the Westbank of the Mississippi River. It began in 1967 as a small, local…
The Lower Ninth Ward: Community and Placemaking
A hundred years ago, the area around the 2400 block of Lamanche Street was occupied by the Temple of the Innocent Blood, a spiritism church that was created and run by Mother Catherine Seals. From 1922 until her death in 1930, Mother Catherine…
The Gex Pottery Site at the Lafitte Housing Project
In 2007, a team of archaeologists excavated the remains of a property enumerated “253 Carondelet Walk,” an address that had at one point operated as a nineteenth-century kiln manufactory along the walkway of the historical “Carondelet Canal.”…
Charity Hospital Cemetery No. 2: Archaeological Investigations from 2000s
In the early 2000s, New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA) planned a route change to the streetcar line on Canal Street so that its terminus would extend to Canal Boulevard. By 2004, RTA hired Earth Search, Inc. (ESI), a local cultural…
Aristide Mary
Aristide Mary’s politics embodied Creole activism in New Orleans. A native of the city, Mary’s mixed race ancestry shaped his experiences and political ideas. Educated in Paris, Mary became a lawyer but his family’s inheritance helped propel him…
Caesar Carpentier Antoine
Caesar Carpentier Antoine was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on September 10, 1836, to a prominent Creole family. His family were part of an established network of Creoles of color in Louisiana that fought for public rights and equality. His…
Rodolphe and Daniel Desdunes
Born in New Orleans in 1849, Rodolphe Desdunes actively participated in the city’s Creole social and political scene, eventually co-founding the Comité des Citoyens (Citizens’ Committee) in 1891. As the son of Pierre Feremie Desdunes, of Haitian…
Madame Josephine Decuir
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…
Louis A. Martinet and Albion Tourgée
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.…
Streets on the Table Episode 4: Georges, Jasper, and Celestin
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…
Streets on the Table Episode 3: Margaret Elizabeth
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…
Streets on the Table Episode 1: Allen Toussaint
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…
Streets on the Table: Introduction
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…
The Forty Artisans of the Boré Plantation
In October of 1796, General Victor Collot, a spy for the French colonial government, arrived in New Orleans after a military expedition down the Mississippi River creating maps of Spanish land holdings and military preparedness. [2] During his time…
Stories of the Enslaved Within Today’s Audubon Park
Basile, Achilles, Congo and many other enslaved people labored on Étienne de Boré’s plantation within today’s Audubon Park. Alongside planting and harvesting sugar cane, enslaved labor on the Boré Plantation included fishing, masonry, woodworking,…
Archaeology of The Melpomene Neighborhood During Reconstruction
During 2013 investigations in City Square 350, archaeologists excavated a large and well-constructed brick-lined privy shaft, producing a rich assemblage of glass containers and ceramic vessels, along with an abundance of personal items, including…
The Melpomene Neighborhood Before 1880
In the Colonial Era, the area that eventually became the Melpomene neighborhood and later utilized for the Guste Homes was located in a low-lying backswamp zone at the rear of the Livaudais plantation tract, straddling land that became the Faubourgs…
Archaeology of the Melpomene Neighborhood at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: Excavation of a Privy at 1304 Howard/LaSalle
In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, many of the people who lived in the Melpomene neighborhood of Central City rented their residences with some addresses seeing rapid turnover. Even though people filled features like privy shafts…
The Melpomene Neighborhood, 1880-1900
By the early 1900s, the Melpomene neighborhood in Central City was a densely populated urban neighborhood, where many residents worked in occupations related to shipping, particularly in the nearby rail yards. Broadly speaking, the area was home…
The Salvaggio Household: Early 20th Century Archaeology of the Melpomene Neighborhood
In 2013, archaeological firms conducted test excavations in City Square 383 in the Melpomene neighborhood, the city block once bounded by Erato, Freret, Thalia, and South Robertson (or Locust) Streets. Testing focused on lots along the former corner…