Charity Hospital was an iconic institution in the history of New Orleans, and at the time of its closure in 2015, one of the longest lasting public institutions in the United States. Both Charity Hospital and its cemeteries are indelibly linked to the changed landscape of the city after Hurricane Katrina. Originally traced to the colonial period and operated by various charitable initiatives, the first Charity hospital was placed in the Vieux Carré in 1736. In the period from 1747-1815, the hospital moved to Toulouse Street and Rampart, then to Conti and Basin streets near today’s Lady Guadalupe Church, and finally to Baronne Street and University Place.

In 1834, it moved one last time to its present-day location, soon to be operated by the Sisters of Charity, and was run as a medical school operated by the State of Louisiana until its closure in 2015. Charity Hospital continued to see patients during its function as a medical school, and included 1000 beds by 1850. To accommodate the need for burial space, especially for the indigent population of New Orleans that the hospital treated, Charity Hospital secured two tracts of land — Charity Hospital Cemetery No.1 in 1847 on the riverside of Bayou Metairie, and Charity Hospital Cemetery No. 2 in 1849 on the lakeside of Bayou Metairie, just adjacent to Cypress Grove Cemetery. 

The effects of stormwaters from the levee breaches caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 damaged the interior of the hospital. After almost a decade of debate about what to do with the building, the state finally began construction on a new facility called the University Medical Center (UMC). The closure of Charity Hospital after Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath caused much public outcry. Among many reasons was that its closure caused a rupture to its legacy of treating the area’s marginalized populations. 

While Charity Hospital remained shuttered during the first years of the recovery effort, Charity Hospital Cemetery No. 1 became the site for the Hurricane Katrina Memorial. This memorial serves as the final resting place to the 86 people who died during the storm whose bodies remained unclaimed or unidentified, as well as a memorial dedicated to the 1,100 people who died in and around New Orleans due to the effects and after effects of the storm. The money to construct the memorial was provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), with donations of up to $100,000 from the Funeral Service Foundation, part of the National Funeral Directors Association. This Association created the momentum for the creation of the monument and the final burial of the unclaimed bodies by the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, August 29, 2008. The monument consists of mausoleums arranged in a spiral, using the shape of the hurricane to create a “meditative labyrinth…[and a] healing space for reflection,” to quote a portion of the words inscribed on the monument. 

Archaeological monitoring was required at Charity Hospital No. 1 during the construction of the memorial. Although the majority of the memorial was designed to be above ground, surface grading and excavation of select postholes for stabilization required oversight. Earth Search, Inc. monitored construction for the memorial in 2008, and in the process fragments from three individuals were exhumed, and examined. The remains, combined with remains from Charity Hospital Cemetery No. 2 were finally reinterred in one of the mausoleums in 2021.

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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, guest researcher Ariel joins Eddie and Lauren at Xavier University to discuss her research on Dr. Norman C. Francis.

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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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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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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 use a newspaper advertisement to reconstruct the experience of Margaret Elizabeth, an enslaved woman who fled bondage in New Orleans.

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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 second episode, Eddie and Lauren discuss Lost Cause legacies in New Orleans and the renaming of Beauregard Avenue to honor Dr. Sherwood Gagliano.

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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 discuss the renaming of Robert E. Lee Blvd. to New Orleans music legend, Allen Toussaint Blvd.

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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. Listeners will learn about artists, self-liberating people, educators, scientists, and many others underrepresented in street signs, public memorials, and historical narratives.

Episodes were released on a rolling basis throughout the summer of 2022. Scroll to the bottom of the media list to listen to the introduction episode. 

For more resources, visit From Robert E. Lee to Mama D.

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McDonoghville Cemetery is a burial site of enslaved and formerly enslaved people. This cemetery was once a part of enslaver John McDonogh’s plantation. According to a 1915 interview with Jacob Dinckel, then sexton of the McDonoghville Cemetery, this “‘colored’ graveyard consisted of an army of white wooden headboards quaintly lettered and surmounted by crosses [...] with their feet to the rising sun.” [1] These wooden markers are long-gone and today McDonoghville Cemetery is dominated by marble, granite, copings, and some unmarked mounds. Upon his death in 1850, John McDonogh was buried in the McDonoghville Cemetery and later reinterred in his native Baltimore in 1860. [2] According to Dinckel, after McDonogh’s death, a person formerly enslaved by McDonogh buried Black and white people side by side in the McDonoghville Cemetery. [1]

The history surrounding the ownership and municipal jurisdiction of McDonoghville Cemetery is complicated. In 1890, forty years after McDonogh’s death, the McDonoghville Cemetery came to the attention of Joseph A. Shakspeare, Mayor of New Orleans, when The Daily Picayune reported that a citizens’ group complained that “a colored man claim[ed] to be the owner of the ground.” [3] According to the article, the man caring for the cemetery said that “his father, [...] belonged to McDonogh and the cemetery was left to him,” and that he “... sells lots in the cemetery but can show no title when called upon to produce it.” [3] Mayor Shakspeare subsequently ordered the relocation and racial segregation of the people buried in the cemetery. [1] In 1891, Mayor Shakspeare granted the Jefferson Parish Police Jury use of the cemetery on behalf of the City of New Orleans. [2, 4] Since then, the City of New Orleans has maintained a hands-off approach to the McDonoghville Cemetery, with the rare exception of allotting funds to maintain McDonogh’s tomb. [2]

When McDonogh purchased plantation land on the Westbank of the Mississippi River in the early nineteenth century, the property was considered part of Orleans Parish. In 1825, the Louisiana State Legislature created Jefferson Parish by carving land out of Orleans Parish, this new parish line bisected McDonogh’s plantation. [5] Today, the parish line runs diagonally through McDonoghville Cemetery. [6] When the City of Gretna, located in Jefferson Parish, incorporated in 1913, the portion of McDonoghville Cemetery on the Jefferson side of the parish line was then also within the boundaries of the City of Gretna. John Ehret, then Mayor of Gretna, formed a commission to enable the City of Gretna to take control of McDonoghville Cemetery. [7] A title search referenced by historian G. Leighton Ciravolo “suggests that McDonoghville Cemetery has never been formally conveyed either to the Parish of Jefferson or the City of Gretna.” [2]

In 2016, the Jefferson Parish Historic District sponsored the erection of a state marker recognizing the historical significance of McDonoghville Cemetery. This marker states that John McDonogh created the cemetery and it is the final resting place for “many prominent local families.” Even though historical evidence documents that McDonoghville Cemetery served as a burial site for enslaved and freed people, the marker makes no mention of them. Community members are appealing to the various municipalities and organizations connected to McDonoghville Cemetery to have McDonoghville Cemetery’s historical significance as a burial site of enslaved and freed people formally acknowledged.

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In 1819, President James Monroe commissioned Fort Pike’s construction alongside six other forts on the Louisiana coast. [2] Originally known as Fort Petites Coquilles, Monroe commissioned the fort with the intention of protecting the city of New Orleans from a second British invasion after the War of 1812. Fort Pike received a name change to honor General Zebulon Montgomery Pike, a War of 1812 leader and avid explorer of the Louisiana territory.

Originally, Fort Pike served as a barracks for up to 400 men and provided storage for gear and ammunition. While the military that occupied Fort Pike never fired a single cannon, the walls of Fort Pike still hold a violent past. During the Seminole Wars (1817-1858), the US government attempted to push Indigenous peoples from their lands in Florida and Alabama. Because of Fort Pike’s location and accessibility, the US government imprisoned Seminole people and previously enslaved self-emancipated people within Fort Pike’s walls in order to steal the Seminoles’ lands. [3] Prior to imprisonment, the Floridian Seminole people “rejected a dubious treaty signed at Fort Gibson in 1833” between delegates of the US government and Seminole leaders that would exile Seminoles and relinquish their land to the US. [3] Shortly after this rejection, self-emancipated enslaved people sought asylum within the Seminole territory in exchange for an allyship. Unfortunately, the Seminole people interchanged the language of allyship to re-enslavement of the self-emancipated people.

[3 pg.85]

With this exchange in place, the Seminoles would require the enslaved people to serve as military support against the US government if necessary. Soon enough, it was. After multiple attempts from the US government to remove the Seminoles and their Black allies from the land, war broke out. According to historian Daniel H. Usner, Jr., “what would become known as the Second Seminole War began with the assassination of agent Wiley Thompson in December 1835 and lasted until August 1842, costing the United States more than twenty million dollars and the lives of some fifteen hundred soldiers and uncounted militiamen and settlers.” [3] The lives of the Seminole people and previously enslaved were not taken into consideration during this cost count. This devastation allowed General Thomas Jesup to deceive the Seminoles. Under false pretenses of a truce, Jesup captured Seminole leaders and forced them to turn over Seminole land. [4] Jesup arranged for ships to transport the Seminole and Black peoples to northern lands, where he promised security “in their lives and property.” [3] This promise was a deception. Instead, “Thomas S. Jesup captured the popular Anglo attitude toward the Seminoles,” stating that “‘the country can be rid of them only by exterminating them.’” [1] It was in this genocidal notion that Jesup, with the help of the US government, imprisoned and shipped Indigenous and Black people to Fort Pike. [3] Usner states that, “over many months at a time, thousands of Indian and [B]lack prisoners of war were confined to Fort Pike on a narrow split of land at the entrance of Lake Pontchartrain or to US army barracks on the downriver outskirts of New Orleans.” [3] Imprisoned Seminole and Black peoples waited for ships to retrieve them and bring them to the new lands supposedly awaiting them. By March 30, 1838, the ships never came. This act left 1,150 imprisoned people stranded at Fort Pike. Major Issac Clarke, a quartermaster assistant, took note that of these 1,150 people, most were sick and the person who was to look after their “shelter” was nowhere to be found. After being stranded for up to a year, the Seminole people emancipated themselves and left Fort Pike. [3]

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On December 31, 2019, the Algiers Tricentennial Committee and the Algiers community of New Orleans dedicated this historic Middle Passage marker at what is now the Algiers Courthouse honoring those who perished and those who survived the trans-Atlantic trade of Africans in bondage.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, as Africans were shipped to New Orleans, this region of the city was a French colonial encampment originally managed by Le Page du Pratz on which cabins housed the enslaved. According to geographer Richard Campanella, Ph.D., this area was used as a “warehouse, workshop, lumber mill and a farm in service of the principal colony across the river. Its primary use, however, was as a depository for captive Africans recently arrived from Senegambia as well as the Bight of Benin and Congo regions. Known as the Company Plantation, the site in the 1720s had more than 30 cabins used for the temporary sheltering of slaves until they were sold to colonists, or for their permanent housing if they were owned by the Company itself — as were 154 people at one point, making present-day Algiers Point, according to historian Erin M. Greenwald, the location of 'the largest single group of enslaved men, women, and children living in Louisiana.’ ”

Historians Freddi Evans and Erin Greenwald explain that “the first ship to arrive at this site was the Expédition, which landed 91 enslaved people, most from the Senegambian region, in 1723 . . . By 1725, the vast majority of enslaved people brought from West and West Central Africa to be sold in Louisiana were put on shore near this site, some receiving treatment at the plantation hospital before being sold to owners in New Orleans and the surrounding area.” As the trade continued, “under French, Spanish, and American rule, approximately 12,000 documented—along with an untold number of undocumented—men, women, and children were forced aboard ships bound for Louisiana . . . where the enslaved labored, 'clearing land, growing and processing rice to feed the colony, and tending cattle'." They also worked on the "colony's waterways" and "across the river as skilled craftsmen -- blacksmiths, carpenters, coopers, masons, roofers, and more" (Evans and Greenwald).

In Algiers, the business of the human trade, both international and domestic, was a principal factor in this city’s fiscal, social, and cultural development. This site, as a port of entry, has been designated a “Site of Memory” associated with the UNESCO Slave Route Project.

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On March 13, 1872, the National Republican reflected upon the importance of the nation’s first Black executive officer, Lieutenant. Governor Oscar James Dunn, some four months after his untimely death writing, “He was to them [Black Americans], their great preservative, their leader, the embodiment of their hopes, the real Moses…. who, as they fainted and famished in the struggle to reach the goal of acknowledged manhood, smote the rock of adversity till it gushed forth the cheering waters of hope. It was Oscar J. Dunn who led his people from the land of oppression and bondage…”

Oscar was born enslaved in 1822, the property of George P. Bowers, a commission merchant who resided in the Vieux Carre. On February 5, 1831, Oscar was purchased by his stepfather James Dunn, a free black stage carpenter who had migrated to New Orleans from Petersburg, Virginia.

James paid $800 to purchase his wife, Maria, and his two-year-old daughter, Jane. On December 13, 1832, he emancipated his family before the city’s Police Jury, officially making them free people of color. After his emancipation, Oscar adopted both his stepfather’s first and last names, becoming Oscar James Dunn.

Now free, Oscar could attend school, a privilege denied to the state’s enslaved population. Despite his academic excellence, at fourteen he was withdrawn and apprenticed to a master

plasterer.

After an argument with his employer, Dunn deserted his employment, inducing the plasterer to post advertisements calling for his apprehension and return in local papers. After the war, Dunn opened an information office where he wrote and negotiated labor contracts for freedmen. A leader among the Prince Hall Freemasons and within the African Methodist Episcopal church, Dunn joined the executive committee of the “Friends of Universal Suffrage,” which advocated for civil and voting rights for people of color in Louisiana.

Dunn was among the first black men appointed to political office within Louisiana’s Reconstruction government. In 1867, he was appointed to the Assistant Board of Aldermen and installed as the Assistant Recorder of the city’s Second District Court, becoming the first Black person to serve in a judicial capacity in the state.

The following year, he became the nation’s first Black executive officer when he was elected Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana.

In office, Dunn opposed the de-facto re-enslavement of black children through agricultural apprenticeships, and also helped to form “The Bakery for the People,” a collective designed to foster economic independence.

A fierce defender of civil rights, Dunn argued that the Black citizens merely required “an equal chance in the race of life; an equal opportunity of supporting our families, of educating our children and of becoming worthy citizens of this Government.” Following the passage of a bill to integrate public schools, Dunn and his wife, Ellen Boyd Dunn, enrolled their daughters and a niece in New Orleans public schools.

On September 26, 1868, Governor Henry C. Warmoth vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, creating a schism within Louisiana’s Republican party. Dunn helped lead the faction which sought to remove Warmoth. By 1871, they had mustered enough support to impeach the governor. Before Warmoth’s trial, Dunn became violently ill and quickly died, leading many to speculate that he had been poisoned. The day of Dunn‘s funeral, November 23, 1871, was declared a day of mourning, and all the offices of city government were closed. Benevolent societies, military and police units, and other organizations formed the largest recorded funeral procession in the city’s history.

The legislature established the Oscar J. Dunn Monument Association of Louisiana for the purpose of erecting a fitting monument in honor of the late lieutenant-governor. Though monies were dedicated, the proposed monument was never erected.

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The Morales-Arlington’s tomb once held one of New Orleans most notorious madams, Josie Arlington, from the city’s equally notorious red light district, Storyville. Arlington's reputation and the tomb she created for herself have attracted visitors and locals alike, from the time of her burial until today, when some observers say they have caught a glimpse of lights dancing around her mausoleum -- Josie Arlington, trying to get back into her grave.

Sometime around 1910, Josie Arlington purchased a cemetery plot at Metairie Cemetery for $2,000. The idea that a retired proprietor of a house of ill repute would eventually be laid to rest amongst some of the city’s elite outraged many. However, Arlington wasted no time after her purchase of the plot to begin work on her memorial. On May 11, 1911, she signed a contract with sculptor Albert Weiblen to create her final resting place. Arlington wanted it to make a statement about herself, spending a whopping $5,500, and personally selecting every last detail. Once finished, the public immediately began to read meaning into the tomb’s design, seeing it as a symbol of her life in prostitution. The reddish-brown granite was said to represent the red light district of Storyville and the fire torches to represent her chosen profession. Some have seen the bronze female statue as symbolizing a virgin’s doomed attempt to enter Arlington’s brothel. Others have suggested the statue represents Josie as a young girl, sneaking back into her father's house. What Josie saw in the statue of the girl we will never know – we just know that she purchased it from Munich, Germany.

On February 14, 1914, Arlington took her last breath and was laid to rest in her tomb. She did not enjoy its amenities for long, however. Only a month after Josie's death, her family began fighting over her money and property, which amounted to over $50,000. Arlington's family was forced to sell not only her mansion on Esplanade Avenue, but her tomb as well. The tomb was sold to Jose A. Morales, a New Orleans attorney. Under cover of night, Metairie Cemetery officials removed Josie Arlington's remains to a remote, undisclosed location in the cemetery. The name at the top of the tomb was changed to J. A. Morales and was soon occupied by Morales’s wife and four children.

The fight over Arlington’s estate and the removal of her remains created heated local discussion and headlines in local newspapers. Crowds were drawn to the tomb, and once a flashing red traffic light was installed on the New Basin Shell Road that ran alongside the cemetery, the crowds grew even bigger, as the red light reflected off the reddish granite of Arlington's tomb, creating the illusion that the tomb was on fire. As Metairie Cemetery historian Henri Gandolfo wrote, “The red glare flashing on and off added a mysterious sense of drama never intended.” The red light was later removed and a cross was carved on the back of the tomb, calming the crowds. Today, Metairie Cemetery authorities still refuse to divulge the site of Josie Arlington's remains, but her abandoned tomb continues to attract her admirers.

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-Errol Laborde

In 1425, at the young age of thirteen, voices spoke to a French teenager named Joan telling her to provide aid to Charles VII of France in his plight against the English during the Hundred Years’ War. Mounted on her steed, this teenage girl led the French forces to drive the English troops out of Orleans.

The ‘Maid of Orleans' continued her fight against the English until her capture in 1430 when a group of Burgundians turned her over to the British. On May 30, 1431, the British charged Joan with heresy and burned her at the stake. On July 7, 1456, the church and government absolved Joan of her crimes, and centuries later in 1909, Pope Leo XIII beatified Joan. Shortly after, in 1920, he canonized the warrior for her outstanding virtues. The presence of St. Joan, the Maid of Orleans, drifted through many centuries, over the ocean to a special place in the sister city of her hometown, New Orleans.

Originally cast by French sculptor Emmanuel Frémiet in the late 1800s, the statue of Joan that can be found in the French Quarter entered the world as one of nine similar statues. With no destination in mind, Joan patiently waited in a French warehouse until her day of liberation. Adventure finally found her in 1958 when a New York Company purchased the warehouse where Joan sat, longing for a change of scenery. While her warehouse mates traveled to places like Melbourne, Quebec, and Philadelphia, Joan traveled to one of the liveliest cities in the world, New Orleans. Though relocated to a lively city, Joan languished in storage once again, this time in a New Orleans warehouse for approximately fourteen years while the city struggled to pay her $36,500 price tag. Even though French President Charles de Gaulle paid her ransom in 1964, she remained in the dreary warehouse until 1972. Joan emerged under the Southern sun at the Rivergate Convention Center.

Dwarfed by the two giant buildings that surrounded her, Joan never gave up and stood proudly in her New Orleans Business District home. Temporarily disappearing in 1984, Joan reappeared in time for the World's Fair. Finally, in the fresh air, Joan enjoyed her freedom until her recapture by a lengthy legal battle in the 1990s when the Harrah’s Company sought to knock her off her pedestal in the Business District. Supported by her new troops - government officials, historians, and the community - Joan charged into battle once more. In October 1999, a triumphant Joan advanced to her current location in the Place de France in the French Market.

Rearing back on her steed, Joan represents the strength, power, and perseverance of New Orleans, a city that no foe may defeat.

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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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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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"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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In August of 1948, a young man from Lafayette, Louisiana named Norman C. Francis moved to New Orleans to further his education at Xavier University. While at Xavier he remained grounded in the life lessons his parents taught him as a young boy, which include, “succeed despite obstacles, respect yourself, respect others, get a good education, and remember there is dignity in people at every level of work.” These lessons along with his faith shaped the leader that Dr. Norman C. Francis would become.

Francis graduated from Xavier University in May of 1952 with a Bachelor’s of Science Degree. Prior to graduation he applied to Loyola University School of Law and was accepted. In 1955, Norman C. Francis made history as the first African American to graduate from Loyola University School of Law. Days after graduating from law school, Francis married Blanche Macdonald, a 1948 Xavier University graduate, and approximately two weeks later he received U. S. Army draft orders.

When Francis’s tour in Germany ended, in 1957, he returned to New Orleans where he accepted an invitation from Sister Josephina Kenny, S.B. S., President of Xavier University to serve as Dean of Men, the first of many posts Francis would hold at the university The other posts Francis held at Xavier comprised of several administrative positions including, Director of Student Personnel Services, Assistant to the President of Student Affairs, and Assistant to the President in charge of Development.

On April 4, 1968, the day that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, Dr. Norman C. Francis, at the age of 37 accepted the position as President of Xavier University, thus becoming the first black lay person to hold the position. Dr. Francis retired as President of Xavier University in 2015 after serving 46 years and being honored as the nation’s longest serving college president.

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In the late summer of 1963, propelled through treacherous rural Alabama by spirituals from his previous post in the civil rights battlefields of south Georgia, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) field secretary and playwright John O’Neal arrived at the campus of Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi.

There, O’Neal joined with fellow field secretary Doris Derby and student Gilbert Moses, already hard at work on the curriculum for the Freedom Schools, to found a theater that would serve as a political education and empowerment tool for Southern organizers.

Political conditions including better access to funding and collaboration with other projects motivated the Free Southern Theater’s move to New Orleans in 1965. From this base the company toured across the rural South, inspiring members of its racially integrated cast to become activists as well as artists.

The FST drew support from the Black communities where it performed in churches, classrooms and barns, and from Black artists and writers around the country. Its first donation – a check for $5 – came from Langston Hughes himself.

Under the direction of writers including O’Neal, Tom Dent and Kalamu ya Salaam, the FST’s works were inspired by the wit and wisdom of ‘common folk’.

One memorable character, first performed in the Tougaloo days, is storyteller and narrator Junebug Jabbo Jones. In 1980, a debut performance of O’Neal’s Junebug solo piece, ‘Don’t Start Me to Talking, Or I’ll Tell Everything I Know,’ symbolically concluded the Free Southern Theater and inaugurated its successor, Junebug Productions.

O’Neal served as Junebug’s artistic director through his retirement in 2011. Today the organization carries on the FST’s mission, supporting activism through creative means including the Story Circle process, the Color Lines project, and drama, dance and poetry performances."

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Born June 29, 1910 in Terrebonne Parish, Avery Caesar Alexander grew up in a poor family. He entered the workforce as a boy, taking odd jobs until he earned work as a longshoreman. His family relocated to New Orleans and because he was forced to work as a child he was unable to successfully earn his high school diploma until he was 29, which he did by attending night school. He went on to graduate from Union Baptist Theological Seminary and became associate pastor at the Historic Second Baptist Church on Marengo Street.

As a longshoreman, he had became active in the longshoremen’s union and eventually in the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In the NAACP, he developed his organizational skills and led efforts for voter registrations, boycotts, marches and demonstrations.

1963 was an extremely difficult year in the Civil Rights movement on both the national and local levels. The interracial and inter-denominational Citizens’ Committee of Greater New Orleans, led a march against racial discrimination on September 30, 1963 to the steps of New Orleans City Hall. Following the march an 18-point petition was presented to Mayor Victor H. Schiro, the City Council, various business & civic leaders and to all of the local news media outlets. The protesters waited weeks for an official response from City Hall. But they were ignored.

On October 31, 1963, Rev. Alexander launched a direct action campaign aimed directly at City Hall. African American protesters held sit-ins in the mayor’s reception area, the City Council chambers and the John Lynne Cafeteria located in the basement of city hall. They were asked to leave, and told that if they did not, they would be removed by force.

Rev. Alexander, Sandra Nixon and two other young ladies held their sit-in at the cafeteria by asking to be served. When the employees refused to serve them, they refused to leave, and the young ladies were carried out of the cafeteria on their chairs which were removed while they remained seated in them. Rev. Alexander, however, was dragged by his feet out of the building. He was abused and beaten as his head hit the marble steps and floors, and was forced into a police wagon.

28 African American protesters were arrested that day. Eight African American employees who worked at the cafeteria walked off their jobs and the images of Rev. Alexander dragged out of City Hall by his feet made local, state & national news.

The images of Rev. Alexander ignited a wave of protest, demonstrations and sit ins around the city. The 1963 City Hall Cafeteria Sit in was one of the catalysts that led to the final and complete desegregation of the city of New Orleans.

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On December 1, 1927, an overall-clad longshoreman interrupted a Sunday evening gathering of the New Orleans Division of the Universal Negro Improvement Association: Marcus Garvey, the organization’s founder, was to be deported to Jamaica through the city’s port the next morning. Congregants held vigil at Liberty Hall, meeting the sun at the Mississippi River’s bank together that Monday. Altogether, an estimated 5,000 people flocked to the docks and levees on either side of the river to catch a glimpse of the man who had galvanized millions of Black people throughout the Americas, Africa, and Europe with the call “Africa, unite!”

Garvey established the UNIA in 1917, amidst nationwide unrest following the First World War. Droves of Black men and women had migrated from the rural south to the urban centers in the south and north for industrial jobs during the War, only to be removed or demoted to make way for white veterans’ return, and the continuance of virulent racism disappointed those Black soldiers who’d expected their veteran status to be of social consequence. Garvey entered here with a gospel of Black autonomy and borderless nationalism that connected desires for economic security, spiritual sustenance, and cultural reclamation.

Alaida Robertson established a division of the UNIA in New Orleans, then the largest urban center in the South, in 1920. Quickly she grew it into one of the largest in the country, with 4,000 dues-paying members in just the first year.

The New Orleans Division (NOD) had a tense relationship with the parent organization in New York. Though fiercely loyal to Garvey and the Association, they bent the rules to fit a southern context yet defined by former enslavers and plantation owners, empowered by the wealth accrued through the trade in Black bodies and labor. One of the ways in which they did so was through the informal leadership of women within the intensely patriarchal organization.

The NOD did not distinguish between their love for arts, culture, and celebration and their firm beliefs in economic and social justice. After visiting New Orleans in 1923, Garvey fondly recounted the festive spirit of the Division, with its house band and parties.

Once the S.S. Salmacca docked, Garvey asked the crowd if, contrary to his captors’ admonition, they would like him to speak. They pulled out their guns and responded affirmatively.

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John Thompson had a sharp wit and irreverent humor. John Thompson was a proud New Orleanian who cursed the dysfunction of his city every day. John Thompson loved his wife, his family, and his friends. John Thompson was an exoneree, a death-penalty abolitionist, an orator, and an idealist. The injustice he suffered was a New Orleans story, but John Thompson became a national icon whose name now stands for the impunity with which prosecutors may disregard the life and rights of a young Black man.

John was wrongly arrested for an armed robbery and unrelated murder in 1984. Prosecutors intentionally hid all the evidence that he was innocent of both, including blood evidence showing he was not the armed robber, at his trials. He was promptly convicted and sentenced to death in 1985. Arriving at Angola Prison, he was put in the cell of a man who’d been executed days before; the man’s possessions were still there. In the summer of 1985, Louisiana had executed eight men at Angola. John knew 12 more men who were executed there.

In 1999, less than a month before his execution date (scheduled the day before his eldest son was to graduate high school), a defense investigator found the blood evidence that proved him innocent of the robbery. The armed robbery conviction was thrown out and he was taken off death row. Then, in 2002, the murder conviction was thrown out. At his retrial in 2003, a New Orleans jury took 35 minutes to acquit him of the murder for which he had almost been executed. He walked out of the courtroom at Tulane Avenue and Broad Street and began a life of hard, often thankless, work of helping others returning from prison.

John became a tireless advocate, social worker and mentor. He sold his brilliant vision for fellow exonerees helping each other upon return from prison and set up the first holistic, exoneree-run, reentry program in the country: Resurrection After Exoneration. But because John knew people should not console themselves with his happy ending, he increasingly used his story as a galvanizing cry. He sued the prosecutors who nearly had him killed, saying prosecutors’ offices should have standards to stop the terrible injustice that happened to him. He wanted longtime New Orleans DA, Harry Connick Sr., to pay because he did not care to have such standards, and as a result, John was ripped from his 6 and 4-year old sons, thrown into solitary confinement for 14 years to await execution for a murder he knew he did not do, survived 7 execution dates and lost 18 years of his life. He asked for help and for the justice any of us would ask for if — God forbid — we had been in his shoes and survived. He and his lawyers persuaded a New Orleans judge and jury that John’s life mattered enough that those prosecutors should pay. But in 2011 in the case of Connick v. Thompson, five justices of the United States Supreme Court took it away, saying the law is not the way to hold prosecutors accountable, and that if district attorneys chose not to train their staff to guard against such an injustice, they would not be liable.

The four men in the majority of the Supreme Court were mistaken and morally wrong. To John, and many others, the Supreme Court said his Black life did not matter enough for the White men who nearly killed him to be held accountable.

John died early of a heart attack in 2017. Meanwhile in 2018, the lawyer who argued to reverse John Thompson’s jury verdict in the Supreme Court was sworn in as a judge for the Court of Appeals for much of the former confederacy: Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. John’s legacy should speed all of America’s realization that its society—as reflected in its courts—does not value Black lives as it does White lives.

John spent his life asking hard questions. He asked the hardest question of the highest court in the country: does my life matter enough? He showed the country the answer, and left us to do something about it. He rests in power.

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St. Frances Xavier Cabrini arrived in New Orleans in 1892, with a charge to help poor Italian immigrants at a time of intense xenophobia in the city. A year earlier, a local lynch mob had murdered 11 Sicilian immigrants. Yellow fever had also decimated the local immigrant community. Mother Cabrini got to work quickly, establishing an orphanage at 817 St. Philip Street in the French Quarter.

Born as Maria Francesca Cabrini on July 15, 1850, in Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, Italy, she dealt with poor health as a child but was an excellent student. As a young adult she taught at an orphanage for several years before taking her religious vows in 1877. She co-founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus congregation, which focused on caring for poor children, and as the institute grew she was encouraged by Pope Leo XIII to continue her mission in the United States, which had an increasing number of poor Italian immigrants.

In 1889 Mother Cabrini and six other sisters came to the U.S., eventually setting up 67 missions across the country, including in New Orleans. As her school and orphanage in the French Quarter continued to take on more poor children, she acquired land on Esplanade Avenue and had another orphanage built in 1905. The building served as an orphanage until 1959, when it became Cabrini High School New Orleans.

Mother Cabrini became a naturalized citizen of the U.S. in 1909 but died just eight years later in Chicago due to complications from dysentery. Pope Pius XII made her the first naturalized U.S. citizen to be canonized in 1946. The patron saint of immigrants, Mother Cabrini is venerated for her lifelong commitment to the care and education of poor, sick, and orphaned children, particularly those of Italian heritage who struggled after arriving in America.

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The Dew Drop Inn "opened" its doors in 1939 under the ownership of Mr. Frank Pania. The Dew Drop would become a major player in the development of Rhythm and Blues.

The "Drop," as it was called, became the hub of social and civic activities for New Orleans residents, regardless of race or gender. Mr. Pania had an "open door" policy and was respected by all.

The Dew Drop offered its clientele much more than entertainment. It offered the Black community access to a nice hotel, a top-notch restaurant, as well as a barber and beauty salon.

Many performing artists at the Dew Drop Inn would become household names in the future world of Rock and Roll.

A young Ray Charles (nee Robinson) as well as Lil' Richard would not only live at the Drop but would record and perform there between 1953 and 1956. The Drop was skillfully managed by Patsy Valdez, who would become a close associate of Lil' Richard (of 'Tutti Frutti' fame), who would record 'Rip It Up' and 'Reddy Teddy' under the auspices of Robert 'Bumps' Blackwell of Specialty Records at the Dew Drop Inn. The stage would host the likes of Professor Longhair, Dave Bartholomew, Don Albert, The Neville Brothers, Johnny Adams and Big Joe Turner.

During the middle to late 1960s, the go-go girls craze would explode at the Dew Drop Inn. Lil' Bea with her Boa would woo the crowd all night and was soon joined by "Pepper," the first Caucasian Go-Go Girl to appear in a black club.

Ravaged by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the building is still standing but has not been renovated. A rather sad position for a local historic icon that could serve as a beacon of success for our city and the world of music.

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