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 ancestry, and his Cuban mother Henriette, Desdunes lived as a free person of color. Their family made a living growing tobacco and making cigars. Desdunes turned to education and studied law at Straight University, a historically Black college, and taught at The Institut Catholique, educating African American orphans. Between 1879 and 1912, he intermittently worked at the United States Customs House at 423 Canal Street as a messenger and clerk. In addition, Desdunes served as a member of the state militia and fought at the three-day Battle of Liberty Place against the White League, made of five thousand paramilitary ex-Confederate soldiers from the Democratic Party. The White League overpowered the state militia and local police force and overran the State Capital in New Orleans to protest the 1872 governor’s election results. This was just ​​one of the many incidents of racial violence that characterized the Reconstruction era in Louisiana.Like many Black Americans of the time, Desdunes’s radical politics found a home in the Republican Party. Between jobs at the Customs House, Desdunes penned the political ideas of Black Creoles like himself. He wrote for two local Black newspapers, The Louisianian and The Crusader, and composed many articles meditating on ideas about public rights and equality, and called for civil rights for Black Americans and Black Creoles. At The Crusader, Desdunes, working closely with other Creoles of color such as Louis Martinet and Aristide Mary, and helped form the Comité that opposed racial separation and devised a legal strategy to challenge the Separate Car Act of 1890, which legally segregated passenger rail cars in Louisiana. In The Crusader, Desdunes explained the humiliating impact of the SCA: “Among the many schemes devised by Southern statement to divide the races, none is so audacious and insulting as the one which provides separate cars for black and white people on the railways running through the State. It is like a slap in the face of every member of the black race, whether he has the full measure or only one-eight of that blood,” he wrote in 1891.  The Comité concocted a plan with Rodolphe Desdunes’s eldest son Daniel to contest the law. In February of 1892, Daniel boarded a white rail car at the Pontchartrain Railroad Depot at the corner of Elysian Fields and Decatur Street, headed for Mobile, Alabama. Desdunes’s civil disobedience caused an immediate stir, and the train was stopped at the Louisville-Nashville line split just north of Claiborne Avenue on Elysian Fields, where Lowe’s Home Improvement is currently located. Daniel was removed from the train and arrested, which allowed the Comité to challenge the Separate Car Act (SCA) of 1890 in court. Local Judge John Ferguson acquitted Daniel Desdunes, ruling that the Separate Car Act could not be enforced since the train he boarded traveled into other states. The SCA only had jurisdiction over travel within Louisiana. Learning from this mistake, the train Homer Plessy boarded a few months later traveled within the state of Louisiana, thus setting the stage to challenge the Separate Car Act. Plessy v. Ferguson put the radical politics of Desdunes and his colleagues on the Comité into action, launching a national fight for civil rights in the 1890s.

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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 steamer Governor Allen explicitly because she was a woman of color, and the women’s cabin was reserved white women only. She was also not allowed to take her meal at a table until all white passengers finished first. Madame Decuir sued Captain Benson for racial discrimination, joining a legacy of women of color who used litigation in the courts to gain rights denied to them during the Reconstruction era. Madame Decuir’s lawsuit against Captain Benson was the first legal case to challenge segregation after the Civil War. Madame Decuir spent the entirety of the American Civil War in France, living in a social environment where she was treated as equal to white women. She came from a family of Black Creoles who spoke French, enslaved others, and owned plantations. Her brother, Antoine Dubuclet, had political influence and served as the Louisiana State Treasurer after the Civil War. In 1866, when she returned home to Louisiana, Decuir boarded the main cabin of the Lafourche, but Captain Barranco denied her access, explaining that segregation was the custom on all steamships. Her prior experiences in France, pride in her family’s status, and Creole identity inspired her to affirm her right to equality. When Madame Decuir boarded the Governor Allen with her lawyers seven years later, she understood the power of them bearing witness to this practice of segregation that directly violated her rights guaranteed under the Louisiana State Constitution of 1868.  Decuir’s legal case began in the New Orleans courts and progressed to the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) in 1877, at the end of Reconstruction. Her lawyers argued that Article 13 of Louisiana’s 1868 State Constitution as well as an 1869 statute afforded her equal access to all modes of transportation regardless of race. Madame Decuir never attended court, but her testimony demonstrated a level of intent equal to other women of color who did. Thirty-one women of color, like Madame Decuir, challenged segregation on common carriers from 1855-1914. Decuir relied on her gender and social class to demonstrate that she was a well-respected woman and therefore deserved access to the women’s cabin. At the local courts, other steamship captains testified as witnesses on behalf of Captain Benson to affirm the practice of segregation. In response, Decuir’s case called upon Creole men of color to describe the conditions of the segregated ships. After these testimonies, the judge awarded Decuir $1,000 in damages at which point Captain Benson appealed to the State Supreme Court which upheld the local decision. As a result, Captain Benson’s lawyers requested that SCOTUS add this case to the docket. By the time the case reached SCOTUS, the dynamics had changed. First, Captain Benson died and his widow, Eliza Jane Hall, became the administrator. As a white woman, she represented the institution of segregation that justified racial separation for the protection of white women. The court was more concerned with Decuir’s race than her gender. Additionally, R.H. Marr, a staunch white supremacist who defended the Colfax Massacre and instigated the Battle of Liberty Place, joined as co-counsel for the defense. In Hall v. Decuir (1877), the Supreme Court overturned the Louisiana Supreme Court’s ruling. Even though Decuir’s stint on the Governor Allen remained within the state of Louisiana, the court made a decision on intrastate affairs--because the boat traveled to other states after Decuir disembarked--fell under the jurisdiction of Congress. Therefore, Louisiana’s civil rights laws protecting Black citizens from racial segregation were nullified by federal powers. This ruling demonstrates how SCOTUS intentionally dismantled Black citizenship rights and rolled back federal protections. Hall v. Decuir set the stage for the doctrine of separate but equal by nullifying civil rights laws against segregation. As a Creole woman of color, Decuir’s protest against racially discriminatory practices foreshadowed the arguments of the Comité des Citoyens. Years before the Comité, she fought for public rights to guarantee her dignity and status. Justice Harlan also cited the Hall v. Decuir ruling in his lone dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson. Hall v. Decuir demonstrates how Black women like Decuir were a part of the legacy of defying and challenging the practice of segregation and their involvement in racial justice movements.

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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. Joining other Black men elected to political office during the Reconstruction era, Martinet represented his hometown of St. Martinville in the state legislature at the age of twenty-three. He later earned his law degree from Straight University Law School in 1876 as its first Black graduate, setting a precedent for people of color to follow. 

In 1889, Martinet founded The Crusader newspaper in New Orleans to report on racial violence and civil rights issues in Louisiana. Shortly after the 1890 Separate Car Act (SCA) was introduced in the state legislature, he wrote in protest of the law and vowed a legal challenge. The next year, Martinet, joined by Rodolphe Desdunes and other Creole leaders such as Aristide Mary and C. C. Antoine, and formed the Comité des Citoyens (Citizen’s Committee) to mount the legal challenge to the SCA. The Crusader became the megaphone for the Comité’s politics and ideas about public rights. 

Albion Tourgée, a white northerner, learned about the SCA and the work of the Comité by reading Black newspapers including The Crusader. Tourgée had dedicated his life to civil rights as a lawyer, legislator, and writer, specifically using his writing to advocate for Black rights. In his column, A Bystander’s Notes, he criticized the SCA as a violation of the 14th amendment and praised Martinet and the Comité for their protests. Martinet offered Tourgée the entire Comité’s fund of $1,412.70 to take the case to the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS), but Tourgée refused to take the funds and offered his legal services pro bono. 

In their correspondence, Tourgée and Martinet devised a legal strategy. Originally, Tourgée proposed that a woman of color who could pass as white board a train car reserved for white travelers. He deliberately wanted a white-passing person to highlight the arbitrary nature of racial classifications because the SCA allowed train conductors to determine a person’s race to enforce the law. Martinet, however, worried that the local context of racial fluidity in New Orleans might foil the plan. “People of tolerably fair complexion, even if unmistakably colored, enjoy here a large degree of immunity from the accursed prejudice,” Martinet wrote Tourgée. Nevertheless, he agreed to Tourgée’s plan and enacted a first attempt that failed after Judge John Ferguson ruled the SCA did not apply to interstate travel. For the second attempt, he selected Homer Plessy, a shoemaker of a fraction of African descent, to board a train traveling within Louisiana. Martinet also convinced the railroad company to cooperate with the plan and hired a private investigator to ensure Plessy’s safe arrest within the racial tensions and violence in Louisiana. 

The strategy succeeded, and Plessy was arrested on June 7, 1892 for violating the SCA. Judge Ferguson upheld his conviction in the New Orleans court, and the Comité’s lawyers appealed the case through the Louisiana Supreme Court, housed in the Cabildo where you are standing, until it reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896. A miscommunication caused Martinet to miss the oral arguments in Washington D.C., but his influence was evident in Tourgée’s radical argument. He asserted that the 14th Amendment extended citizenship, guaranteed due process and equal protection under the law, and nullified states’ legal authority to define citizenship. His arguments also emphasized that racial categories are arbitrary and therefore cannot be a sound reason for legal discrimination. Finally, Tourgée asked the justices how they would feel as Black people subject to the SCA: “What humiliation, what rage would then fill the judicial mind!” Through these comments, Tourgée reflected the ideas of dignity central to public rights and citizenship that Martinet and Desnudes held and expressed in The Crusader. 

In a 7-1 decision, the Supreme Court upheld precedents established during the last three decades that narrowed the scope of federal protections of the rights of Black citizens. It ruled that citizenship and racial segregation fell under the authority of the state, ultimately deciding that segregation was legal as long as the accommodations were equal, codifying the doctrine of “separate but equal” that ushered in an era of Jim Crow rule. After this decision, the Comité dissolved and Martinet closed The Crusader offices for lack of funding that same year, turning to a career in medicine. 

The blow to civil rights in Plessy v. Ferguson did not end racial activism or Martinet’s influence, however. The sole dissent by Justice John Marshall Harlan asserted that the U.S. Constitution was “color-blind,” providing activists with judicial backing to work toward federal civil rights protections. Today, a group of African American attorneys make up the Greater New Orleans Louis A. Martinet Legal Society, devoted to honoring Martinet’s legacy through support for Black lawyers, pro bono work, and community service. Martinet understood the long-term impacts of his efforts and that it was up to those who followed him to continue fighting for civil rights. Writing to Tourgée in 1893, he said, “you may not live to see the fruit of your labors and sacrifice, or to receive the gratitude of those benefitted by them. It will be reserved to future generations to properly and justly estimate them.” 

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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 predominantly to working class immigrants of European descent in the period between Reconstruction and the end of the nineteenth century, with the neighborhood gradually becoming a predominantly Black neighborhood in the first decades of the twentieth century. The demographic changes in the neighborhood can be tracked in documentary records like the census and city directories, which provide information at the address level about residents’ race and ethnicity, household composition, occupations, and property ownership.

Larger-scale political events always loomed in the background of neighborhoods with such racially integrated patterns of residence. The period after Reconstruction was a particularly turbulent one, as the city’s Black residents found opportunities for social advancement subverted and blocked. Black voter registration in Louisiana had reached a high of 128,150 by 1888, but white supremacists attacked their rights on all fronts. The 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision legalized segregation, and the new Louisiana Constitution of 1898 distinguished the right of citizenship from the “privilege” of the vote, using this language to disenfranchise Black voters. By the next year, Black voter registration plummeted to just over 12,000; by 1930, there were just over 2,000 Black voters left in the entire state. White supremacists segregated schools and public facilities, attacked biracial labor organizations, and used extralegal violence like lynching to reinforce state-sanctioned oppression.

Archaeological assemblages can only indirectly illustrate such widespread changes, but they do help explore the individual strategies that working class families employed to live and, in some cases, to prosper, even in the face of considerable adversity. They also help us to understand how people experienced such broad changes at an everyday level: in foodways and diet, in health, in childcare, in social interactions, and in recreation, as displayed through consumer behaviors.

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Shirley Thompson, the youngest of the Thompson sisters,  joined the New Orleans Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Freedom Rides as they tested the Interstate Commerce Commission’s desegregation of bus transit. At eighteen years old, and just a few days after graduating from George Washington Carver High School, Shirley boarded her first Freedom Ride on June 6, 1961, to Jackson, Mississippi. [1]  The previous Freedom Rides into Mississippi were met with violence, an increase in jail penalties from two months to four, and a request from President John F. Kennedy to the Freedom Riders for a “cooling-off period.” However, CORE leaders remained diligent in their protests and continued ahead with their Freedom Rides and sit-ins across Mississippi. [2] Because of CORE members’ vigor and determination to fight white supremacy, police jailed activists for their continued acts of civil disobedience, imprisoning Riders in the Parchman State Penitentiary when local jails exceeded capacity. Police arrested Shirley Thompson for “breach of peace” while attempting a sit-in within a waiting room. Given the increased sentence of four months, police took Shirley to the Parchman State Penitentiary. [3] While there, Shirley stated that “she was slapped by police officers.” [4] CORE activist Abdul Aziz Khaalis documented the brutalities at Parchman State Penitentiary in his diary, later published online as a series entitled Letters to My Children. Khaalis stated: 

"Yes, they took our mattresses from us. We still sang freedom songs. Yes, they took our clothes. Yes, we froze when our bodies touched the steel bunks with the air turned on high. Yes, we were eaten by insects released from jars into the cell block with the air turned off and the windows closed to make it hot like hell as we were bitten and eaten everywhere. Yes, they dragged a screaming white Freedom Rider past our cells. They had a wrist breaker attached to his right arm. It was a handcuff with big screws that hit the nerve points in his wrist. It was attached to a chain with a wooden handle. They dragged him, flipped the chain, making his body flip like a fish from the agony he experienced, and I felt it In my cell and still hear his screams when I have the memory. Yes, they put stuff in our food to give us the runs. Yes, they were devil-mean hateful jailers." [5]  While newspapers reported one piece of Shirley’s testimony from within the walls of Parchman State Penitentiary, Shirley likely faced other violence as well. Jean Thompson posted a bond for her sister and the prison released her. Shirley’s release date is unknown.  Before her death at age 47, Shirley also participated in the 1962 Louisiana Freedom Summer, 1962 Mississippi Freedom Summer, and 1963 March on Washington alongside her sister Alice Marie Thompson. 

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On May 24, 1961, Jean Thompson, at age 19, participated in the Freedom Ride from Montgomery, Alabama to Jackson, Mississippi as civil rights activists tested the Interstate Commerce Commission’s desegregation of bus transit. Jean’s bus was the first to make it safely to its destination in Mississippi. Previously, white groups acted violently to activists and burned Freedom Ride buses. [1] This safe arrival was short-lived. According to the Times-Picayune, city police arrested Jean along with eleven other riders “moments after they alighted from their buses and set foot in a white waiting room at the bus terminal.” [2]  Jean and the other Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Freedom Riders refused to move from the white waiting room after police ordered them to leave. The police then immediately booked the riders on “two counts of refusing to move on when ordered by police and causing a breach of the peace.” [2] The following day, Jean appeared in front of the municipal court led by Judge James L. Spencer. CORE’s attorney advocated for the riders stating that all people have the right to travel. Judge Spencer did not alleviate the penalties and charged Jean and the other riders with the maximum penalty of a $500 fine and up to six months in jail. [2] 

On November 1, 1961, Alice Marie Thompson joined other New Orleans Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) members to test the Interstate Commerce Commission’s new policy of bus desegregation at the New Orleans Trailways bus terminal located on Loyola Avenue. [1] Information regarding the test’s impact on Riders or the New Orleans community has little documentation. However, according to Julia Aaron-Humbles, another New Orleans activist, some locals regularly took care of the New Orleans CORE members, providing housing, food, nurturing, and training to prepare those like Alice for the violence ahead. [2]  On November 14, Alice Marie Thompson and other CORE members tested bus desegregation in Hattiesburg and Poplarville, Mississippi. The police arrested Alice and charged her with a “breach of peace.” [3] The mayor of Poplarville, Pat Hyde, fined Alice Thompson $250.00 and sentenced her to two months in jail. The police released Alice, along with two other activists, Frank Nelson and Patricia Smith, through a paid bond. [4] On November 29, 1961, Alice also joined in the testing of bus desegregation in McComb, Mississippi along with her sister, Jean. While there, a mob of white people attacked Alice and other CORE members, shouting “Kill ‘em! Kill ‘em.” [5] According to the New York Times writer Claude Sitton, Alice and the other CORE members fled the bus terminal, rested for the evening, and then attempted a sit-in at a local cafe after a reported gas leak at the bus terminal. White men attacked the CORE members, kicking and shoving them through the cafe door onto the street. [6]  Though the Freedom Ride to McComb was the last for Alice Thompson, she continued to engage in other civil rights activism including the 1962 Louisiana Freedom Summer, the 1962 Mississippi Freedom Summer, and the 1963 March on Washington, known for Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech.” [7]  

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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 color elected to Louisiana’s House of Representatives and served in the legislature until 1980. (2) Before being elected, Taylor helped desegregate New Orleans public schools and helped to desegregate the New Orleans Recreation Department (NORD). (3) Taylor fought for civil rights, corrections reform of Angola Prison, and economic equality for Blacks over the span of six decades. “When I decided to run for the LA State Legislature, my major concern was that I might use my office to improve living conditions—the social, political and economic makeup of my district,” said Taylor. (4)

Taylor believed in the need for more female leadership and the need for more women role models. Taylor’s role model was Sojourner Truth and Taylor promoted instilling pride in one’s self. Taylor said “We need these historical role models to remind us that we are somebody. That we were somebody before slavery. That we were somebody during slavery. That we were somebody after slavery.” (5) Taylor emphasized the importance of Black involvement in city government and was a fierce advocate on “eliminating policies that have a negative impact on the equality of life in the Black community.” (6)

Taylor’s stance on creating equal opportunities for the Black community is her lasting legacy. In the later years of her career, Taylor was known for enacting an ordinance that prohibited segregation practices in Mardi Gras krewes. Taylor felt that if public resources were used for krewes to participate in Mardi Gras parades, then all citizens should be allowed to join any particular krewe. Taylor also knew that important deals were made behind krewes' closed doors that did not include or benefit Blacks. (7) In 1992, she enacted a city ordinance to prevent Mardi Gras krewes from discriminating based on race. (8) According to a 2006 NPR piece, some white New Orleanians labelled Taylor as “the vixen that tried to steal Mardi Gras." (9)

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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 my color separate me from the things I want to see and do?” (1) The oppression of white supremacy and racial segregation affected Haydel-Morial’s everyday life. Haydel-Morial’s family created their own networks of interaction in Black communities. In her memoir, Haydel-Morial explained how her "parents, along with other middle-class blacks, out of necessity created our own cocoon of interaction for professional and social activities and at the same time limited the rejection and humiliation we experienced in our Southern cities.” (1) Haydel-Morial’s parents opened their home to weary travelers due to a lack of accommodations for Black people in New Orleans. Haydel-Morial’s parents also made their backyard a play area for the neighborhood children, so that they might safely play.

Haydel-Morial studied at Xavier University before transferring to Boston University in 1950, and that was when she began to see life differently. “I relished my new life in Boston,” Haydel-Morial said. “I would always have an abiding love for Louisiana, but in leaving it, I had found that my roots could grow both deeper and wider.” (1) In Boston, all facilities were open to Black people, and Haydel-Morial wanted to experience life without the trappings of segregation. Haydel-Morial’s experiences in Boston made her want the same for Louisiana. On May 17, 1954, Haydel-Morial turned on the radio and heard the news that in the case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. This ruling declared segregation of children in public schools was “inherently unequal.” (2)

The following summer, Haydel-Morial returned to New Orleans. After a Great Books Book Club meeting, Sybil Haydel-Morial met with a friend, Ernest Nathan “Dutch” Morial, and after discussing W.E.B. DuBois’ Souls of Black Folk, the two decided to meet and discuss Brown v. Board of Education. Haydel-Morial applied to Tulane University. She was accepted and enrolled in two courses. When filling out a registration form, Haydel-Morial wrote “Negro” in the blank for race. Tulane University asked Haydel-Morial to leave because they did not accept Black students. Haydel-Morial called “Dutch” Morial, “It’s over,” Haydel-Morial said, “I was asked to leave.” (1) Nearby Loyola University also rejected Haydel-Morial because she was Black. Haydel-Morial returned to Boston to complete her master’s degree and began teaching. (3)

In February of 1955, Sybil Haydel-Morial married “Dutch” Morial and they returned to New Orleans. “Dutch” Morial dove into local civil rights activism in New Orleans and held a law practice with A.P. Tureaud, a prominent civil rights attorney in New Orleans. Sybil Haydel-Morial also became a champion for civil rights. After being rejected by the League of Women Voters for membership on the basis of race, Haydel-Morial and several other mothers formed their own organization, CiCulSo (an acronym for Civic, Cultural, and Social Organization). (1) CiCulSo evolved into the Louisiana League of Good Government (LLOGG), an organization of women of different ethnicities that pursued voting rights and ensured voter rolls included Black people. Haydel-Morial also joined the women’s auxiliary of the Urban League (which her son, Marc, is the current President and CEO), the Urban League Guild. (4) The Urban League Guild supported the Urban League and was responsible for fundraising, mentoring youth, and helping community leaders develop leadership skills. In 1963, Haydel-Morial filed lawsuits against the Orleans Parish School Board for enforcing a law that kept Orleans Parish school teachers from advocating for integration or belonging to associations that favor integration. (5)

Throughout her teaching career in New Orleans public schools, Haydel-Morial brought cultural awareness to many students she encountered. She championed many civil rights issues, all while raising five children with her husband “Dutch” Morial. Haydel-Morial curated educational programs to raise awareness about civil rights while leading a number of community organizations. Haydel-Morial became an administrator for Xavier University, and eventually, Associate Dean, where she remained for 28 years. In 2015, Haydel-Morial completed her memoir Witness to Change: From Jim Crow to Political Empowerment.

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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. Freeman. Keller was white, wealthy, and maintained societal connections that would bolster her activism efforts. Keller’s brother was a member on several boards in New Orleans and Keller was also close friends with Judge J. Skelly Wright. (1) In 1932, Keller experienced anti-Semitism after marrying her Jewish husband Charles Keller Junior. Keller’s husband was in the army and spent time away from the family. Keller used that time to focus on activism. Keller recalled, “It was World War II that woke a lot of us up… I’d married a Jewish fellow, and learned a lot about prejudice then… I thought I could see the seeds of what got Germany in such terrible trouble right here.” (1)

In 1944, Keller formally began her role in activism when she joined the New Orleans Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) Board of Directors, a position previously held by her mother. (2) Keller noticed the discrimination that African Americans experienced and also became aware of her own privilege. “It was bad enough that they were kept out of privately owned facilities, but worse was my perception that “public” meant “public for whites only,” said Keller. (3) Keller worked with African-American women at YWCA. Keller recalled, “I met people like Jesse Dent and Daisy Young… They were ladies, lovely people, beautifully educated. I didn’t know they existed; the town was so sealed up in compartments.” (1)

In 1945, Keller became a supporter of the Urban League and would become its president. (1) Keller used her influence to open doors that were closed to African Americans. Keller escorted Black community leaders into the offices of white businessmen to encourage them to employ African Americans. (1) In 1959, Keller worked to desegregate New Orleans public schools and public libraries and received death threats for her efforts. (2, 4) Keller served on the boards of Dillard University, a historically Black university, and Flint-Goodridge Hospital, which provided much-needed medical services to the Black community. In 1964, Keller financed the lawsuit that desegregated Tulane University and participated in voter registration projects with leaders in the Black community. (1) Keller worked with white liberals and Black community leaders to address issues that affected African Americans in New Orleans. In 1993, A New Orleans Public Library branch was dedicated in her honor on Broad Street. (5)

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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. (1) Simmons’ sister and other activists would meet at the Golden Pheasant after attending National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) meetings. In exchange for not telling their parents that her sister attended these meetings, Simmons asked sister Venison for bus fare and entry to the NAACP meetings. At the age of 14 or 15, however, Simmons ultimately joined the New Orleans chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Simmons said she “liked what they [CORE] were doing because the NAACP wasn’t doing any direct action.” Simmons found CORE’s approach “exciting.” (2) CORE activists were leaders of non-violent civil rights protests in New Orleans. CORE organized boycotts, sit-ins, and picket lines at establishments with racist practices. Simmons became known as a “first lieutenant” to fellow CORE member and organizer, Oretha Castle Haley. (3)

As the New Orleans chapter of CORE grew in prominence, Simmons’ activism grew as well. As a teen, Simmons braved violence while she picketed and participated in sit-ins, which sometimes resulted in police arresting and jailing her. On March 27, 1964, police arrested Simmons and fellow activists outside the entrance to Loew's State Theater because they were protesting the theater's segregation policy. (4) Simmons’ activism within CORE led to her participation in the Freedom Rides. The “Freedom Riders” rode interstate buses to challenge southern states' non-enforcement of Supreme Court decisions Morgan v. Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which made segregation on public buses unconstitutional. (5, 6) Simmons’ served as a test rider prior to the national Freedom Rides. Simmons and other CORE members rode a bus from New Orleans to McComb, Mississippi to test segregation practices of public facilities. The riders took seats at a lunch counter at the bus terminal in McComb to test the law, after which Simmons said “all hell broke loose.” (7) A mob of white people attacked the test riders and Simmons escaped to the so-called colored section of the bus terminal. From 1962 to 1963, Simmons worked with CORE to integrate hotels and Florida beaches and participated in the March on Washington. (7)

After participating in the test rides, Simmons became a trainer for CORE. She taught members how to participate in nonviolent protests. According to Simmons, CORE set up three training centers at that time, one in Nashville, Tenessee, one in Montgomery, Alabama, and one in New Orleans. (8) Eventually, Simmons shifted her focus to advocating for Black New Orleanians' voting rights by educating voters about registration tests and organizing voter drives. “For me, I wanted to be out in the field, and I guess I felt what I did was great. It was a good feeling knowing that you were able to help someone,” Simmons said. (9)

The video below, created by The Historic New Orleans Collection as part of their NOLA Resistance Oral History Project, features Simmons discussing her experiences with CORE. (10)

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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 threatened to remove their children from Frantz Elementary if Bridges entered the premises. Bridges later described the loud mob’s roars as “being at Mardi Gras.” (1) Bridges did not understand what was happening that morning, only that she would be attending a new school.

Federal marshals escorted Bridges to school. Bridges did not go into a classroom the first day but remained in the principal’s office watching parents remove their children from the classrooms. (2) In addition to student withdrawals, teachers quit as they refused to teach African American children. One teacher remained to instruct Bridges. Once Bridges finally joined other students at play, she realized the reason for her isolation. Bridges attempted to make new friends; however, she was told by a fellow student that they were instructed by their parents not to play with her because of the color of her skin.

In 1999, Ruby Bridges formed The Ruby Bridges Foundation in New Orleans. The foundation’s mission is “to promote respect and equal treatment to all races.” (3) Through her foundation, Bridges attends public speaking engagements, hosts a virtual classroom and podcast, and she also has a book club. Bridges’ desire is to teach others how to overcome racism. Bridges is the subject of the Norman Rockwell painting, The Problem We All Live With, (4) and a movie made about the history-making event that shaped her life. Bridges visited the White House under former President Barack Obama’s administration when Rockwell’s painting was on display. President Obama, stated “I think it’s fair to say that if it wasn’t for you guys, I wouldn’t be here today.” (5)

Bridges has two elementary schools named in her honor, one in Alameda, California, and the other in Woodinville, Washington. Bridges has a bronze statue dedicated in her honor at William T. Frantz Elementary (present day Akili Academy). (6)

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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 person. (1) This court decision declared separate educational facilities for white and African American students inherently unequal. Without clear instructions from the federal government on how public schools would integrate, public schools in southern states took full advantage of the lack of federal leadership and allowed schools to remain racially segregated. (2) Several years later, federal intervention forced the racial integration of public schools throughout the nation.

Judge J. Skelly Wright first ordered New Orleans Public Schools to integrate on February 15, 1956. (3) Ultimately the Judge had to execute his own integration plan after the New Orleans Public School Board refused to establish one of their own. (4) On the morning of November 14, 1960, Leona Tate, Tessie Prevost, and Gail Etienne entered the doors of McDonogh No. 19 Elementary School as its first African American students. The media dubbed them “The McDonogh Three.” (5)

As the young girls entered McDonogh No. 19, crowds of angry and verbally abusive white people gathered outside of the school. “Somehow we were able to maneuver through a crowd of cursing, screaming, yelling people, who were being held back by the police,” said Tate. (6) There was no physical violence that morning, but white parents removed their children from the school once the girls entered the building. (2) Federal marshals escorted the three girls into the school. The McDonogh Three became the public faces of New Orleans Public School integration. That experience would change Leona Tate’s life and set her on a course to her lifelong role in political activism. In 2009, Tate formed The Leona Tate Foundation for Change. Tate focuses her life’s work on promoting change through education and empowering and enriching her community. The Leona Tate Foundation for Change aims to address the community’s issues “from a spiritual, multicultural, economical, historical, and social perspective.” (7)

In 2005, McDonogh No. 19 School closed following the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. In 2019, Tate’s foundation, in partnership with Alembic Community Development, acquired the McDonogh No. 19 building. (7) Tate announced that the school she once helped to integrate would become The Tate, Etienne, and Prevost (TEP) Interpretive Center. (8) The center will focus on providing affordable housing for senior citizens, educational programs, training and workshops, and revitalizing the Lower 9th Ward. Tate stated: “I’m overwhelmed with unspeakable joy because I’m excited about what this project means for the city of New Orleans and the pivotal role it will play in revitalizing the historic Lower 9th Ward community.” (9)

Tate’s primary objectives in preserving the McDonogh No. 19 building are to create a permanent memorial site and exhibition dedicated to the McDonogh Three and the integration of New Orleans Public Schools; curate engaging programs that will attract visitors and address the needs of the community; and stimulate the local economy of the Lower 9th Ward. Tate wishes for all who enter the center to leave with an overall understanding of the importance of the events of November 14, 1960, and McDonogh Three’s contribution to the Civil Rights Movement and the possibilities for the further advancement of African Americans. Tate feels that there is more work to be done, as segregation has taken on new appearances such as restructuring school districts by creating tiered systems that greatly disadvantage poor African American New Orleanians. (10)

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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 the Civil Rights Movement after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Junior. The tragic event inspired her to continue to strive for equality in her community. Ortiz remembered how she felt following the passing of Dr. King. “I just said I’m going to get so active,” replied Ms. Ortiz. “I’m going to help keep his work going on,” she said, “They can’t stop us!” (4)

Ortiz furthered her commitment to the Civil Rights Movement by founding the nonprofit organization, Grass Roots Organization for Women, or GROW in 1975. (4) Ortiz wanted an organization that encouraged women to serve in their communities and in the Movement through peaceful protests, rallies, street marches, and boycotts. “Why did I get that organization formed? I’ll tell you why,” Ortiz said. “Rev. Harvey was that old-time minister that didn’t believe in women in leadership, in those days.” (2) Ortiz went on to say that eventually Rev. Simmie Harvey, president of the Louisiana chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), changed his mind about his anti-feminist sentiments. GROW challenged the traditional patriarchal social systems that prevented women from participating in leadership roles.

Ortiz was a force in the later years of the Civil Rights Movement and led protests in many surrounding areas. In 1976, Ortiz led demonstrations for the family of Stanley Magee who suspiciously passed away while in custody. (5) The protest and subsequent march over Stanley Magee’s death began at the 22nd Judicial Courthouse and included many African American residents of St. Tammany and Washington Parishes. It was one of the largest demonstrations ever held in Covington. Ortiz explained that some of the more difficult and passionate Civil Rights cases, especially those involving racially motivated deaths and violence were passed on to her organization from the NAACP. “It was GROW that did the work,” Ortiz said. (2) Ortiz remains politically active today. Her most recent work is dedicated to taking down monuments dedicated to Confederate leaders in New Orleans.

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Aimée Potens was the mother of Louis Charles and Jean Baptiste Roudanez, the founder and publisher of  L’Union, the South’s first black newspaper, and the New Orleans Tribune, America’s first black daily newspaper. She was born to an enslaved woman in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) in the late eighteenth century. [1] Aimée eye-witnessed the long arc of Atlantic and Carribean world history: slavery; the Haitian revolution; exodus to colonial Louisiana; the Louisiana Purchase; territorial plantation life; all things de couleur libre in antebellum New Orleans; the Civil War; emancipation; the birth of the South’s first Civil Rights movement via her sons’ activism; and in her final years the triumph and failure of Reconstruction.

Soon after Union forces seized New Orleans from the Confederacy in 1862, calls for equality reverberated among free people of color. Hundreds assembled at frequent mass meetings and rallies at Economy Hall in the heart of Faubourg Tremé. There, boisterous crowds listened to speakers advocate for racial democracy and the enfranchisement of all men of African descent. The newspapers L’Union, and later the New Orleans Tribune, frequently promoted and reported on these dramatic gatherings. “Grande Assemblée à L’Économie, Immense Enthousiasme,” recounted L’Union in 1863. [1] “A vast and enthusiastic assemblage met last evening at Economy Hall,” reported the Tribune in 1864. [2] “One of the most largely attended assemblies ever held in this city met last night at Economy Hall,” declared the Tribune in 1865.

Jean Baptiste Roudanez (1815-1895), a free man of color, served as publisher of L’Union, the South’s first black newspaper, and the New Orleans Tribune, America’s first black daily newspaper. Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez, the Tribune’s founder, was Jean Baptiste’s younger brother. Jean Baptiste Roudanez’s home still stands on Dumaine Street in the Faubourg Tremé. 

Jean Baptiste Roudanez, publisher of L’Union, the South’s first black newspaper, and the New Orleans Tribune, America’s first black daily newspaper, is entombed alongside his mother Aimée Potens, a free woman of color, in Square 3 of St. Louis Cemetery No. 2. This section of St. Louis Cemetery No. 2 honors many civil rights pioneers of African descent, including Henriette Delille, Rodolphe Desdunes, Arthur Esteves, André Callioux, Jordan Noble, Marie Couvent, P.B.S. Pinchback, Oscar Dunne and many others. Square 3 has been described as “the greatest collection of memorials to African-American achievement in the world.”  

Roudanez and fellow activist Arnold Bertonneau delivered a historic petition to President Lincoln on March 12, 1864, demanding the right to vote. Signed by almost 1,000 free men of color from New Orleans, the document righteously proclaimed “WE ARE MEN, TREAT US AS SUCH!” For the first time, Louisianans of African descent boldly entered the whitest house in America, the inner sanctum of the country’s authority. They were frustrated with Lincoln’s gradualism and general failure to support the growing national movement for racial equality. [1]

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Faubourg Tremé is home to the oldest existing cemetery in the City of New Orleans, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez, founder of the New Orleans Tribune, America’s first black daily newspaper, is entombed in the Roudanez family tomb located in Alley 9. The doctor’s wife, Célie Saulay, and several of their children are also in this tomb. Access is permitted only with approved tour guides. When in the cemetery, be sure to ask your guide to see the Roudanez tomb.

Like many free people of color in New Orleans, Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez was wealthy, grew up with the French language, attended Catholic Church, and received much of his education in Paris. Roudanez’s parents were racially mixed refugees from the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti), leaving after the island’s successful slave rebellion began in 1791. [1] 

On July 30, 1866, black Republicans attempted to reconvene the Louisiana constitutional convention in an effort to secure voting rights. Held at the Mechanics' Institute, a large crowd of black spectators was present as well. The gathering was attacked by an angry white mob that included police and firemen. [1] According to the Tribune, "black men were assassinated by scores. They fell inside of the hall, outside of the building, in the neighboring streets, and even in distant parts of the city, where they were tracked like dogs." [2] Tribune editor Jean-Charles Houzeau witnessed the bloodbath and heard the assassins shout "To the Tribune!" He claimed the newspaper was saved by a detail of black soldiers. [3]

In November 1866, the Tribune moved from its offices on Conti Street to 122-124 Exchange Alley. These new digs were in the shadow of the St. Louis Hotel (site now occupied by the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel). The St. Louis Hotel housed a large antebellum slave exchange. As free men of color, the men of the Tribune had witnessed the horror and degradation of the city's many slave pens and auction blocks, where over the years over 100,000 souls were stored, assigned a price, and sold as living property.

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You are standing in front of the L’Union and the New Orleans Tribune building, the birthplace of civil rights history in the Crescent City. Here, surrounded by the howling madness of the Civil War, these two radical journals condemned slavery and fought for the rights of all of African descent. The black community rallied around the Tribune and organized one of the most important freedom movements in American history. The Tribune’s crusade led to black enfranchisement, integrated public schools, the creation of a groundbreaking state constitution with strong equal rights provisions, and the election of many black state representatives.

The New Orleans Tribune (la Tribune de la Nouvelle Orléans) proclaimed itself an “organ of the oppressed” and defiantly vowed to “spare no means at our command” to promote equality for all people of African descent. [1] Bravely challenging the very foundations of white supremacy, the Tribune was in the vanguard of a monumental struggle for racial democracy. 

Both newspapers were founded by Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez, a free man of color. L’Union was unleashed in 1862 soon after Union forces seized the city. The New Orleans Tribune debuted on July 21, 1864. Publishing over 1,300 issues in the five years of its existence, the Tribune concentrated on matters of central importance to all of African descent: suffrage; an equitable labor and land system to replace slavery; the condition of the emancipated; the creation of integrated public transportation and school systems; the black military; Union policies of accommodation with planters; Louisiana’s constitutional conventions; local and national elections; Reconstruction politics and legislation; and much more. 

The Tribune arose from les gens de couleur libres, the community of free people of color who lived in the Vieux Carré and the Faubourgs Tremé and Marigny. Racially mixed, French-speaking, and Catholic, this prosperous, politically astute and assertive group was one of the largest of its kind in the United States. [2] Of African, Caribbean, European and First Nations ancestries, free people of color resulted from unlawful but tolerated inter-racial relationships during the colonial and antebellum periods. Their very existence contradicted the foundational idea of slave society, that racial inferiority was part of the natural order. Moreover, white elites worried that free people of color offered the enslaved hope for their own liberation.

The Tribune was bilingual from the start, two pages in English and two in French. The English-language section was a strategic effort to expand the journal’s message outside of the francophone community of free people of color that had been served by the newspaper’s predecessor, L’Union. That new audience grew to include those who had been enslaved, with whom the Tribune identified. “They are of us, and we love them as we do ourselves. We are the organ of the oppressed, without distinction.” [3]

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Starting in the 1920s and increasing exponentially in the 1930s, and onwards, the urban landscape of New Orleans, like many urban municipalities across the country, began to change as a result of a series of racially restrictive covenants and zoning ordinances, New Deal housing policies, local government blight and slum clearance initiatives, and real estate and banking practices. These changes took root with the passage of several federal and state acts, key among them was the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation Act of 1933, the National Housing Act of 1934 that established the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and the Housing Act of 1937, also known as the Wagner-Steagall Bill, which created the United States Housing Authority. The formation of the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) established by Congress to refinanced mortgages in default to prevent foreclosures, and HOLC’s subsequent color-coded Residential Security Maps, or redlining maps, to measure real estate risk assessment of neighborhoods based on the racial demographics set up a discriminatory practice of urban divestment and exclusion. Outlined in the lending protocols of the FHA’s Underwriting Handbook, the practice of redlining institutionalized racial residential segregation, discriminatory housing practices in mortgage lending, and divestment in urban communities. The establishment of the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) by the Louisiana Housing Act of 1936 coupled with the passage of the federal Housing Act of 1937, charged with coordinating and financing the construction of public housing developments in urban settings, set the stage for the displacement and relocation of low-income Black residents in public housing in the city.

In 1938 New Orleans became the first city in the country to receive federal funding under the Housing Act of 1937, codifying racial residential segregation in public housing and the social positioning of black residents, particularly low-income black women, in the city for decades to come through the public demonization of their subsidy-status and punitive socials policies that justified their mistreatment. For decades, nearly all mortgages underwritten by the FHA supported white families, while private banks frequently discriminated against Black households seeking mortgage assistance in the neighborhoods in which they resided. Slum clearance and urban renewal projects disproportionally uprooted black communities, and the locations chosen for public housing developments both displaced and confined black people to racially and economically segregated neighborhoods. Within its first three years, HANO secured $30 million in federal loan contracts for the construction of public housing, and by the time the U.S. entered World War II in 1942, the first six public housing developments in the city were completely occupied.

Four developments were reserved for Black occupancy

— the Magnolia (1941) Lafitte (1941), Calliope (1942), St. Bernard (1942) and the two developments for white occupancy — the St. Thomas (1941) and Iberville (1941).

By 1957, HANO was the fourth largest public housing authority in the country managing over 10,000 units or public housing, with Desire (1956) being the biggest development. Low-income black women found it difficult to find places to live in this continually changing housing landscape as racial and gender stereotypes, biases, and fears combined in insidious ways rendering public housing, for many, their only ‘choice.’ Public housing became sites of housing security, contradictions, activism, demonization, violence, community, poverty, and isolation.

Hidden within the history of public and subsidized housing in New Orleans are narratives of black women who engaged in a movement without demonstrations.

Circumscribed by opportunity and discrimination, possibilities and restrictions, affordability and surveillance, low-income black woman organized to improve the lives of public housing residents, transform housing policies, advance tenant rights, encourage resident engagement, support policy changes, and participate in community building efforts through partnerships and collaborations.

With the formal incorporation of The New Orleans Public Housing Tenants, Inc. in 1972, and the establishment of the Community Services Department at HANO in 1974, public housing residents significantly increased involvement in shaping management decision-making affecting their communities.

Through resident councils, the New Orleans Citywide Tenant Council, and interactions with housing officials, black women challenged poor maintenance policies, fought against illegal and unfair evictions, sponsored neighborhood clean-ups, created programs for senior citizens, developed recreational and after school enrichment programs for youth, organized against police brutality, established community centers and resident management corporations, formed non-traditional resident councils, created work opportunities for residents, partnered with local groups establishing child care centers and health clinics, hosted cultural events, advocated for safe and healthy housing conditions, and worked daily to address the impact of economic and housing-related poverty, violence, and substance addiction. Black women challenged dominant stereotypes purported by the media, elected officials, and others that criminalized their poverty, family size and composition, and residential neighborhoods. Resident leaders engaged with and reshaped housing institutions as they fought to improve the living conditions of their families and communities. Unable to actualize rights gained during the Civil Rights Movement, low-income black women in New Orleans, like many of their counterparts in urban cities across the country, developed mechanisms to address the harsh circumstances of the everyday violence of racist and sexist housing policies and the irresponsibility of government actions that accompanied living in public housing. Although limited by their housing options, the biographies, political agency, activism, struggles, triumphs, setbacks, experiences, and advocacy efforts of low-income black women—and the communities that supported them—is often invisible or marginalized in historical narratives of black freedom struggle and women’s liberation movements.

Here we acknowledge some of the women who transformed public housing in New Orleans:

Ursula Spencer, Mildred R. Taylor, Dorothy Allen, Lolita King, Hilda LeBlanc, Viney D. Reynolds, Donna Johnigan, Yvonne Marrero, Augusta Kerry, Barbara Villere, Debra Davis, Kathleen Matthews, Desiree Williams, Cynthia Wiggins, Leah Green, Birgil Green, Dianne Lee, Angela Winfrey, Lillie Clark,

Constant Haynes, Christopher Homes, Karen Johnson, Marla Taylor, Demetria Farve, Barbara Jackson, Fannie McKnight, Helen Lane, Crystal Jones, Barbara Carter, Beverly Magee, Yvonne Miles, Laura Johnson, Irene B. Griffin, Cynthia Doughty, Laura French, Delores Morrel, Sharon Jasper, Theresa Nicholas, Kim Piper, Stephanie Mingo, Kawana Jasper, Julie Andrews, Jessie Brock, and Ollie Pendleton.

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