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 presented itself. Filling the gap, public history graduate students at the University of New Orleans created projects to illuminate the work of the Street Renaming Commission.

Produced by the Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies, Streets on the Table is a podcast that reflects on the historical relevance of both the old and new street names. Hosted by two UNO graduate students, the podcast highlights the lives and histories unrecognized in the commemorative landscape.

In the fourth episode, Eddie and Lauren continue their discussion on self-liberating people in New Orleans. The stories of Georges, Jasper, and Celestin shine light on incarceration during slavery.

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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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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 still developing in this era, and serious offenses were likely to be considered a direct affront to the sovereign, and thus to be punished corporally. The evidence from the Cabildo suggests that, even at a comparatively early date, prison labor was being exploited in manufacturing, a pattern that would be developed through the nineteenth century and into the modern era. It shows the poor sanitation within the prison, but it also demonstrates the ways in which those confined maintained some degree of autonomy within those conditions.

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 police station were some of the city’s earliest administrative structures. In 1769, following the transition from French to Spanish rule, Spanish officials demolished the existing structure and built a Cabildo, or town hall: a complex with a military prison, a civil prison, police station, jailer’s quarters, and government chambers. The Great Fire of 1788 damaged this Cabildo and another fire in 1794 destroyed other parts of the complex. In 1799, the second Cabildo was completed, and this is the structure you see today.

In the early 1830s, the City Council authorized plans for enlarging the prison to deal with its notorious overcrowding, but the city also built a new Orleans Parish Prison behind what is today the Municipal Auditorium near Louis Armstrong Park. After the construction of the new prison finished in 1839, the old prison was abandoned and subsequently torn down. Throughout the Spanish and American periods of its operation, government officials and visitors commented on the poor condition of the facility, from lack of food and clothing to rat infestations.

In May of 1988, the third story of the Cabildo, by then a part of the Louisiana State Museum, caught fire. Following the fire, the museum hired Earth Search, Inc., led by Dr. Jill-Karen Yakubik, to excavate the Cabildo courtyard prior to the construction of a new water line in the vicinity.

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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 police station were some of the city’s earliest administrative structures. In 1769, following the transition from French to Spanish rule, Spanish officials demolished the existing structure and built a Cabildo, or town hall: a complex with a military prison, a civil prison, police station, jailer’s quarters, and government chambers. The Great Fire of 1788 damaged this Cabildo and another fire in 1794 destroyed other parts of the complex. In 1799, the second Cabildo was completed, and this is the structure you see today.

In the early 1830s, the City Council authorized plans for enlarging the prison to deal with its notorious overcrowding, but the city also built a new Orleans Parish Prison behind what is today the Municipal Auditorium near Louis Armstrong Park. After the construction of the new prison finished in 1839, the old prison was abandoned and subsequently torn down. Throughout the Spanish and American periods of its operation, government officials and visitors commented on the poor condition of the facility, from lack of food and clothing to rat infestations.

In May of 1988, the third story of the Cabildo, by then a part of the Louisiana State Museum, caught fire. Following the fire, the museum hired Earth Search, Inc., led by Dr. Jill-Karen Yakubik, to excavate the Cabildo courtyard prior to the construction of a new water line in the vicinity.

For more information about archeaology at The Cabildo, please visit the Archaeology of the Cabildo tour.

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Juanita Pierre and her partner Leslie Martinez opened Les Pierres, the first Black lesbian owned bar in New Orleans, in the 1980s. Located on the corner of Pauger and Rampart Streets in the Marigny, their Saturday night crowd spilled out of the bar’s French doors and onto the street. Known for their drag queen and king shows, it was a place where “anyone was welcome.”

In some sense, this scene at Les Pierres was nothing new. Queers have paraded Rampart Street, found lovers in dark French Quarter bars, starred in gender-bending variety shows, and visibly defined the nightlife of the city since at least the 1920s. Queer women have long labored in the larger economy of sex and entertainment tourism here. Some bars they frequented were a part of the hustle economy and some were a relief from it: The Starlet Lounge, the Goldenrod Inn, Miss Kitty’s. Les Pierres was the kind of place locals went after their late shifts in the Quarter had ended. What was new about Les Pierres and this particular moment in lesbian bar culture was that, beginning in the 1950s with Dixie Fasnacht of Dixie’s Bar of Music, women now owned and operated these businesses for themselves. They joined the ranks of Brady’s, Charlene’s, Pinstripes and Lace, Rubyfruit Jungle—at least a dozen bars in total—that were women-run bars catering to lesbian patrons from the 1950s to the early 2000s in New Orleans.

“We did it for us,” Pierre firmly declares in her recent interview with “Last Call,” a podcast dedicated to the stories of people who experienced the thriving (and now non-existent) lesbian bar culture of that era. The stakes were high. Outside the doors of Les Pierres was a culture dedicated to profiting from these women while violently limiting their experiences, desires, and mobility, especially those who challenged gender and racial norms. But that culture was not simply outside the doors, safely at a distance.

A long history of police brutality and harassment in particular threatened what this community continually created together. The 1950s saw large-scale raids of bars frequented by gays and lesbians. In 1953, one lesbian bar in New Orleans was raided 78 times by the police. Women were frequently charged with lewd conduct, being improperly attired in men’s clothing, and having no visible means of employment. After arrest, their names and addresses were printed in the papers, and if they had jobs, they usually lost them.

By the 1960s popular white lesbian bars like Brady’s anticipated police surveillance and so limited dancing and touching in the bar, insisting on feminine attire for their clientele. Bar patrons and bar owners paid off police and the mafia in hopes of avoiding being targets of vice squads. Upon arrest, white women faced shame and stigma, while Black women faced time in state prisons. In the long glare of Jim Crow, gay and lesbian bars have been as segregated as the rest of social, political, and economic institutions of the city. Though often targets of state violence, white lesbian bars enforced the status quo as much as they challenged it.

When Les Pierres opened, they defied the past prohibitions on intimacy between women and the enforcement of gender norms. They created an erotic space of defiance for women of color. The energy of collective organizing was nurtured in spaces like Les Pierres. These bars were spaces of political incubation where radical visions and lifelong friendships were born.

And so in the dance, the music, the sexual energy of Les Pierres was a long legacy of electric resistance.

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Built in 1896, this Moorish-influenced Richardsonian style building was built on the site of the former Duverje plantation, which was completely destroyed, along with approximately 200 other homes and businesses, on the night of October 20th, 1895.

Barthelemy Duverje purchased the land that we now know as Algiers Point from Martial Le Boeuf, on August 9th, 1805, for $18,000. The title is traced back to Louis Borepo, who acquired it February 3rd, 1770, by a grant from Don Alexander O’Reilly, Governor of the province of Louisiana, who then represented the crown of Castile under Charles III. The Duverje plantation home was built circa 1812-15 and was a splendid, strongly built, brick structure. Plantations and orange groves lined the river at this time, which was later to be replaced by sugar cane.

Barthelemy died in 1820, and his widow in 1839. The estate was divided among the heirs and Mrs. Evelina Duverje-Olivier, the widow’s daughter, received the fine old mansion, together with her share of the land adjoining. Over the years following, the plantation home went into a state of disrepair, at one point being used to house cattle.

The Police Jury Report of November 5th, 1866, mentions a proposition that the parish should buy the building, which was then being used as a school, known as St. George’s Academy. A week later, a committee suggested the building was “well fitted for Court House Offices and other requirements of the Parish.” The local jail was also situated there. Although the building was sound, it was in need of roof repairs.

The former Duverje mansion became the seat of justice of the right bank on March 13th, 1869. It was annexed to the City on March 14th, 1870, and designated as the Fifth District.

The present Courthouse is the third oldest continuously used courthouse in the State of Louisiana. Marriages, property assessments and small claims are now its everyday business. If open, go in and take a look at the old Courtroom upstairs and check out the view of the City across the river.

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On September 9, 1960, seven local university students staged a sit-in at Woolworth’s department store located at 1031 Canal Street to protest the store’s refusal to serve Black people at the lunch counter. According to The New Orleans States Item, this protest was “the first organized demonstration of its kind in New Orleans.” [1] The New Orleans chapter of Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) organized the protest and all seven protestors were CORE members. 

Protesters included five Black students and two white students--Jerome Smith of Southern University, Ruth Despenza of Southern University, Joyce Taylor of Xavier University, William Harper of University of New Orleans, Hugh Murray Jr. of Tulane University, William Harrell of Tulane University, and Archie Allen of Dillard University. Woolworth’s employees refused to serve the students when they sat down together at the lunch counter. The students remained seated at the counter while waitresses continued to serve white patrons. [1]

Crowds gathered to watch the protest. Store officials closed and barricaded the lunch counter, but the student protestors remained. Meanwhile, over forty police officers patrolled the store and surrounding area. District Attorney Richard A. Dowling ordered the students to leave the lunch counter, but they refused, and Dowling ordered their arrest. New Orleans Police Officers, under the direction of Superintendent Joseph I. Giarruso, arrested all seven protestors. Newspaper coverage of the arrests detailed the protestors’ names, age, school affiliation, and home address. [1]

Following the protest at Woolworth’s, Mayor Chep Morrison declared that sit-ins and picketing demonstrations were not permitted and directed the police department to prohibit the demonstrations through enforcement of Act 70 and Act 80 passed by the 1960 State Legislature. Under these new laws, demonstrators could be arrested for disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, or obstructing public sidewalks. [2] However, civil rights activists continued to hold protests and boycotts against Woolworth’s and other stores on Canal Street. In addition to calling for racially integrated services, protestors demanded stores employ Black people. 

In a 2017 interview, Dr. Raphael Cassimere reflected on his participation in the Canal Street protests. At the time of the protests, Cassimere was a student at the University of New Orleans (then LSUNO) and president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Youth Council. Cassimere stated that he never expected the protests to last so long, but it was not until 1965 (when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 went into effect) that Canal Street retailers finally yielded to protestors’ demands. [3] For more of Dr. Cassimere’s reflections on the Canal Street protests, see the video segments below.

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Located in Treme, the original Orleans Parish Prison stood where the Municipal Auditorium and Louis Armstrong Park stand today. From the 1830s to 1895, the prison housed individuals accused of crimes, including enslaved people who attempted to free themselves from bondage. [1]

The nineteenth-century newspaper advertisements in the images below come from Freedom on the Move, a database of fugitive slave advertisements including those placed by jailors appealing to enslavers to claim ownership of runaways. If someone accused a Black person in New Orleans of running away from slavery, jailors imprisoned them until their enslaver paid the bond. Black people, enslaved or free, lived under the constant threat of incarceration. Laws required free people of color to carry court-issued documents proving free status, known as freedom papers. The failure to show freedom papers at the request of any white person could result in imprisonment or enslavement. [2]

In 1895, The Times-Picayune described Orleans Parish Prison as “the place where refractory slaves were sent to receive a dose of cat o’nine tails, or to be confined in the dungeons… in extreme cases the rebellious blacks were kept immured in the dark cells on a diet of bread and water until reduced to the proper degree of submission.” [3] Jailors subjected enslaved people to degrading and torturous prison conditions as a punishment for running away.

It is not known exactly how many enslaved people spent time locked away behind these now forsaken walls. Nonetheless, the Orleans Parish Prison jailors’ advertisements reveal a lot of information about self-emancipated people and their experiences of physical escape to resist punishment, violence, and the other brutal conditions of slavery. [4] Names, physical descriptions, skills, family connections, and many more personal and individual characteristics surface in the advertisements. We can also learn how long a self-emancipated person lived outside of the confinements of slavery. During this time, self-emancipated people fostered a greater sense of privacy, autonomy, and freedom.

Even though many self-emancipated people ended up in bondage once again in the Orleans Parish Prison, their efforts show how enslaved people resisted enslavement and created their own freedom.

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In 1924, Times-Picayune journalist Lyle Saxon provided a description of Gallatin Street as it appeared in the 1920s, calling it “deserted, forgotten, given over to warehouses and storage rooms of produce merchants. It is permeated with the smells from the fish market, and with the odors of decaying garbage. Its narrow width is littered with trash and dirt—old shoes, broken barrels, rotting fruit. And yet, before the dark doors of one or two old houses, battered signs sway, signs proclaiming that ‘rooms’ are for rent.”

By the 1880s, Gallatin Street no longer fostered the kinds of crime and vice it was known for during the previous three decades. The Live Oak Gang had been mostly killed or jailed. On September 18, 1886, the Times-Picayune reported the arrest of Live Oak members Albert “Lagerbeer” Lockerby and Hugh O’Brien for the unsurprising charge of being drunk and disorderly.

The reporter goes on to assess the current state of Gallatin Street: “There was a time when no policeman on the force, single-handed, would have essayed the arrest of either one of these two men, nor of any one of the “Live Oak” crowd and has he possessed sufficient courage to place his hand on his shoulder, bloodshed, possibly murder, would have followed. Now they are weak and broken in spirit and in purse, and there are none so faint-hearted as to fear them.” The article continues, “Occasionally the old spirit will manifest itself among them, but they no more resort to the deadly revolver and murderous knife as they did in years gone by when Gallatin and Barracks streets were in their prime.”

William Knuckley, former member of the Live Oak Gang who was the intended victim of Thomas Pickett and the murderer of D.A.C. Lee, visited the Picayune office to respond to “a bad break” in the Times-Picayune’s previous article about Lagerbeer and O’Brien’s arrest. He expressed nostalgia for the men he used to call his “gang” and told stories of some of the more colorful characters on Gallatin Street. Knuckley had this to say of killing D.A.C. Lee, former owner of the Green Tree Tavern: “I killed Lee at his own door, and the man drank his own blood. He was full and so was I. Jack Lyons was with me. To tell the truth I feel kinder sorry that I killed Lee. He was a pretty good feller, but had my brother Mike’s girl, and I wasn’t going to stand that. Lord, how he did bleed! De floor at his feet was full of blood in a minute. I just out with my knife and let him have it.” For all his nostalgia, Knuckley certainly didn’t express remorse.

Two city ordinances solidified the decline of Gallatin Street as a center of vice. In 1897, City Ordinance 13032 created the boundaries of Storyville. It became illegal for dance houses and brothels once found on Gallatin Street to operate outside of Storyville’s limits. As Saxon noted, the street became a quiet, almost haunted, area, reserved for those who sold at the nearby markets. However, in 1935, Gallatin Street received its final blow. City Ordinance 14427 officially renamed the two-block stretch French Market Place, and plans were developed to tear down the two riverside blocks to make way for a new French Market shelter. This is the street we see today.

The nighttime no longer came alive with music and dancing and brawls on Gallatin Street. Once one of the most dangerous streets in the country, in the middle of one of the South’s economic centers, Gallatin was now slated for demolition to make way for a new cast of characters in the French Market. “From the river comes the sound of the whistles, the lapping of the water against the piling of the wharf. From the French Market there is a muffled sound of voices, the rattle of wagons unloading produce,” Lyle Saxon wrote in the Times-Picayune. He continues: “you find yourself listening for other sounds from behind the tight-shut doors of the deserted houses,” However, those sounds you strain to hear are long gone. The music is silenced, and the ladies’ screams of fear or of pleasure are replaced by the whistle of steamships in harbor. Saxon warns, “There are only ghosts on Gallatin Street.”

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Gallatin Street was once filled with barrooms, dance houses, and brothels — most institutions serving as all three. There was rarely a fee to enter, but men were encouraged to buy a drink for their dance partner at the end of each dance, keeping the bartenders happy and the patrons “loose.” The Times-Picayune reported that owning a bar on Gallatin Street required “Courage, Brutality, and Diplomacy.” Many stories from Gallatin's most notorious bars describe the dangerous of business of hanging around or worse, owning one of these taverns.

The California House was a popular barroom on Gallatin Street during the antebellum era. In 1854, a policeman named Phillips was suspended for attempting to prevent the arrest of Archy Murphy and David Kinney after the two started a brawl outside the California House. Peter Johnson, better known as “Dutch Pete,” owned the California House at the time of Murphy and Kinney’s brawl. Only a few years later, police protected Dutch Pete after he killed a man and escaped to Cuba. The California House was one of the Gallatin Street institutions that certainly had the police on its side.

The Amsterdam House hit its peak during the Civil War, after the infamous dog fighter Dan O’Neil took ownership of the place. It remained one of the best regarded dens of vice until 1869. The year of its decline started when Molly Mason, a prostitute who worked for O’Neil at the Amsterdam, ran away with her lover. When Mason returned seeking her job again, she was drugged, stripped, and abused in the alley behind the bar. Later that year, the police fined O’Neil for running a house of ill-repute, and he was forced to close the Amsterdam for good.

Of all the clubs on Gallatin Street, The Green Tree Tavern had one of the longest and most violent reputations. An article in the Times-Picayune recalls a sign that hung in front of the building on which “was painted a tree, green with foliage.” The Times-Picayune also described the building as a “three-story brick house [which] had three doors opening on Gallatin street and was two houses distance from Barracks street. The bar ran across the rear of the front room of the house, and in the rear was the ballroom.”

The Green Tree Tavern’s popularity peaked during the Civil War. The institution, however, seemed to curse all who dared to own it. Some Gallatin Street bar owners took to the custom of watering down drinks after the second or third round to temper drunkenness while saving a little money on alcohol. Harry Rice was one of the bar owners who had taken to watering down his patron’s drinks. This upset some sailors drinking at The Green Tree Tavern one night in 1854, and they responded by stoning Rice to death for his offense. From there, a woman took over the bar, but did not fare much better. In 1865, Mary Rich, better known as “One Legged Duffy,” was stabbed multiple times by her husband before being beaten by her own wooden leg.

After One Legged Duffy’s death, Paddy Welsh ran the Green Tree Tavern. He owned it until 1873, when he offended some members of the Live Oak Gang and was found drowned in the Mississippi River. Thomas Pickett became the next owner of the Green Tree. Pickett, not learning from Welsh’s mistakes, also took on members of the Live Oak Gang. On January 11, 1876, Jack Lowe and William Knuckley, members of the Live Oak Gang, caused a disturbance at the Green Tree. Infuriated, Pickett went looking for revenge. He found the two men at a nearby coffee shop with Knuckley’s brother, Mike. Pickett shot and killed Mike Knuckley, who hadn’t even been at the Green Tree that night. Pickett then fled the city, but in October 1867 was brought back to New Orleans in chains.

By the time Pickett returned to New Orleans, D.A.C. Lee and his wife Lena Welsh had taken over the club. Lee arrived in New Orleans during the Civil War as a drum major in the army. After the war ended, Lee married the widow Lena Welsh, who was the proprietor of the Green Tree Tavern. Lee worked as a police officer during the day, and as a bartender at the Green Tree Tavern at night. On October 8, 1876, Billy Lyons and William Knuckley, the same Knuckley brother Pickett was after, caused a disturbance at the Green Tree. As Lee was escorting the two men out of the bar, Knuckley turned and stabbed Lee, at which point Lyons fired two fatal shots at Lee.

In the 1880s, The Green Tree Tavern was converted to a bakery. By this time, vice on Gallatin Street was in decline. In 1886, a fire from Decatur Street leapt onto the old Green Tree building, burning it to the ground. Perhaps a fire was the most appropriate way to close the violent history of the Green Tree Tavern.

The rest of the street found a much more deliberate end, and the countless stories form Gallatin Street’s dark past were lost in the rubble.

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Gallatin Street’s close proximity to the port made it a quick and frequent stop for those who docked, worked, or lived near the booming economic area. Close to half a million immigrants came through New Orleans’ port between 1841 and 1860, and many of them didn’t make it past Gallatin Street. According to historian Judith Kellehar Schafer, the majority of prostitutes in and around the area were immigrant women. Prostitution, known as New Orleans' second most profitable industry, The second most profitable industry in New Orleans, prostitution, also benefitted from the transient guests of Gallatin Street.

Schafer cites a study published by William W. Sanger in 1858 on the sex industry. Sanger found that after women were entangled in sex work, they often died within four years. He also found that at least fifty percent of prostitutes had sexually transmitted diseases. Although Sanger's study is based in New York City, Schafer applies his findings to New Orleans, and she reinforces the prominence of venereal disease in New Orleans by citing the recurring ads in New Orleans’ papers during that period for “cures” and remedies for sexually transmitted diseases.

Gerald Capers notes that during the Civil War, when Union soldiers were stationed in New Orleans, venereal disease among soldiers (who were regular visitors to brothels) cost the Department of the Gulf “50,000 to 100,000 days of service.” If public women didn’t die of disease, they died from being subjected to violence at the hands of drunken patrons or angry bar owners. In 1857, a young Irish immigrant named Mary Jane died by the knife of an angry customer in John Swan’s brothel after refusing certain sexual services. Such violent acts were not uncommon on Gallatin Street.

While women were often victims of violent crime, some women were also active criminals. In 1859, three prostitutes were charged with larceny after working together to steal from a patron of Archy Murphy’s brothel, at which the women were employed. Another famous woman, Mary Jane Jackson, better known as Bricktop, skipped theft and went straight to assault. A scourge throughout New Orleans, Bricktop also worked for Archy Murphy until she was deemed too rough for even one of the roughest dance houses on Gallatin Street. It is said that she carried a knife personally designed with two five-inch blades on either end. In December 1861, she took her violent streak so far as to kill her own husband. The Times-Picayune commented on the murder as such: “Both were degraded beings, regular penitentiary birds, habitual drunkards, and unworthy of any further notice from honest people.”

Three brothel owners on Gallatin Street were particularly violent—Archy Murphy, the brothel owner noted before, George Kent, and John Swan. In 1856, Swan successfully led a brawl of men and women against the police, then assaulted a man and beat a woman in two separate instances. Kent and Swan’s violence seemed to be a family affair. In 1858, the two bar owners’ wives were involved in a fight in which George Kent’s wife attacked and kicked the wife of John Swan. The bar owners had to be tough to run a club on this street, whose drunk and rowdy clientele could often hold their own in a fight and had very little to lose.

A group of men known as the Live Oak Gang frequented Gallatin Street. Although a motley crew, they were the closest thing to organized crime in the area. Herbert Asbury claims that the group earned their name by carrying around oak clubs, and because of their meeting place near the river in a pile of live oak knees. They were generally unwelcome in brothels because they were sure to cause a fight. The only club where they were welcome was Bill Swan’s Fireproof Saloon. Asbury claims that Bill Swan was once a member of the Live Oak Gang, but after Swan made a good amount of money, he invested in business rather than crime. The Live Oak boys were even violent towards one another. In 1886, the O’Brien brothers got into an argument at Bill Swan’s Fireproof Saloon that ended with the younger brother, Matt, shooting his older brother, Hugh. Hugh later died in Charity hospital. It was a gamble to trust a member of the Live Oak Gang, even if you were a member yourself.

Police were known to avoid Gallatin Street without a partner, especially at night. Antebellum-era police in New Orleans were understaffed and underpaid--two factors that Schafer claims made officers susceptible to bribes and apathy. However, some police officers took advantage of the underworld they were meant to protect. For example, in 1852, the Times-Picayune reported that a watchman on Gallatin Street threatened to shut down a woman’s brothel “unless she consented to certain propositions made by him.” In 1857, a police officer named Lieutenant Legget was accused of preventing the arrest of Arthur Guerin. A year earlier, Guerin had been dismissed from the police force after trying to cover up a murder on Gallatin Street. The murderer, “Dutch Pete,” former owner of the California House on Gallatin Street, had killed a man near his dance house. Guerin allowed for Dutch Pete to flee to Havana while Guerin “took care” of witnesses to the murder in New Orleans. The lack of police presence on Gallatin Street created an environment where crime and violence ruled the streets.

Of course, some police officers attempted to uphold the law. In 1860, for instance, Schafer cites that 36 women were arrested in Gallatin Street brothels and were sent to the workhouse for six months, but were soon let off on a technicality. Often, police would target prostitutes while ignoring the more violent crimes in the area. However, the bad cops outnumbered the good, and so prostitutes, drunks and criminals became the law enforcers of Gallatin Street.

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A small, two-block stretch called Gallatin Street, now called French Market Place, was once the headquarters of vice in New Orleans. A visitor to the street in 1873 described the scene for the Times-Picayune:

"Gallatin street is wet and slippery, it is dimly lighted, for rows of tall houses with battered, broken shutters, and windows unlighted, look down on the stones below. Gallatin street has a puddle here and there on the sidewalk, but these cannot be seen, as the moon has not come yet over the edge of the tall, seemingly untenanted houses by which the street passes. But the houses with the wet bricks and the dark broken windows are inhabited by hundreds of human beings. This is one of the haunts of poverty. Squalor and misery are sleeping above in chambers so dark and damp as the cold pavestones below.

"We reach the doorway of a large room, whence the music proceeds. We pause, look in, and a sailor with a blue shirt and trousers and a blue flat cap on the back of his head, half grunts, half hiccoughs as he says, 'Sail in if yer after fun an' frolicking.'"

Although arguably on the decline by the time this article was published, Gallatin Street sheltered some of the most dangerous criminals, prostitutes, street gangs and con men of the mid-1800s in New Orleans. Named for Albert Gallatin, the secretary of the treasury under Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, the two-block street connected the US Mint building to the French Market. Its location next to the Mississippi River made it a spot for sailors to find housing, drink, and entertainment. The port of New Orleans during this time was never empty, keeping a constant flow of men and women through Gallatin Street's infamous boarding houses, brothels, and saloons.

Its location amid the wharves and railroad tracks made it undesirable, so many of the empty rooms in the multistoried buildings that lined Gallatin Street became the homes of recently arrived immigrant families. The area also had a substantial concentration of yellow fever cases, a particularly deadly virus in antebellum New Orleans. A study done by Edward Hall Barton published in 1857 describes the daytime scene of the area:

" . . . boarding, or rather lodging, houses, occupied, many of them, by crowds who only sleep there, eating and working out, with no privies (these being monopolized by the tenants on the ground floor). The streets and levee opposite are used for this purpose; small rooms are sometimes occupied by whole families; some use them for raising fowls and dogs, and as receptacles for vegetables for market, and the refuse of the unsaleables of the market from day to day with little regard to removing the half decayed relics."

From antebellum times until the latter part of the 1870s, Gallatin Street served as the meeting place for those who participated in New Orleans’ underworld. In the late 1890s, most brothels and barrooms moved to Storyville, and plans were developed in the 1930s to redevelop the street for the expansion of the French Market. Steadily in decline through the early 1900s, Gallatin Street buildings were demolished and the street was officially renamed French Market Place in 1935.

Much of Gallatin Street’s history is shrouded in legend. This tour will introduce you to some of the people and places that gave Gallatin Street its notorious, if now forgotten, reputation.

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The 1980s saw a notable decline in the park's prestige. Numerous residents wrote letters to the editor in the Times Picayune complaining about litter in the park; one letter was titled “Palmer Park Dump.” The most common complaints were about broken bottles throughout the park, especially in the sand areas where children played, and vagrancy; one article labeled the park as a “hotel for winos” and another describing the park as a place where the homeless slept every night. In September 1980 Nancy Shepard adopted the park through the Parks and Parkways Commission’s “Adopt an Area” Program; she noted her plan was to collect money to hire youth to clean up the park. City Councilman Bryan Wagner also became involved and organized park clean-ups and was able to secure the hiring of a full-time groundskeeper. He also passed through a city ordinance banning the drinking of alcohol in the park in 1984. In 1982 the Palmer Park Neighborhood Association was formed and listed as their top priority eliminating litter and crime in the park.

Crime had become a larger problem in the park in the 80s. Numerous Times Picayune articles described armed robberies and violent assaults in Palmer. The park did continue to be the site of community gatherings like the annual Carrollton caroling, the inauguration ceremony for two state officials in 1988, and a 1988 “World Peace Through Race Unity” rally, but the area was more often described as a site of litter and crime than as a community space as it had been in earlier decades.

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For many years, a bar called “Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop” has occupied this building at the corner of Bourbon Street and St. Philip Street. Designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1970, Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop was built between 1772 and 1791 as “a French Colonial Louis XV townhouse of briquette-entre-poteaux construction.”

Legend suggests that Jean Lafitte and his brother Pierre Lafitte operated a blacksmith shop here as a “front” for selling goods and enslaved people they plundered on the high seas. However, author Stanley Clisby Arthur, who also served as regional director of the Survey of Federal Archives during the Depression, discovered that the name “Lafitte” never appeared in any of the property records for this structure. In his 1936 book Old New Orleans, Arthur concluded that the name “Lafitte” was misspelled and should have been spelled “Laffite”:

New Orleans’ notarial records, however, are literally filled with thousands of sales of enslaved people by brother Pierre. Jean’s signature appears only occasionally, but in each case, the surname is spelled “Laffite” [and not “Lafitte,” which is the orthodox spelling] by the signatory.

In addition to this French Quarter location, the Lafittes resided on Barataria, an island located in Barataria Bay close to Grand Isle, Louisiana. This island was also called Grand Terre.

Jean and Pierre Lafitte and their privateers assisted Jackson and the Americans at the Battle of New Orleans. The Baratarians, as Jean Lafitte and his followers were called, had been approached by British officials to act as allies and waterway guides. Acting as leader of the "Frenchmen of Barataria," Jean Lafitte advised American authorities of the British offer, ultimately securing from Jackson promises of amnesty for past offenses in return for siding with the United States and committing his men to battle. Louisiana Governor William C.C. Claiborne eventually offered Jean Lafitte and his men a full pardon “should their conduct in the Field meet the approbation of Major General Jackson.” Before reaching that settlement, several complicating factors characterized the exchanges between Claiborne and Lafitte.

On September 4, 1814, Lafitte wrote Jean Blanque, a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, informing him of the British offer and including copies of the British correspondence. In exchange, Lafitte asked for the release of his brother Pierre who was locked up in the Calaboose, or city prison. Lafitte also wrote to Governor Claiborne, offering his services and those of his men to defend New Orleans. Lafitte asked Claiborne for a pardon for him and his men. “I am the stray sheep, wishing to return to the sheepfold,” he wrote.

Claiborne and his defense council voted to refuse Lafitte’s offer of assistance. The United States revenue officer insisted that Lafitte be removed from Barataria and his operations shut down. Coincidentally, Lafitte’s brother Pierre escaped from prison on September 6, 1814.

Less than two weeks later, on September 16, 1814, the Carolina, an American schooner with 14 guns under command of Commodore Daniel Patterson, and six gunboats left New Orleans, sailed down the Mississippi River and attacked Grand Terre, Lafitte’s headquarters. Lafitte's men, not knowing if the attacking fleet was British or American, took battle stations. The Carolina raised a flag offering pardon for deserters. The Baratarians abandoned their vessels without resistance. The Americans seized 8 ships, 20 cannons, and an estimated $500,000 worth of goods and captured 80 Baratarians, but not Jean and Pierre Lafitte.

General Andrew Jackson originally described Lafitte as a “hellish banditti.” However, Jackson finally accepted Lafitte’s help in December 1814 because of the ammunition, cannoneers, and knowledge of the area Lafitte could supply. The expert cannon fire of Jackson’s troops, including Lafitte’s Baratarians, contributed to the American victory over the British at the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815. So impressed with the artillery skills of Baratarian Dominique You at Battery No. 3, Jackson reportedly stated before the Battle: “I wish I had fifty such guns on this line, with five hundred such devils as those fellows are at their butts.”

On February 6, 1815, President Madison issued a Proclamation, granting a full pardon to Jean Lafitte and the Baratarians for their role in the defense of New Orleans, stating in part: “Offenders, who have refused to become the associates of the enemy in the war, upon the most seducing terms of invitation; and who have aided to repel his hostile invasion of the territory of the United States; can no longer be considered as objects of punishment, but as objects of a generous forgiveness.”

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Southport was one of the most infamous clubs in the area. It was owned by Carlos Marcello and is now a music venue called Southport Hall. It moved and changed names several times.

According to Al Kleindienst, in the early 1910s Joe Hiland became one of Southport's "gambling pioneers." He ran Hiland's Southport Inn, which was renamed Southport Club. He taught Mickey, Rudy and George O'Dwyer the business. "After some time he sold them the club. Sometime around 1916 they in turn sold the club to Charlie Kerner, who renamed it the Old Southport Club. In the meantime, George and Rudy built a club two blocks away on Monticello at Willow Street. They named their place the original Southport Club. They were in business here from 1916 to 1942, when a fire destroyed the club...In the 1930s there was a building between the Old Southport and the Original Southport which the O'Dwyers used briefly.

"This building was called Jefferson Inn. Sometime thereafter Carlos Marcello took over, and it was renamed the New Southport Club. This is the only gambling building which has survived, and it now serves as the Southport Hall, a night club, which can also be rented for weddings etc."

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According to Al Kleindienst, a long-time resident of the Greater New Orleans Area, the O'Dwyer family opened a gambling club at 100 Jefferson Highway in 1949 called "O'Dwyer's." The O'Dwyer brothers were well-connected and operated many different clubs for decades. Though gaming was technically illegal, they were established members of the community.

In an interview, Al Kleindienst reflected on his in-laws' visits to the O'Dwyer club:

"It was a way of life in New Orleans. They, my mother-in-law, they never really had a lot of money. He [my father in law] was a lieutenant with the fire department. But once or twice a month [people] would get dressed up and come to Beverly or O'Dwyer or something like that and just enjoy it. Just eating good and gambling a little. And the music... they'd dance and everything. It was just a way of life. It was really nice. But. Like I said... Washington didn't get their share [in taxes], and that was the end of that. So it's a way of life that just stopped going on."

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According to Al Kleindienst, after a fire in 1942 destroyed George and Rudy O'Dwyer's Original Southport Club, they "moved to the Club Forest at 407 Jefferson Highway and called it O'Dwyer's Club Forest. They operated this club from 1943 to the fall of 1944 when they sold it to the Mills brothers--Henry, Frank and Arthur--Al Schorling and Carlos Marcello, and they changed the name to Original Club Forest."

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Al Kleindienst explained that he met a Dakin Street club owner because the owner would frequent the Kleindienst bakery. Al asked the man why he was always buying so many birthday cakes, and the owner explained that "if he was informed that they was going to have a raid, they would turn the table upside down, put the cake in the middle of the table, and everybody would gather around and they would start singing happy birthday."

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Oral history interview with Buddy Adams about gambling in Jefferson.

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The state of illicit gambling in New Orleans was summed up well in the 1938 WPA New Orleans City Guide, "although gambling is, strictly speaking, illegal, these places are usually open for business from dusk to dawn." Gambling had a strong presence throughout the Greater New Orleans Area.

According to Hank Staples, part owner of the Maple Leaf Bar, "there was a lot of gambling; it was tolerated. I guess more than tolerated because it was so wide open, so blatant." Al Kleindienst, a lifetime resident of the Greater New Orleans Area, shared some of his memories of the prevalence of gambling as well. "They had a sheriff out that way [Arabi], who had his own place," Al said in a 2012 interview. "He had chips that had his initials on it."

Below you will find an excerpt from a video interview with New Orleans resident Buddy Adams discussing the past prevalence of gambling houses.

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Clubs often changed owners, locations and names, but the general area and primary circle of families involved with the clubs remained largely consistent. While the gaming activity was illegal, it was largely tolerated (when not explicitly supported) by the public and police, until Tennessee Senator Estes Kaefauver's investigations began the process that led them to shut down in the 1950s. The club owners were often associated with organized crime rings, and many have suggested that the New Orleans illegal gambling circuit was the proto-type for Las Vegas casinos.

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Hank Staples of the Maple Leaf Bar discusses illicit gambling that took place along Oak Street prior to the 1960s.

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