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 this episode, Eddie and Lauren talk about the struggles of studying the lives of people without a historical record and explore the Irish immigrant experience in New Orleans.

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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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In 2013, archaeological firms conducted test excavations in City Square 383 in the Melpomene neighborhood, the city block once bounded by Erato, Freret, Thalia, and South Robertson (or Locust) Streets. Testing focused on lots along the former corner of South Robertson and Erato Streets, where archaeologists identified a number of brick building foundations and midden (domestic waste) deposits. In 1895, the construction of a double house at 1300-1302 South Robertson Street replaced an earlier frame dwelling. This structure would eventually function as a combination business and residence, variously identified as a corner grocery, saloon, barber shop, soft drink establishment (as it was called after Prohibition), retail liquor business, and barroom over some five decades. A man named Saverio (Americanized to Sam or Jim) Salvaggio served as the longest tenured proprietor of this shop, and at least some of the archaeological material recovered from the address is likely related to his family’s tenure at the location from around 1905 until 1925.

Both Sam and his wife Josephine (born Giuseppa) arrived in the United States from Bisacquino, Sicily in the latter part of the 1880s, just before the infamous 1891 lynching of eleven Italian men by a mob angered over the murder of a New Orleans police chief. This violent episode, which became an international scandal, must have affected the Salvaggio’s sense of security in their new country. In 1883, Sam and Josephine married and in 1902 Sam naturalized his status as a United States citizen. A man named Hillary M. Nugent served as the witness in Sam’s naturalization. This is presumably the same Hillary Nugent listed as the owner of the 1300-1302 South Robertson Street property in 1900, an Irish-born clerk living there with his wife and four children. Nugent sold the property to Sam Salvaggio in 1908, but apparently Sam already participated in the business there in 1903, when a short blurb in the Daily Picayune mentions the results of a pool tournament at “Salvaggio’s,” identified as being on that corner.

According to the 1910 Census, Sam Salvaggio lived at the address with Josephine, their three children, and Josephine’s mother. All of these people still resided there in 1920, although daughter Virginia, now an adult herself, had married Leo Conners. Virginia continued to live at 1300-1302 South Robertson Street, along with Leo and a four-month-old infant, while the Salvaggios had added another daughter themselves.

Sam Salvaggio ran afoul of the city’s increasing attempts to segregate social spaces in 1908, when the City cited him for violating the ‘Gay-Shattuck’ law, which mandated that saloons and bars be racially segregated. Italian immigrants found themselves in a difficult situation in regard to segregation, as racist ideologues and anti-immigrant activists sought to cast doubt on the ‘whiteness’ of people from southern and eastern Europe and stigmatize them as criminals.

As for many operators of saloons and barrooms, the federal prohibition of alcohol also created legal and financial problems for the Salvaggios. Many bar owners tried to circumvent the new legislation. The City fined “Savario Salvaggio” $50 for violations of the “Federal Dry Law,” and a 1924 account of an arrest describes Frank Salvaggio, Sam’s son, as a “two-timer” for liquor-related crimes. In 1929, the police arrested Frank Salvaggio and Vincent Puleo, husband of Salvaggio’s daughter Mary, in connection with the discovery of a 75 gallon still.

Perhaps these legal troubles (and the difficulty of operating a ‘soda’ vending establishment profitably) caused Sam to give up the business on South Robertson. Sam is last associated with the property in 1925. Sam Salvaggio died in 1929, survived by Josephine Salvaggio who died in 1957, while their family thrived in the city’s growing civically active Italian American community.

The images below illustrate a number of archaeological findings from this site that tell us more about the Salvaggio family’s time living in the Melpomene neighborhood.

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In working class neighborhoods like the Melpomene in Central City, the importance of women’s labor in the household’s economy is visible both in historical records and archaeological materials. Women worked as dress makers, cooks, and laundresses. Their work financially sustained households, especially in times of labor instability.

From 1900 to 1930, Black men living in the Melpomene neighborhood found jobs around the nearby railyards, though this period saw a general shift away from higher paying skillful or union jobs and towards unorganized labor or service work. This shift played a part in a concerted effort by business and industry to marginalize Black workers and subvert biracial labor cooperation, a campaign that continued throughout the twentieth century.

After 1900, Black residents made up an increasing proportion of the Melpomene neighborhood. However, it provided a frequent home for immigrants who found themselves at the margins of white society, especially those considered non-white in the two-tiered racial hierarchy of the segregated South. Chinese immigrant Sue Wah operated a laundry at 1233 South Liberty Street from 1900-1908. The late-nineteenth century saw large-scale immigration from Sicily and from Eastern Europe. Archaeological artifacts found at the corner of South Robertson and Erato Streets, indicate that the Salvaggios, a Sicilian American family, lived there in the early 1900s.

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In 2013, archaeological consulting firm Earth Search, Inc., excavated a block of the Melpomene neighborhood originally bounded by South Liberty, Erato, Clio, and Howard/LaSalle Streets. Earth Search identified brick foundations and artifacts from a number of different addresses across this particular block. The most informative materials recovered came from a wood-lined privy shaft located along a property line between two homes at 1220 and 1222-1224 Howard/La Salle Street. Archaeological findings suggest that the privy was filled during the 1930s, presumably representing a cleaning episode linked to a family moving from the house or a change in ownership. Glass bottles and containers, many of them intact, filled the privy along with a smaller collection of ceramic tablewares, personal items, and butchered animal bones.

The 1930 Census recorded a woman named Minnie Puckett as the owner of 1222 Howard Street. The Census described Minnie Puckett as a 49-year-old “Negro” widow, born in Mississippi to parents from Virginia. The Census valued the home, where she resided with her 13-year-old granddaughter, at $4400. Minnie Puckett’s thirty-year-old daughter, Lucille Puckett, rented the other side of the house. Also born in Mississippi, Lucille Puckett lived with her four daughters: Edna (10), Helen (8), Genieve (5), and Minnie (3), named for her grandmother. Minnie Puckett resided at this house until her death, after which the house appears in an advertisement for a property seizure and auction by the Civil Sheriff in 1937. By the time of the 1940 Census, the Puckett family no longer owned 1222 Howard Street. The Pucketts’ departure from the house seems like the sort of life event that caused the filling of the privy.

The archaeological assemblage from the privy gives us a small glimpse of everyday life in the household, and of the hopes and obstacles faced by Black families of this generation. The images below illustrate and describe some of the objects found in the Puckett family privy.

The Puckett family’s story epitomizes the aspirations of Black migrants to New Orleans in the early twentieth century, but it also shows the precarity of their position in a segregated society in which oppressive forces devalued their labor and sabotaged their chances of property ownership. The Pucketts moved to New Orleans from Mississippi by 1920, when both Minnie and Lucille lived at 2605 Calliope Street. Minnie was already widowed and working as a laundress. Lucille’s husband, Eddie Carr, a laborer from Alabama, and Andrew Puckett, Minnie’s son working as a brakeman on the railroad, also resided with Minnie and Lucille on Calliope Street.

It must have taken considerable hard work for the family to purchase the property on Howard Street, particularly after the death of Andrew Puckett in 1920. Legal problems surrounded Andrew’s succession, trapping Lucille in litigation issues until the late 1920s. The loss of the property must have been a devastating blow to Lucille and her family.

Of course, the Puckett family’s dreams didn’t end at the moment in time captured by the archaeological assemblage at 1222 Howard Street. Lucille’s children grew up and had families of their own, eventually moving into the Calliope Housing Project nearby. The story of the house lost at 1222 Howard Street passed through family generations as a lesson in being careful in business and personal affairs, and a warning to not be taken advantage of. Lucille’s family remembers her tough and hard-working character, taking on extra jobs to provide more for her family. She insisted that they shouldn’t be content with their lot and should strive for better. Her daughter inherited some of her tastes for fine china and elegant petticoats, symbols of affluence in a racist society structured to keep them as second-class citizens. Many of Minnie’s descendants still reside in New Orleans and saved photos of Minnie, Andrew, and Lucille that they shared with researchers for this project.

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Between the 1930s and 1960s, racist policies at every level of government pushed Black residents of New Orleans into lower-paying jobs and racially segregated neighborhoods. Throughout the nation, local and federal government agencies used coded terms like urban renewal, racial covenants, and red-lining to describe their efforts to segregate housing and homeownership. These policies limited possibilities for Black residents to achieve independence, financial security, and other opportunities for their families.

Of course, Black New Orleanians worked to resist and counter the effects of structural racism in whatever ways they could. The written historical record gives glimpses of individual families who tried to use homeownership as a foothold on economic security in the Melpomene neighborhood. Segregation in an urban setting also provided avenues for prosperity with the formation of businesses catering to Black customers that white-owned businesses often excluded.

By engaging archaeological artifacts excavated from the Guste Homes site in 2004, alongside the written historical record that documents the lives of families who lived in the Melpomene neighborhood prior to its 1961 demolition, we can gain a deeper understanding of residents’ lives.

For instance, Edward Shannon, first a renter at 1219-1221 Howard/LaSalle Streets, owned the property by 1930 while working as a superintendent for a life insurance company. He later opened a furniture repair business at the same location. Another home at 1216 Freret was owned by a series of railroad porters in the period from 1920-1940, while, in 1926, a Black family of Puerto Rican descent headed by Jose Fuentes purchased a home at 2317 Erato and lived there through 1949.

It is often a mixture of luck and circumstance when a particular household is represented in the archaeological record of a neighborhood, and sometimes it can be very difficult to link material remains with specific families. However, the Puckett family at 1222-1224 Howard/LaSalle can be traced in both documents and in the objects they left behind in a privy shaft, apparently filled when they moved out in the 1930s.

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The French may claim New Orleans French bread, but later immigrant bakers' influence on the city's bread-making traditions is undeniable. At the turn of the nineteenth century, a wave of Sicilian immigration to New Orleans left a lasting impact on the city's culture and economy. Nowhere is this more evident than the French Quarter, where traces of a once-thriving community known as "Little Palermo" are still etched in tiles and memories. Many of the Sicilians who arrived in New Orleans lived and worked in the French Quarter and forged a path in the commercial food business, unloading produce on the wharves, truck farming, and establishing grocery stores, restaurants, macaroni factories, and bakeries.

The 1891 City Directory lists a baker on St. Philip Street named Agostino Lombardo, who arrived in New Orleans from Trabia, outside of Palermo. [1, 2] There were almost 200 bakers in New Orleans at that time, most with German or French names. Agostino Lombardo was one of only two bakers at that time with an Italian last name (the other was Lorenzo Federico, a pasta maker, also on St. Philip Street). With his father Francesco and brother Filippo, Agostino Lombardo soon moved to 1210 Decatur Street, where "F. Lombardo and Sons Bakery" operated until declaring bankruptcy in 1941. [3]

Lombardo Bakery was one of the earliest recorded Italian bread bakeries in New Orleans. [4] With entrances facing both Decatur Street and French Market Place (previously Gallatin Street), Lombardo Bakery served the port, and the growing Sicilian community clustered near the bustling French Market. The grandson of Francesco Lombardo, Frank Lombardo, wondered in a 2015 oral history, "why do they call this the French Market? It's all Italians. Sicilians!" [5] This tight-knit community added their language, traditions, and foods to an already vibrant mix of New Orleans cultures. Other small, multi-generational Sicilian bakers such as Lanasa, Ancona, Aiovolasiti/Ace Bakery, Lovoi, Ruffino, Evola, Gendusa, Brocato, and LoGiudice/United Bakery, continued the French and American bread-making traditions of New Orleans. But they also added their own styles of bread to the mix, including the famous "poor boy loaf," St. Joseph's bread, braided sesame twist loaves, sfincione pizza, and the other well-known loaf, the muffuletta. Lombardo's bakery laid the groundwork for this dynasty of Sicilian bread-makers to follow.

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Bread-baking is a hard, physically demanding job. Before the Civil War, most bakery owners relied on apprenticeships and enslaved laborers to handle the workload. Postbellum bakery workers inherited a system of forced on-premises lodging, 16 to 23-hour shifts with no days off, low wages, hard manual labor, and dangerous, unsanitary conditions. The New Orleans bakers’ union took shape in the 1880s to address these concerns. Although largely a forgotten force, the New Orleans bakers’ union is an important piece of the city's baking and labor history. It is responsible for what are now considered standard labor practices (eight-hour workday, overtime, paid vacation, and safety measures).

On January 13, 1886, representatives from the local bakers’ union joined those from ten other cities in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to establish the Journeymen Bakers’ National Union. In New Orleans, the Journeymen Bakers’ Union presented a list of demands at their offices at No. 52 and 54 Exchange Place (now 220 Exchange Alley). [1] Although the union occupied several different downtown addresses throughout its existence, this first recorded location was on a busy commercial thoroughfare that housed several other labor organizations. A group of fifty-three mostly small bakery owners formed a separate Baker Bosses’ Union to “support and assist the Journeymen Bakers’ Union.” [2] It was later renamed the Master Bakers Association of New Orleans and was tasked with negotiating agreements with the labor union.

By 1892, the union expanded to include ice cream and candy makers, renaming itself Union of Journeymen Bakers and Confectioners. 1892 also marked the general strike in New Orleans when several other labor movements joined together to force business owners to negotiate. The bakers’ union demands included a closed union shop, a six-day workweek, a twelve-hour day (fifteen on Friday), the abolishment of forced lodging, union product labeling, and two holidays. [3] Most of the owners agreed to the union demands. [4]

One unexpected result of the union’s action to highlight working conditions was an increased public concern not for the well-being of bakers, but customers, due to perceived unhygienic bakeries and “unclean bread.” Advertisements in the early 1900s emphasized “sanitary bakeries” and bread “untouched by human hands.” [5] The New Orleans Health Department passed several related sanitary ordinances around this time, requiring bread to be placed behind a screen or wrapped. A 1909 newspaper article described the "crusade" of the pure food department of the city's Board of Health to enforce bakery ordinances. The inspectors frequently targeted immigrant bakers in the Sicilian section of the French Quarter. [6]

The bakers' union continued to strengthen in size and power, becoming one of the city's largest labor organizations. [7] The New Orleans branch of the union, Local No. 35, opened its doors to Black bakers in 1918, a rare example of an interracial bakers' association in the South, but common in a city where Black and white laborers often worked together in the same trade. [8] A 1939 bulletin by the United States Department of Labor titled "Wages, Hours, and Working Conditions in Union Bakeries" points to a changing industry and union. As bakery work shifted from small hands-on shops to factory-type bakeries, the list of job descriptions moved beyond ovenmen, mixers, and benchmen to include machine operators, maintenance men, elevator operators, clerks, and janitors. The union bakeries in New Orleans maintained more hands-on jobs than other cities. They also had slightly lower wages and a longer workweek than other cities. [9]

Collective bargaining negotiations preceding a threatened strike in 1947 revealed that 90% of bakeries in New Orleans employed union labor. These 1,100 union bakers produced 700,000 loaves of bread per day to feed a city. [10] While the bakers’ union no longer operates in New Orleans, many of the benefits and conditions it fought for still linger in the city’s remaining traditional bread bakeries. Local No. 35 laid the groundwork for bakery workers to earn their daily bread.

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The intersection of St. Peter and Royal Streets is loud and busy with the passing hustle of to-go drinks, music, and tourists, making it hard to notice a faded patch of tile work outside the corner grocery store located at 701 Royal Street. However, this almost hidden marker is a powerful reminder of a long line of baking and confectionary businesses that once occupied the space and built on French and Spanish colonial baking traditions.

Mannessier’s Confectionary was the last of several bakeries to operate out of the location. An 1895 photograph shows the elegant and ornate interior of Mannessier’s, lined with the above-mentioned tilework. (Pictured below) According to owner Adolph LeClerc’s 1912 obituary, “he owned a confectionary at the time of his death, which is noted throughout the city as one of the landmarks of the old French section.” [1] The first recorded bakery to operate out of this location was Cadet’s Bakery (1789 to 1824). Frenchman Jacques Molon (or Moulon) established Cadet’s in a rear structure facing St. Peter Street and operated a mill "in which coarse flour, floated down the Mississippi River on flatboats, was reground to a finer grade – the grade that made the loaves Cadet sold over the counters of his corner store second to none. No other baker made a better brioche." [2]

Bakers and millers were among the first laborers sent by the French government to New Orleans in 1718, bringing the supplies and knowledge necessary to establish strong bread-making and bread-eating traditions. The first recorded commercial bakery in New Orleans was for a baker named Francois Lemelle (or Lemesle), who operated under the alias of “Bellegarde” at the corner of St. Ann and Chartres Streets. [3] These transplanted French bakers relied on standard methods and recipes. The types of bread baked resembled those popular in eighteenth-century France – large dense round loaves of mixed grains, smaller enriched loaves of white flour, and hard, long-lasting biscuits suitable for sea voyages. Bakeries often produced two qualities of bread, one of more refined quality and one of second quality, for those unable to afford the higher-priced loaves. This two-tiered bread system continued into the next century and reinforced bread as a marker of social class. [4] Eventually, the more elite white loaves of bread became the norm, replacing the large whole grain loaves. [5] Today, small artisan bakeries are again reversing the trend, returning to whole grain rustic loaves, but this time at an elevated status/price.

Bakeries in eighteenth-century New Orleans also resembled bakeries of the same time in France -- equipped with one or more wood-burning brick ovens, wooden peels to move the loaves in and out, long wooden dough troughs to mix the dough, and a workbench to weigh and shape loaves. By 1820, approximately sixty French bakers and confectioners operated in New Orleans close to the Mississippi River – a source for the water needed to make bread. Rainwater collected in outdoor cisterns provided an additional source of water. While the bread baked at Cadet’s bakery maintained a French identity, the bakery opened when New Orleans was under Spanish colonial control. The Spanish colonial forces had a lasting impact on bread-making history in New Orleans not through recipes but by implementing ordinances on the price of flour and the size and price of bread due to flour shortages. The Municipal Council of New Orleans also taxed the number of barrels of flour bakers consumed to collect funds for the city's illumination system. This tax replaced a system of taxation based on the number of chimneys on each building, obsolete following a fire in 1784 that destroyed many buildings and chimneys. [6] These government regulations contributed to the standardization of a loaf of bread in the city.

After Cadet’s bakery closed, several other bakers and confectioners operated in that same location (Leblanc, Lefevre, Tambelli, Vincent, Desbonnes and Bonnecayes, Mannessier, and LeClerc). [7] While always evolving and adapting, the bread-making traditions of New Orleans remain firmly established in the familiar identity of the early French bakers.

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Often visible in the background of historic images of the French Market, the three-story Italianate building with the “Garic’s Bakery" sign anchored the neighborhood. [1] Garic’s Bakery was once part of a bustling riverfront commercial corridor, closely intertwined with the nearby port and public farmers market, at times even taking on the name “French Market Bakery.” An 1893 newspaper article reported Garic’s bakery among the merchants that offered hurricane relief to the lower coast's oystermen, who traded near the French Market. [2]

Newspaper advertisements throughout the bakery’s existence reflected the busy, diverse, and ever-changing French Quarter neighborhood. The bakery was “always open,” operated 24 hours a day, serviced ships, and supplied loaves of bread and pastries to some of the city’s finest restaurants as well as the people who lived, shopped, and worked in the area. The bakery was referred to as the “French Italian Bakery” (that sold rye bread!) and adapted its products to customer demand. Some of the types of bread baked at Garic's over its almost one-hundred-year existence included hardtack for ships (a long-lasting biscuit that looks like a flat, dimpled disk, a staple since the colonial era), cap bread, French bread, Sicilian St. Joseph's bread, German rye and pumpernickel bread, and French biscuits.

When Lawson Garic opened his namesake bakery in 1885, close to 150 bakeries were listed in the New Orleans City Directory. Garic had previously managed Stiegler Bakery near the Treme Market and was a flour merchant to some of the city’s older bakeries, such as Chretien’s. Just as bakeries reflected the surrounding community's needs, they also had to adapt to outside forces such as sanitary laws and flour shortages. In the early 1900s, health ordinances required bakeries to wrap loaves and adjust loaf size, resulting in the standardization of products. [3] Records show that a rise in ingredients' cost resulted in a 1916 request to renegotiate Garic’s contract to deliver 17,000 pounds of bread a month to Charity hospital. [4] After a few years, Garic left the bakery business to pursue real estate ventures, but family members continued to operate the bakery until 1952. [5]

In the 1930s and 1940s, new challenges, such as industrialization, changing bread styles, and World War II labor shortages appeared. An article from 1933 reveals the growing popularity of "poor boy" loaves and machine-made sliced pan bread versus old-fashioned French bread and the French cap bread. The same article highlights Sterling Garic, a third-generation owner of Garic’s, as the last baker to produce hardtack. [6]

In 1952, the Gaudet family purchased Garic’s bakery and renamed it “Gaudet's French Market Bakery.” A few years later, the family leased the business to German baker Andreas Reising who operated the bakery as “Sunrise French Market Bakery.” In a 1958 Times-Picayune advertisement, Reising described the charm of the old Garic's bakery and its appeal to tourists in the changing French Quarter. Location still mattered, but the clientele had shifted once again – this time away from locals to tourists. He implored locals to follow the example of “visitors from all over the country, with Sunrise French Bread to be carried to their homes” to serve “daily at our table, n’est ce pas?” [7]

Following Sunrise Bakery, another baker, Adam Falkenstein, operated "French Market Bakery” at the site briefly in the early 1970s. In 1981, records show that the Gaudet family estate sold the property. The famous bakery that once served and profited from the busy French Market, port, and surrounding neighborhood transitioned to a gallery and souvenir shop. Garic’s history stands as an enduring testament to a bakery’s power to anchor and serve a community.

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In 2013, the reality cooking television series Top Chef filmed its eleventh season in New Orleans at 1231-33 Bourbon Street to revitalize the struggling restaurant and tourism industry following the effects of the 2010 BP oil spill on Gulf seafood. [1] While Top Chef showcased the charm and ingredients of the city’s cultural and culinary fame, another culinary story was buried just beneath the surface of the Hollywood film set. The pair of 1830s townhouses at 1231-33 Bourbon Street was also once home to two famous and now forgotten French bread bakeries: Chretien's bakery (approximately 1860-1911) and B.C. Francingues bakery (1911-1940).

One hundred years before Top Chef celebrated the glories of New Orleans food, local journalist and tour guide Flo Field highlighted the stories of Chretien's bakery and B.C. Francingues bakery in a 1913 newspaper article on New Orleans bread-making titled “How New Orleans Won Fame as Baker of Finest Bread Outside of France.” Field was a member of a small, vibrant, and short-lived bohemian social circle of writers, artists, journalists, preservationists, and hangers-on who settled in the French Quarter at the end of World War I, immersing themselves in the local scene. In addition to her work as a journalist, Field was also a playwright and the first French Quarter tour guide. [2] Field’s article gives a golden-hued “history of bread-making in Louisiana before the days of modern machinery, when the baker’s craft was a handicraft, indeed – fine loaves made with slave help – a few of the old bakeries still left.” [3] This romanticized and nostalgic story of “old-time” French bread is an example of an enduring narrative of the exceptionality of New Orleans shaped by authors in the post-Civil War years such as George Washington Cable, Lafcadio Hearn, and Lyle Saxon, spotlighting the notion of a disappearing and unique Creole culture. In bread-making, the narrative reinforced the importance of traditions begun in French and Spanish colonial New Orleans over other influences, including African, indigenous, and American.

In 1846, Eugene Chretien, owner of the earlier bakery, arrived in New Orleans from France at the age of twenty-two, coinciding with a population boom in the city. Records show that Chretien’s Bakery produced bread from before the Civil War until early in the 1900s. 1860 census records list Chretien as a baker located on Dumaine Street. [4] By 1865, Chretien appeared in the City Directory on Bourbon Street and was one of seventy bakers operating. [5] Field describes Chretien's bakery as one of the best bread bakeries of the time and tells the story of "Papa Jim," a formerly enslaved baker who worked for Chretien, lived nearby and trained multiple bakers. The 1860 census does not include Eugene Chretien's slave-holding records. But Field provides a glimpse at other antebellum bakeries that exploited enslaved labor, such as D’Aquin bakery, Bouny bakery, and Poincy bakery.

By 1867, the City Directory lists 170 bakeries in operation, more than double the number of bakeries just two years prior. [6] Chretien’s bakery was part of a vibrant neighborhood economy, operating “a flour warehouse, bread store, bakery and stable.” [7] In the early 1900s, bakeries often baked and delivered bread several times a day, both to homes and businesses. A former French Quarter resident recalled Chretien's bakery delivering long loaves of freshly baked bread daily to neighboring homes. [8] Gaston Alciatore, son of Antoine’s restaurant founder Antoine Alciatore, married into the Chretien family and is listed in census records as a baker at the same address as Chretien’s. It is possible that Chretien’s bakery also supplied the famous Antoine’s restaurant with its French bread.

In 1911, Bernard Francingues, another francophone, took over Chretien’s Bakery. The 1913 Field article described the manual labor of bread-making inside Francingues’ bakery: from mixing in long troughs to kneading, molding loaves, and baking in brick ovens -- methods similar to those presently revived as part of the artisan bread movement. Field provides rare photos from the Francingues bakery of the ovens and some of the lost loaves of bread from one hundred years ago. In the early twentieth century, before widespread industrialization, popular types of bread in New Orleans included pain chapeau (cap bread), pain tresse (French twist), flute (old-style French bread), loaf bread, and frog loaves (small rolls). While some people today may remember a few of these lost styles of bread, most only know today's New Orleans French bread style.

In 1942, the Francingues family transferred ownership of the Bourbon Street property to La Societe’ des Dames Hospitalieres, an organization founded after the Civil War that owned several properties and housed indigent war widows. The building later became a nursing home, active until Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In 2010, developers renovated the site as luxury residences. The French Quarter has long been the symbol and epicenter of New Orleans. The property at 1231-33 Bourbon Street is an example of the layers of history found within the Vieux Carre. The transformation of the property – from bakery to reality television film set also reveals an intriguing chapter in the story of New Orleans French bread and the development of the French Quarter as a tourist destination.

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Before the Civil War, enslaved labor was an integral part of the commercial baking industry and the overall economy in New Orleans. While food historians note the role that French, Spanish, and Anglo colonial bakers played in shaping the city’s early bread-making traditions, they often exclude the contributions of enslaved Africans, Free People of Color, and Afro-Creoles from the narrative.[1] By tracing some of New Orleans' antebellum bread bakers' history and piecing together fragments from the archives (legal documents, census records, fugitive slave advertisements) a parallel story of forgotten forced labor unfolds.

Records show several prominent antebellum bakeries in the French Quarter, including those belonging to Louis D’Aquin, Widow Bouny, and Paul Desdunes Poincy, who relied on enslaved labor. [2] The above-mentioned bakery owners worked within a two-block radius of each other, respectively located at 840-842 Royal Street, 921-25 Chartres Street, and 530-36 Dumaine Street. They were members of an exodus from the West Indies to Louisiana in the 1790s and early 1800s following the Saint-Domingue revolution (present-day Haiti). This wave of refugees, referred to as the Foreign French, fortified a dwindling French presence in New Orleans in the face of encroaching Americanization. Many of these white refugees from the West Indies were involved in the trades and crafts, including baking. [3]

Enslavers profited from the skills of enslaved bakers but often placed little value on keeping families intact. Advertisements list for sale or lease “machinery and fixtures for carrying on the baking business with or without 6 negroes, all superior bakers.” [4] An 1847 auction advertisement in the Times-Picayune lists the names of twenty enslaved persons, all fluent in French and English, with a wide range of skills, including the following experienced bakers:

“Washington – aged 32 years, excellent baker, capable of taking charge of any bakery. Jacob – aged 27 years, good baker, salesman, and oven man. Bazile – aged 27, excellent miche baker and salesman, also, oven hand. Zeno – aged 24, baker, somewhat of a pastry cook, tailor and a remarkably handy boy. Barm – aged 24 years, excellent hard bread baker and understands the making of dough. Reuben – aged 25 years, excellent hard bread baker, hostler, coachman and valuable boy for taking care of horses. Monday – aged about 45 years, an excellent pastry maker, good confectioner and strictly honest.” [5]

An 1856 auction advertisement for the indebted “F. D’Aquin and Co.” bakery (the predecessor to Margaret Haughery’s Steam Bakery) lists the property for sale, including building leases, machinery, utensils, wagons, bread carts, horses, and thirty-eight enslaved persons, from age sixty-one to eighteen months. The advertisement lists the enslaved workers' skills, including oven repairman, flour sifter, dough mixer, yeast maker, carpenter, drayman, bread seller, and the types of bread baked (hard bread, soft bread, loaf bread). [6]

Fugitive slave advertisements illustrate the cruelty of slavery, with mention of injuries and physical bondage including chains, and neck and leg irons. Fugitive slave advertisements also show how enslaved bakery workers moved through the city and shared expert knowledge– both as vendors traversing the streets and markets, and as human property transferred between enslavers. Multiple listings suggest that some enslaved people who worked in bakeries made several attempts to escape bondage and that some even succeeded in their quest for self-emancipation. [7]

Labor is an essential foundation of the bread-making history of New Orleans. Whether brought into the business by family ties, economic necessity, or (in the case of slavery), force, the people who mixed dough, shoveled embers or hawked wares on the street reflect the complex multi-faceted history of New Orleans and its bread. Reinscribing enslaved people and their baking skills in this history demonstrates the significance of forced labor to the growth and development of one of the city’s most beloved and iconic industries.

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In 1924, journalist and political activist Dorothy Day lived in an apartment at 520 St. Peter Street while writing for the New Orleans Item. During her short time working at the newspaper, Day wrote articles generally concerned with the culture of dance halls, alcohol, and gambling in the city. Day also conducted interviews with personalities like Italian actress Eleonora Duse, Governor Henry L. Fuqua, and boxing legend Jack Dempsey. [1]  Before her arrival in New Orleans, Dorothy Day was a political activist. Day was a suffragette, arrested for picketing the Wilson White House, and went on a hunger strike while imprisoned. In 1927, Day converted to Catholicism and later founded the Catholic Worker Movement in New York with Frenchman Pierre Maurin. [2] The Catholic Worker Movement is an organization dedicated to aiding the poor by engaging in labor organizing, nonviolent protests against war and violence, establishing cooperatives, and advocating for human rights. [3] In 1933, Day co-founded Catholic Worker, a radical Christian newspaper covering workers’ rights and social issues, and served as its editor until her death in 1980. 

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In 1952, Lawrence Sintes Sr. opened Sintes Boat Works on the edge of Orleans Marina in Lake Pontchartrain with his oldest son, Lawrence Sintes Jr. The Sintes family’s move to the area, known as the West End neighborhood, coincided with a re-emergence of resorts, restaurants, and amusement rides on the lakefront that drew more tourists and locals to Lake Pontchartrain’s coastal neighborhoods.

The completion of the 1926 Lakefront Land Reclamation Project expanded the amount of habitable West End property and led to an increase in the neighborhood’s population. It was on this reclaimed land that the Sintes family laid the foundations for their home and business. When Sintes Boat Works first opened, Lawrence Sintes Jr. and his father constructed wooden boats, but they soon transitioned to repairing boats harbored in Lake Pontchartrain.

Living and working in the West End for four generations, the Sintes family has experienced significant changes to their neighborhood, from natural disasters displacing community members, to the slow loss of uninhabited land to condominiums. In order to ensure the business’s ongoing success, Lawrence Sintes Jr. and his younger brother, David “Dave” Sintes, embraced modern boat construction technologies. Dave Sintes Jr. introduced modern computer technology to enable the business to construct better boats at a faster pace, while Lawrence Sintes Jr. continued to do what the Sinteses are known for- providing reliable and expert repairs. In 1981, Lawrence Sintes Jr.’s son, Steve Sintes Sr., was the third generation to join the family boatyard, ensuring that Sintes Boat Works would continue well into the future.

Boatbuilding is a Sintes family tradition that has gone on longer than anyone in the family can remember. They are masters of their craft. The Sintes family has left their mark on every boat they have built and repaired. Through their business, the Sintes family has helped the West End’s maritime lake community thrive.

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In the 1920s, the William H. Todd Corporation built Todd Shipyards on the shore of the Mississippi River in an area once known as McClellanville. The shipyard was located near the Algiers Naval Station at the present-day intersection of Merrill and Patterson streets. Since the early days of shipping in New Orleans, the West Bank of the Mississippi River housed industries that supported the area’s shipping traffic. While loading docks and ports were mostly on the East Bank of the river, dry docks and ship repair facilities were on the opposite bank of the river in Algiers and nearby communities.

In 1936, Todd Shipyards merged with nearby Johnson Iron Works. The resulting combined industry brought economic growth to the area with jobs at the docks in addition to other local supporting businesses including food, housing, utilities, and supplies.

During World War II, Todd-Johnson Dry Docks, as it was known for a time, covered 73 acres that included 50 buildings covering 228,000 square feet. There were 6,400 linear feet of wharves along the river and two dry docks that could lift ships weighing up to 20,000 displacement tons. Over 4,000 people worked around the clock to build and repair military craft including submarines.

In 1944, Mel Ott, Gretna born right fielder for the New York Giants, joined Todd-Johnson’s personnel department during baseball’s off season for a “winter war job.”

After the war, Todd Shipyards continued shipbuilding and repair operations in this location for several decades. In 1979, Todd Shipyards lengthened the wharf by 450 feet and constructed new dry dock facilities. In the early 1980s, military defense buildup of the Reagan administration provided more work for the shipyards.

In the 1980s, Todd Shipyards, like many shipyards throughout the nation, fell on economic hard times as demand for domestic commercial shipbuilding waned. On June 3, 1985, 136 Todd Shipyard employees went on strike to combat proposed cuts to pay and benefits. Just six months after the strike began, Todd Shipyard closed. Todd Shipyards (which operated additional shipyards in Houston, Los Angeles, and Seattle) filed for bankruptcy protection. In 1987, the Port of New Orleans acquired the shipyard's 21 acres and remaining equipment for $6.9 million in settlement of the company’s debt.

Todd Shipyards’ docks, wharves, and buildings no longer stand. The site of the shipyard is currently green space. In 2018, the Port of New Orleans asked the city to alter the site’s zoning from green space to maritime use to permit shipping, docking, and industrial activity. As of September 2019, the Port withdrew its application and no changes were planned due to serious community opposition.

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The year was 1865; the Confederacy had just been defeated, and many emancipated African Americans departed the cane and cotton fields for New Orleans. Louisiana planters scrambled to assemble a new labor force, as did railroad investors, and learned that their peers in the Caribbean, in the wake of emancipation there, had imported thousands of East Asian and South Asian laborers.

Intrigued, Louisiana planters in 1867 dispatched agents to recruit a few hundred Chinese workers out of Cuba. That effort was interrupted by war, so the agents instead hired 1600 Chinese out of California, and later China proper, and brought them to lower Louisiana to work on plantations and railroads.

Recruitment faced various obstacles, and those Chinese who did land in Louisiana resisted exploitative work conditions and low pay. By the early 1870s, planters began to look elsewhere for contract labor, and the Chinese workers headed for the hope of the city.

The 1880 Census recorded 95 Chinese living in New Orleans and 489 in Louisiana; most were young men residing in boarding houses and apartments, employed in laundering, cooking and cigar-making, a skill learned in Cuba.

In 1882, the Canal Street Presbyterian Church opened a Chinese Mission at 215 South Liberty Street. Serving over 200 people, the service made this Third Ward neighborhood a hub for the city’s Chinese population. By the 1900s, seven Chinese markets, groceries, and merchandise shops filled the 1100 block of Tulane Avenue, and an equal number operated nearby. Surrounding Chinatown was one of the city’s most fascinating neighborhoods. On adjacent South Rampart were jazz venues and integrated shops owned by Orthodox Jews, Italians and African Americans; a block away stood the Knights of Pythias Temple, the largest black-owned building in the nation; and across the street was the ominous Parish Prison and Criminal Courthouse, with its medieval-looking turrets and tower.

In terms of size, Chinatown remained stable because exclusionary immigration laws had restricted the flow of Asian immigrants to the United States. By the 1920s, the local Chinese American population had become increasingly middle-class, more mobile, and less dependent on its old enclave. In 1926, the Presbytery moved its Chinese Mission to Mid City, and in 1937, merchants lost their lease on 1100 Tulane Avenue. This brought an end to the original Chinatown — but not to the enclave itself. “Chinatown is moving lock, stock, and herb barrel,” reported The Times-Picayune, to the French Quarter.

By the 1940s, about ten Chinese businesses operated around 500 Bourbon, and the new Chinatown became a part of midcentury Quarter culture. Bourbon Street’s transformation to the entertainment strip of today paralleled the Chinese merchants’ gradual departure for Jefferson Parish, where most descendants live today. Many still worship at the Chinese Presbyterian Church, now located on West Esplanade Avenue in Kenner.

All that remains of the original Chinatown is one old brick wall, and the only visible trace of the second enclave is the fading hand-painted sign of the On Leong Merchants Association at 530½ Bourbon Street.

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The “Monument to the Immigrant” was erected in March 1995 and stands along the Mississippi River in Woldenberg Park. The monument depicts an immigrant family on one side and the other side a stylized figure shaped like the front of a ship, reminding people that New Orleans is historically a port city and a city of immigrants. “Monument to the Immigrant” is a link to the past sitting on the river’s edge representing how the old and the new are interconnected in New Orleans.

The Italian American Marching Club in New Orleans commissioned Franco Alessandrini to sculpt the monument. Alessandrini, an Italian immigrant, came to the United States in the 1970s, making Louisiana his home. When the monument was dedicated, Judge Anthony J. Russo gave a stirring dedication speech, ending with, “LET US NOT FORGET OUR IMMIGRANTS,” (Italian American Society).

The site of the monument, the riverfront of New Orleans, was one of the first places where generations of immigrants first touched solid ground when they arrived. Alessandrini, who traveled to Carrara, Italy, to select the marble for the monument, used actual photos of immigrants arriving in the city to ensure that he depicted them with accuracy.

The inscription on the monument reads:

“MONUMENT TO THE IMMIGRANT DEDICATED TO THE COURAGEOUS MEN AND WOMEN WHO LEFT THEIR HOMELAND SEEKING FREEDOM, OPPORTUNITY AND A BETTER LIFE IN A NEW COUNTRY MARCH 19, 1995 COMMISSIONED BY THE ITALIAN AMERICAN MARCHING CLUB SPONSORED BY PRIVATE CITIZENS, BUSINESSES AND ORGANIZATIONS.”

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"Ten thousand Micks/They Swung their picks/To dig th’ New Canawl, But the choleray was stronger’n they/And twice it killed them awl"

And with that ditty, published in the Times-Picayune of July 18, 1937, the lore was born that thousands upon thousands of Irish died in New Orleans digging the New Basin Canal (NBC) in the 1830s.

As with many stories in New Orleans, this one, too, is a mix of truth and fiction. The facts are that in 1831, the New Orleans Canal and Banking company raised funds to build a new canal connecting the “American Sector” (CBD) with Lake Pontchartrain. Compared to other canals, the NBC was modest, only 6 miles long and completed in fewer than four years. As with most building projects, the number of laborers varied throughout its construction.

So how did this grim myth come about? Notably, none of the contemporary newspaper contained reports of such a catastrophe. Moreover, the city’s population in the 1830s and the short building period, defy these numbers: there were simply not enough Irish in, or coming to, the city for such numbers to die in only 4 years. Most likely, the myth was nourished by the devastating cholera epidemic of 1832-33 which killed several thousand New Orleanians, including Irish canal workers.

Rather than mass Irish deaths, the press, instead, reported Irish actions on wage disputes and breaches of contractual promises. For instance, Irish workers published their grievances in an open letter in the Louisiana Advertiser, demonstrating their solidarity and proto-union organization when confronting unacceptable work conditions. Among other complaints, the letter accused their contractors, of “having sold them as redemptioners” and protested the excessive prices at the company store. Moreover, the striking Irish laborers objected to the contractor describing them as “a turbulent and disobedient set of men, because we do not tamely submit to the numberless acts of injustice.” Their own characterization as ‘not tamely submit[ting]’ makes it virtually impossible that the Irish would have remained silent about tens of thousands of deaths during the canal’s construction.

Instead of a story of tragedy, the NBC is testimony to Irish strength and defiance. Many of the canal workers soon became their own construction bosses in New Orleans, directing many of the city’s projects during this heyday of building. Furthermore, employment conditions in the antebellum were training grounds for the Irish men and women who later dominated the leadership ranks of the local and national unions in the latter 19th and 20th century.

The story of the New Basin Street Canal is story of defiance and triumph, not victimhood. It should be commemorated as such.

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Domestic servants were a permanent feature of middle class families in 19th century America. We tend to think of them as lacking agency over their daily lives and without power to shape their future. Yet, Irish immigrant women belie that image, as a closer examination of this group demonstrates.

Starting in the 1840s up to the Civil War Irish immigration to New Orleans was at a fever pitch. Nearly two million people left Ireland in this period due to the Great Famine. The wave of Irish immigrants, many of whom were women, coincided with an increase in demand for servants in middle class households and resulted in plentiful and steady employment opportunities.

No skill requirements and promises to train on the job attracted single Irish women to these jobs. They quickly realized that the market was expanding and that specialization within this field, such as training as a parlor maid versus a general servant, would empower them to sell their skilled labor and thereby increase their earning potential.

High demand for their labor also gave Irish domestics a certain independence. When his Irish cook failed to appear for work one morning, local architect Thomas K. Wharton complained that they “do just as they please, go or stay, work or play.” That neither Wharton nor his wife considered firing the servant attests to the level of accommodation these Irish women received to act as it suited them. In fact, in an editorial refuting an article extolling Irish servants’ virtues one reporter stated that Irish females often forgot themselves “so far as to hire the employer, in place of the employer hiring them.”

Servants’ favorable bargaining position also was used to enable the women to practice their faith. Attending Mass and participating in important rituals was of paramount importance to most Irish immigrants. As Wharton loudly complains again: “Went to market at 6 ½ and for the first time in my life carried the basket myself as it is Easter Sunday and my Cook, being an Irish Catholic must of course be permitted to attend the early services of ‘ill mumbled mass,’ muttered by stupid Priests in equally stupid monkish Latin”.

Additionally, since room and board were provided, domestics could save a large part of their earnings. They used this surplus in a variety of ways, including sending money home to Ireland. Indeed, Irish daughters reliably sent more remittances than sons and thus provided a lifeline that enabled other family members to leave. Beyond remittances, Irish immigrant women’s earnings also provided money for their families, their church, and their own financial security with remarkable success.

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125 years ago, one of the greatest united strikes happened here in New Orleans – the General Strike of 1892. The general strike grew out of the labor movement struggles for improved economic well-being and Black peoples’ continued struggles for equality and freedom.

1892 was an active year of class struggle. Two all-U.S.A. labor organizations were founded: the International Longshoremen Association and the International Seamen Union. On June 30, 1892, a major steel strike was launched in Homestead, Pennsylvania. The strike was violently defeated by Pinkerton guards with several strikers and guards killed. In New Orleans, May 1892, the streetcar drivers struck for shorter working hours and a closed shop. They won. Labor hours were reduced from 16 hours to 10 hours. Workers could now be unionized. On June 7, 1892, Homer A. Plessy and the Citizens Committee initiated their fight for equality and freedom against the Segregated Railroad Car Act at the railroad depot located then at Press and Royal Streets. This action was later followed by an important strike in October.

The strike in October was organized by three key unions that formed a partnership – the Triple Alliance. The three unions were the white Scalesmen and Packers unions and the Black Teamsters. Scalesmen and Packers were skilled laborers. Scalesmen’s labor was that of weighing commodities, a function that determined the value, the exchange value or selling price of a commodity. Packers were those laborers who loaded or ‘packed’ commodities for shipment on vessels such as boats, trains or other moving vehicles. Packers had specific tools to pack or ‘screw’ the commodities in place. Teamsters were those laborers considered not as skilled as scalesmen and packers. Teamsters moved commodities by carriages, wagons, drays (carts) as drivers and general laborers.

On October 24, these three unions went on strike for a shorter work day (10-hour day), overtime pay for after 60 hours and a union shop. There were between two to three thousand workers on strike. The city’s employing class (banks, stevedores, foundries, hotels, merchants, etc.) was struck with terror. Less than 30 years after the end of the Civil War, and with the counterrevolution of Reconstruction, Black and white workers united to walk out for joint demands.

THE CAPITALIST OWNERS’ AND BOSSES’ REACT

The exploiter and oppressor social class of owners and bosses organized an all-out strike-breaking assault. Their allies consisted of the bosses of the four railroads that entered the city, and also the bosses of cotton, sugar, and rice commodity exchanges. They amassed a huge strike-breaking and terror fund. The New Orleans Board of Trade, located at 316 Magazine Street, represented the interests of this social class of owners and bosses. The Board of Trade would make decisions for them.

The New Orleans Board of Trade refused to recognize the Triple Alliance. That summer, the workers had organized a city-wide united front called the Workingmen’s Amalgamated Council. This form of organization was a clever idea designed to pursue a specific form of struggle. The Council was located at 87 Exchange Alley next door to where today’s Marriott Hotel, 555 Canal Street, is located. The council represented the widely exploited and most oppressed sections of the community. The purpose of this council was to provide solidarity and aid to the workers’ struggles. The more ‘enlightened’ or ‘conscious’ workers knew that the strike’s outcome would affect the wages and conditions of all workers. In preparing for the fight, the workers raised $7,000. As part of their strike-breaking assault, the bosses designed a tactical campaign of ‘divide and conquer’.

THE CAPITALIST OWNERS’ AND BOSSES TACTICS

Initially, the Board of Trade said that they would negotiate and sign only with the Scalesmen and Packers union and not with the Teamsters. Second, the newspapers, the Times Democrat, the Daily States, and others popularized an anti-Black sentiment. Headlines appeared agitating “Negroes Attack White Men”. Stories reported “mobs of brutal Negro strikers” running through the streets “beating up all who attempted to interfere with them”. The newspapers collaborated with the Board of Trade. The papers included the Daily Picayune, Daily City Item, New Orleans Mascot, the french written New Orleans Bee, and the german written Tag Deutsche Zeitung. The aims of these tactics were to appeal to white supremacy and undermine class unity. The poisonous lies these papers printed did affect the workers. Wavering and vacillation appeared in the ranks of the Scalesmen and the Packers union. But conscious white workers, members of the radical Knights of Labor, struggled and argued with their class brothers. They agitated that the Black workers were not their real enemy but instead their class brothers. This struggle inside the workers’ movement enabled the workers to see and embrace their true class interests. The ‘enlightened’ labor leaders prevailed amongst their white brethren. Consequently, the Workingmen’s Amalgamated Council demanded that there be negotiation with the three unions (the two whites and one black) or no negotiation at all.

The Board of Trade refused. The Board then demanded that everybody return to work, and that bargaining would be considered after everbody returned to work.

WORKERS OF NUMEROUS NATIONALITIES RESISTED AND FOUGHT BACK!

Refusing to submit to threats or fear, the Workingmen’s Amalgamated Council escalated the fight and called for a general strike on November 8. Over 25,000 workers, of African, Caribbean, Spanish, French and other European descent that also included 45 locals responded to the call. More than half the city’s workforce struck. Carpenters, joiners, warehousemen, screwmen, coopers, coachmen, musicians, freight handlers, horseshoers, grain shovelers, plasterers, piledrivers, pressmen, tinners, drivers, cotton men, gas and electric workers united and struck together. When night fell, New Orleans economy was further paralyzed. Without utility workers, the city was in darkness. Not a ship nor boat moved. Not one dray nor delivery carriage operated. Not a hotel worker greeted a guest. Not a cigar rolled. The economy had been halted. This was the first time in U.S. history that Black and white workers carried out a general strike together!

Needless to say, the owners and the bosses of capital were furious. They did not give up, however. The Board of Trade offered ‘special higher wages’ for anyone or any scab to come forward. With a population of 100,000 people in New Orleans, only 59 people stepped forward. Calls were made for scab labor to come from Birmingham and Mobile, Alabama; Memphis, Tennessee; and Galveston, Texas, but many prospects declined to come. The owners and bosses cried to end the ‘anarchy’. They tried to get their managers and supervisory personnel to do the work. But their numbers were few. They then told Governor Murphy Foster that they would pay the militia to do the work that the strikers refused to do. Hence, they demanded that Foster send the militia to end the strike. Foster did send soldiers. But the strikers were so well organized that the state militia was made useless. The militia could not move or transport any commodity, and more importantly, could not break the strike.

THE WORKERS ARE VICTORIOUS!

After three days, the Board of Trade surrendered to most of the strikers’ demands. They got a shorter work day. They got a 25% wage increase. Years later, the government’s legal suits against the strike leaders were eventually dropped. There were some gains made in the working conditions. But they did not win the closed shop which was full recognition of their unions.

Shamefully, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) – the only all-U.S.A. labor federation at that time did not follow up this historic victory but continued to organize all-white crafts. Because of the stand and actions of the AFL, the AFL contributed greatly to the shops remaining a haven of white supremacy, low wages, and non-union labor. In time, the millionaire owners and bosses were able to re-divide the workers and regain what they lost.

There were some important lessons and gains made. The strike demonstrated the power of the workers. The strike demonstrated that gains can be made and won when ‘proper leadership and proper organization’ are in place.

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The French Market is a notable location right at the edge of the French Quarter. The market was built in 1791 and has continued to be a historic and important location for the people of New Orleans. Throughout its years the market has changed with each new government, starting as a Native American trading post right on the banks of the Mississippi, and converted by the Spanish into a covered public market on the riverfront. In 1788, a great fire that consumed most of New Orleans destroyed the market. The new covered market was completed around the site of the present French Market in 1791. The market was destroyed again in the Hurricane of 1812 and would not be rebuilt until 1813. Since then the market has been greatly altered, but it still stands as part of the French Market complex. Through the centuries, immigrants from Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean opened their own tables in the market offering part of their local cuisine to the passerby.

From 1936 – 1937, a major renovation was undertaken by the WPA and the city of New Orleans. Rebuilding a new Bazaar Market, wholesale seafood, adding to the Butcher Market and a New Farmers Market. To help with sanitation, new refrigeration and sanitation systems were updated for the sale of meat and fish. Through the years there have been many changes, disasters, and renovations, but the French Market has stayed strong through it all and is still open to the public today. Though the market has been demolished, moved, expanded and redesigned, it still shows the intricate history of New Orleans. The market has become a location that is visited by millions of locals and visitors of New Orleans every year. The French Market is America’s oldest public market that is one of the main attractions to tourist every year.

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In 1983, archaeologists of Coastal Environments, Inc. conducted extensive testing and excavations for the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development in the areas of the proposed east-bound Greater New Orleans Bridge Number 2. The first Greater New Orleans Bridge opened in 1958 to connect the east and west banks of the city. The second bridge was completed in 1988, and the city of New Orleans renamed it the Crescent City Connection in 1989. A 1977 Federal Environmental Impact Study identified 24 historical structures in the proposed bridge project area eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, and the archaeology study followed up on the Environmental Impact Study to minimize construction damage on these archaeological resources.

The excavation was an expansive undertaking that lasted 4 months during the spring of 1983 with fieldwork totaling 9,200 hours. The project area was a one mile long and 300 foot wide strip that paralleled the existing Pontchartrain Expressway from the foot of the bridge at the Mississippi River all the way to its connection with Interstate 10, crossing portions of 56 city blocks and 36 acres of urban environment. This project offered an ideal opportunity for archaeologists to compare the material lives of ethnic and class groups in New Orleans as well as the commercial and industrial developments of the city.

The Lower Garden District area at the foot of the bridge was the most extensively researched and excavated given that this part of the city was once a dynamic neighborhood and later the active commercial center of 19th century New Orleans. The bridge follows along property once occupied by the Saulet, Foucher, and Delord-Sarpy plantations which has been partitioned and sold off by the the 1830s. During the mid 1800s this area’s batture land along the river was hotly contested in land ownership disputes that went up to the US Supreme Court, which you can read about in the 200 Years of Louisiana Supreme Court History tour. The area then transformed into a bustling residential neighborhood on the edges of urban New Orleans where immigrant Irish, German, Italians, and Americans settled. The project area’s proximity to the river, the railroad terminus, and the New Basin Canal, completed in 1835, accelerated economic growth. Five cotton presses were located within the Greater New Orleans Bridge corridor, and they were the source of most jobs for Irish and German immigrants who lived in the budding Irish Channel neighborhood. Other commercial enterprises in the area included the Orleans Sugar Refinery, a rum distillery, foundries, hundreds of warehouses, brickyards, and ice houses. By 1850 the neighborhood reached its population peak following the wave of Irish immigrants during the 1840s and 50s. The second half of the 18th century, however, displaced residents to accommodate growing industries. It wasn’t until after the Civil War that people moved to the far west area of the project site toward the intersection of the expressway and Interstate 10 near the Superdome.

Archaeologists dug 59 backhoe trenches and 110 hand excavation units that produced two tons of artifacts and exposed 291 cultural features. These features include 23 privy pits, two wells, nine cistern foundations, 74 wall foundations, 68 pavements, post molds, and trash deposits. The artifacts and features came from various residential and commercial sites such as a wagon yard, a tin shop, an icehouse, a brick kiln, general stores, and working class homes. The team experienced various setbacks including site vandalism resulting in artifact disturbance and inaccessibility of potentially fruitful sites due to private property ownership. They most thoroughly investigated artifacts from the 1100 blocks of Tchoupitoulas, St. Thomas, and Constance Streets, an 1835 Creole cottage at 615 Erato Street, and the corner of South Rampart and Calliope Streets.

The excavation and analysis of the 16OR78 site provides a snapshot of the scope of importance of the GNO No. 2 Project. The site is a city block bound by Gaiennie Street on the north, Erato Street to the south, St. Thomas Street to the west, and Tchoupitoulas Street to the east held 19th century structures of national historic significance including a Creole cottage, a brick shotgun house, and a double shotgun house. In the 1800s a carpenter’s shop, The Crescent City Ice Company Warehouse, Creole cottages, two-story row houses and tenement that housed working class Irish families. As the 20th century progressed, commercial properties outnumbered domestic ones. Excavations behind the double shotgun house revealed cobblestone pavements, a cement lined privy, pier footing, foundation walls, post molds, and a wooden trough. Recovered artifacts such as ceramics, buttons, liquor bottles, and tobacco pipes lead the team to conclude that lower and middle class Irish-German inhabitants replaced wealthier French occupants as the 19th century progressed.

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Standing at the intersection of Basin and Conti Streets and facing just west of St. Louis Cemetery #1, is the former location of the Storyville district in the Tremé neighborhood.

From 1897 to 1917 New Orleans established a centralized prostitution district known as Storyville, named after the city alderman Sidney Story who sponsored the creation of the district. Storyville was bound by Iberville, Basin, St. Louis, and North Robertson Streets.

In this period, upscale brothels in mansions such as Lulu White’s Mahogany Hall lined Basin Street and employed parlor pianists such as Jelly Roll Morton. On the backstreets Fewclothes’ Cabaret, Pete Lala’s, the 101 Ranch, and the Tuxedo Dance Hall provided many of jazz’s most notable performers with stable income and an environment in which they could hone their various musical styles.

In 1917, the district closed in upon order from the U.S. Navy, and the neighborhood was razed in 1939 to make way for the Iberville public housing development for low-income white residents.

The closing of Storyville provided romanticized lore regarding the birth and spread of jazz. This legend emphasizes the closing of Storyville as a catalyst for musicians leaving New Orleans and spreading the style. In fact, jazz musicians performed throughout the city from before World War I well into the 1920s and 1930s.

1216 Bienville Street, now a local corner store, is the site of Frank Early’s My Place Saloon, one of only three remaining structures from the Storyville period. Tony Jackson, considered to be one of the great piano professors of the period, worked at Frank Early's before moving to Chicago in 1912.

"I also looked forward to every night in the Red Light District, when I was delivering Stone Coal to the girls working in those Cribs. I could hear these wonderful jazz musicians playing music the way it should be played." -  Louis Armstrong [6]

"It's not true that nothing happened after Storyville closed. [In New Orleans] before and after Storyville closed there were so many great jazz musicians, so many cats all the way down the line. Buddy Petit, Kid Rena, Sidney Desvignes, Sam Morgan, Punch Miller....there was plenty of work with vaudeville and minstrel shows, roadhouses, circuses, riverboats, and lake-boat excursions, as well as circuits and tours that traveled the South."

-Musical Artist/Educator Danny Barker

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There were times when enslaved people in New Orleans could no longer bear the intense burden that came with the constant suffering of bondage. Escape became the last hope for some of these slaves despite the dangers that they would surely face if caught. Fanny, an enslaved mother ran away from this site on March 6th, 1844, today marked 1000 Rampart Street. Her owner J. A. Braud posted an advertisement in the Daily Picayune on March 9th in an attempt to encourage her recapture.

Descriptions of enslaved people’s personalities and appearances are rarely included in any writing from the era. When they are found, they most commonly appear in sales documents, which are hardly reliable sources of information because slave traders often modified descriptions of the enslaved for bargaining purposes. While it’s important to consider the biased perspectives of the people who wrote the advertisement like Fanny’s, the objective of them was to accurately describe the missing person so that they could be easily found. They also often include identifying factors such as disposition, skills, family members, or other details that don’t typically appear anywhere else in the historical record.

Fanny is described as “aged about 30 years; speaks English and French; has lost her front teeth; very dark skin.” It was common for enslaved persons to be bilingual, even 30 years after the Louisiana Purchase, which happened around the time Fanny was born. Readers also learn that Fanny had at least two children, a daughter, whom she took with her, described as, “a mulatto, aged 7” indicating that she may have had lighter skin. According to the advertisement, which is reproduced at the bottom of this age, Fanny had a daughter who lived at 183 Girod Street somewhere roughly in the block between Saint Charles Avenue and Carondelet Street.

According to the 1840 Census, there was a J.A. Braud living in the CBD, who owned four slaves. One of them was a woman between 24 and 35, and another was a girl under the age of 10. While we cannot know for sure, it is plausible that these nameless checkmarks in the census record represent Fanny and her daughter. The census shows one person involved in commerce, presumably J.A. Braud. We also learn from the advertisement that she was spotted, though the accuracy of this is questionable, at the St. Mary Market.The St. Mary Market was built in 1822 and remained in its original location on the neutral ground below Tchoupitoulas Street between North and South Diamond Streets, near the present-day Convention Center, until 1858.

Enslaved people were often not physically confined to their homes. There was too much work to do throughout the city. Enslaved women would travel daily to local markets to pick up supplies, including groceries. They were allowed to travel amongst free people in the streets as long as they carried a permission slip, also called a pass. In New Orleans, eyes were everywhere. Runaway slave advertisements often included reward prices, basically a bounty. Here the reward is listed at $10, or roughly $216 today. The ad appeared again in the Times-Picayune on March 10th, two days later, so we know Fanny was successful at staying away for a couple of days. Beyond that, the records stop telling us what happened to Fanny. There are 3 Fannys listed in the 1870 census in New Orleans. One of them is listed with no last name. One is listed with two daughters who could be the right age to be at least one of Fanny’s daughter based on the newspaper ad. Fanny was not an uncommon name, and we have no record of any Fanny that fits the correct age and racial profile between 1844 and 1870.

Walter Johnson writes, “when they ran away, slaves often traced a path backwards toward their past lives.” We can only hope that Fanny was able to reunite with her family and make a successful life on her own. Enslaved people who ran away faced the threat of torture, abuse, death, or imprisonment, but some of them found ways to forge passes, pass as free people, or create new families in the form of maroon communities on the outskirts of town.

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