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 the 1920s and 1930s, the second floor of 1001 Canal Street was home to the Arcadia and Alamo Dance Halls. These dance halls served as a space for thirsty men in New Orleans to cut loose at the height of Prohibition. Prohibition, enacted in January 1920 by the 18th Amendment, made the manufacture and sale of alcohol federally illegal throughout the United States, but nowhere housed more scofflaws than New Orleans. When Izzy Einstein, a famous 1920s customs agent, traveled to New Orleans to enforce Prohibition, he remarked that it took only thirty-five seconds to find alcohol. The driver of a taxi that Einstein hailed at the train station offered a swig of liquor from a bottle stashed beneath a seat. [2]

One of sixty-three dance halls in New Orleans, the Arcadia was known as a ‘closed,’ or ‘nickel-a-dance’ hall, primarily catering to single men without dates who would pay for dances from the women employed by the establishment. [3] The women working in these closed halls were known as ‘hostesses’ and club owners encouraged them to dance, drink, and converse with the male clientele. [4] In 1924, New Orleans Item journalist Dorothy Day went undercover as a hostess in the Arcadia dance hall. Day's first-hand account of dance hall goings-on gives us an in-depth glimpse into New Orleans nightlife in the 1920s. Day describes the diverse clientele of the Arcadia as “transients, salesmen, sailors and boys from the army and navy, [and] high school boys out seeing life.” [5] Alcohol consumption was everywhere, especially in the practice of ‘B-drinking’, a scheme wherein women wokring at the dance hall would convince gullible male suitors to buy them the most expensive drinks. Police officers frequented the dance hall and often overlooked the sale of alcohol - for a fee. [6] Like most music venues in the city, jazz was the music of choice for the dance halls at 1001 Canal. The dance halls hosted a variety of jazz acts, including The Fischbein-Williams Syncopators and the world-famous banjoist/guitarist, Danny Barker. [7, 8]

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There are three buildings still standing in New Orleans where it is most likely young George Herriman spent his childhood days: St. Augustine Church, the site of the Herriman & Chessé tailor shop, and this handsomely restored Creole cottage on the corner of Burgundy and Kerlerac streets (or, during Herriman’s time, the corner of Craps and History). Here was the Chessé family home, just blocks from the Herriman home on Villere street.

More than cousins, the Herrimans and Chessés might best be considered one family. Justine Olivier raised her two Herriman sons in the Chessé family, and throughout their time in New Orleans, the Herrimans and Chessés worked together, worshipped together and — though there is no record of it — surely socialized together. Extended family members, including the Esnards, intermarried, deepening the family ties.

As with the Herrimans, members of the Chessé family moved from New Orleans where they would self-identify, or “pass,” as white. These include Ralph Chessé, who went on to become an accomplished painter and puppeteer. During his remarkable career, Ralph worked with the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Theatre Project, staging marionette shows including an all-puppet adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s drama The Emperor Jones. (Although not identifying as Black, in this and other works, Chessé explored racial themes in his work.) Other members of the Chessé family include Ralph’s son Bruce Chessé, also a puppeteer, and film editor Matt Chessé. Cousins to the Herrimans and Chessés include the writer Norman Rush, former commander of Joint Task Force Katrina Lt. General Russel L. Honoré (ret.), and the various members of New Orleans’ musical Boutté family. In 2018, singer John Boutté honored his ties to the Herrimans and Chessés by voicing the part of Krazy Kat in the song “Happy Land,” recorded with New Orleans’ Panorama Jazz Band.

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“Weeds, snakes, and a contaminated lake.”

These were the swimming conditions that New Orleans provided for African Americans prior to the opening of Lincoln Beach. In 1938, Sam Zemurray, president of United Fruit Company, deeded a 2.3-acre tract of land to the city. The following year, the Orleans Parish Levee Board purchased the land. The tract was along the lakefront in the Little Woods section of New Orleans East. The city asserted that Little Woods was a ‘separate but equal’ recreational area, in compliance with the standard established in Plessy v. Ferguson. However, many African-Americans recall a 12-mile trip on an unpaved road that was followed by crossing active railroad tracks, and waste from nearby fishing camps which polluted the swimming water.

African-Americans continued to seek out other options so they could stay cool in the tropical summers. Some visited the nearby Seabrook in spite of police harassment and the city’s refusal to provide lighting or lifeguards. The most impactful tragedy at Seabrook occurred in 1931 when a group of six family members all drowned together due to a sinkhole in the lake. Such drownings became increasingly common as structural improvements were made along the North Shore of the lake. Real estate investments increased the value of homes in burgeoning white communities. Additionally, the white sand that was imported for the newly constructed and segregated Pontchartrain Beach eroded the South Shore.

After 25 years of struggle for recreational equality and environmental racism, the Orleans Levee Board invested $500,000 in building a lakeside amusement park for African-American citizens, who comprised about 200,000 — or 32% — of the city’s population in 1950. More extensively developed than the park designated in 1939, Lincoln Beach was a better-equipped site. Some remember tickets for free admission to Lincoln Beach that came in Sunbeam Bread. There was a Midway with rides, a ferris wheel, rollercoaster, and games of chance. Patrons dined at the Carver House Restaurant, and danced atop its terrace.

There were two swimming pools with a lifeguard corps and a swimming teacher, Edward X. Dunn. One of the pools was named in honor of Capt. Nolan McNeal, a former slave and fighter for black progress. Highlights at Lincoln Beach included bathing beauty contests and diving expositions. It was also the site of the annual Negro State Fairs. Musical artists included Fats Domino, Irma Thomas, Earl King, The Neville Brothers, Nat King Cole, The Ink Spots, Ernie K-Doe, Dr. John, and many others.

Despite marked improvements, most African-Americans recognized that Lincoln Beach was a park of lesser quality than the Whites-only Pontchartrain Beach. Lincoln Beach was a quarter-mile in length in contrast to Pontchartrain Beach’s half-mile, and it was difficult to arrive at, but it was a place where African-Americans produced culture through their bodies. And as many have said, “It was a place where I felt safe.”

Since its closure following the desegregation of public accommodations under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Lincoln Beach has become dilapidated. It barely shows the skeleton of what it once was. As soon as Pontchartrain desegregated, the Orleans Levee Board abandoned caring for the beach. And once Pontchartrain Beach integrated, owner Harry Batt disinvested in his own property. White violence was initially enacted against African-Americans that began to integrate Pontchartrain. Eventually, whites stopped attending the park at all.

Mr. Leon A. Waters [researcher, author, and native of New Orleans] took me [storyteller Danielle Abrams] to Lincoln Beach in the summer of 2018. We stood on the levee looking down into a forest that blanketed the beach. Mr. Waters said to me, “They let that forest grow so we’d forget it [segregation] ever happened.”

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The Algiers Folk Art Zone & Blues Museum, which is located directly across from the Mississippi River levee at 207 Leboeuf Street, was founded by Charles Gillam in 2000. A self-taught sculptor, wood-carver, and mixed media artist, Gillam was born in 1945 and raised in the Lower Ninth Ward. He traces his earliest experiences creating folk art back to his childhood when he and his brother worked shining shoes in the French Quarter. After stints in the military and the Black Panthers, Gillam devoted himself to creating folk art from found objects and materials like wire, grating, and Mississippi River driftwood. His work gained broader exposure in the early 1990s when the New Orleans House of Blues club commissioned Gillam to carve a bust of the iconic Delta blues man, Charley Patton. His hand-carved doors and other blues-related works were also purchased for display in other House of Blues locations.

The Folk Art Zone & Blues Museum consists of two houses joined by a carnivalesque courtyard filled with Gillam’s colorful creations that celebrate African American history and culture with a definite emphasis on the blues and New Orleans music and street life. Gillam explains: “Discarded materials from Hurricane Katrina, old cabinet doors that people have discarded, I turn them back into works of art by taking them apart and using the wood and creating the images and characters of New Orleans. When I carve these characters, it seems like they just tell me how to pull them out from that wood.” Gillam’s dedication to creating a folk art environment that repurposes materials is testified to by the roofing shingles that came off one of his buildings that were used to pave the courtyard and are now adorned with his mural art.

Inside the blues museum the walls are lined with concrete busts of blues men — Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Big Joe Williams, Roosevelt Sykes; blues divas — Billie Holiday, Sippie Wallace, Koko Taylor, Etta James, Memphis Minnie; and New Orleans greats — Professor Longhair, Fats Domino, James Booker, Allen Toussaint. In addition, Gillam’s museum displays work by an array of folk artists, including Lonnie Holley, Gregory “Mr. Imagination” Womack, Roy Ferdinand, A.J. Boudreaux, and Big Al Taplet. Of course, a visit to the Algiers Folk Art Zone & Blues Museum also means a guided tour by the effervescent host that combines history, culture, and art. Gillam also uses his Folk Art Zone for educational workshops, and each fall he and his wife Susan, who is also an artist, host the Algiers Folk Art Festival.

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The intersection of Exchange Alley and Canal Street reflects jazz's early roots in youth culture and community, as well as Canal Street prominence as a commercial corridor.

On December 13, 1915, Chicago café owner Harry James discovered a young ragtime band playing on Canal Street in which the meeting eventually led to the recruitment and formation of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (ODJB) in Chicago. The ODJB went on to make the first jazz record "Livery Stable Blues" in New York on February 26, 1917.

The original members Nick Larocca, Alcide Nunez, Johnny Stein, Manuel Mello, Tony Sbarbaro, and Larry Shields came from historically marginalized white immigrant communities, which were attracted to the vernacular dance music eventually known as jazz.

The adjacent 100 block of Exchange Alley was where young white musicians, such as the original members of the ODJB, tried to pick up music work and gigs with "Papa" Jack Laine’s Reliance (brass) Band. Such musicians likely offered non-union costs, in competition with the American Federation of Musicians Local #174 white union nearby on Iberville Street.

In the early 20th century, Canal Street served as the city's main commercial center. Lined with department stores, the wide thoroughfare brought streetcars from all over the city, and hosted jazz bands playing music (known as a "ballyhoo" for promoting businesses.

"...around Exchange Alley, by Martin's [Bar] --you could go there and fill up, you understand, and get free lunch. And you could go in there and buy a beer. And if you were hungry you could get a big sandwich. And if you could eat another sandwich, get another beer and get another sandwich." -Trumpeter Batiste Steckler, Hogan Jazz Archive

Following stop one, cross over Canal St. and head toward the Roosevelt Hotel.

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Louis Armstrong Park is a 30 acre park featuring several sites and sculptures related to New Orleans music history. The main pedestrian entrance is on N. Rampart at St. Anne Streets.

The shady landscaped space to the west (towards Canal St.) is historic Congo Square, where enslaved persons, free persons and color and Native Americans gathered on Sundays during the colonial and early American periods to trade, perform music and dance . Elements of improvisation, African rhythm patterns, and use of string instruments became incorporated into early jazz.

On the edge of the lagoons to the east (towards Esplanade Ave) are sculptures of New Orleans music icons. Buddy Bolden who reigned as the first "King" of cornet from 1900-1907 is portrayed as three persona in motion, possibly reflecting his unstable mental state. Louis Armstrong' larger than life statue created by esteemed artist Elizabeth Catlett, pays tribute to the King of Jazz in the twentieth century. Further to the north is the bust of Sidney Bechet, the great creole of color clarinetist and peer of Armstrong in New Orleans during the 1910s. Beyond this grove Mahalia Jackson, considered the greatest gospel singer of the twentieth Century, is honored in a modern sculpture and the adjacent Mahalia Jackson Theater for the Performing Arts.

Across the lagoon to the east (towards Esplanade Ave.) the Perserverance Hall/Masonic Lodge #4 (Society Hall) is typical of many society halls rented out for dances in the 1910s. During this period, jazz musicians including clarinetist/saxophonist Sidney Bechet and bassist George "Pops" Foster played dances there. The first floor would be rented out for public events to produce income for the lodge, and the upper floor was used for lodge rites and dances. Captain Verne Strekfus, who owned a line of excursion riverboats, recruited talented musicians such as Pops Foster from the dance bands.

Built in 1820, this Scottish Rite masonic lodge is one of the oldest in the United States. French-speaking white immigrants from San Domingue who moved to New Orleans following the Haitian Revolt founded the lodge in 1810.

The lodge was situated at the corner of St. Claude Avenue and Dumaine Street, an intersection made famous in Professor Longhair's 1949 hit "Go to the Mardi Gras" as the location where one can "see the Zulu King."

The city developed Louis Armstrong Park in the 1960s and 1970s in an urban renewal project that destroyed a section of the Treme community, considered to be one of the oldest African American neighborhoods in the United States based on the large number of free person of color land owners in the early 1800s. Like the French Quarter, the Treme was largely an Italian and African American community by 1900, and produced the great New Orleans trumpeter/singer Louis Prima, who modeled his style on Louis Armstrong.

Nearby, Lil Dizzy's restaurant (1500 Esplanade Ave.) serves authentic creole gumbo, fried chicken, and ice tea. In a small display, owner Wayne Baquet celebrates his family' rich jazz history, as he is a descendant of clarinetists George Baquet of the Original Creole Orchestra and Achille Baquet of the Original New Orleans Jazz Band,

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Musician, educator, author and storyteller Danny Barker was born in 1909 in the rear building at 1027 Chartres Street. At the time of Barker's birth, the lower French Quarter community was home to a large African American and Sicilian population.

Barker grew up in a creole family that embraced music education and formal brass band performance. Known as the "Banjo King of New Orleans" in the 1920s, Barker toured with local bands along the Gulf Coast. Seeking new opportunities, Barker moved to New York in the 1930s, where he worked with Cab Calloway, Charlie Parker, and other legends. According to Barker: “If you went on the road with [Sam] Morgan, you would play Bay St. Louis, Pensacola, and Mobile. You would stay in Mobile and play Friday, Saturday and Sunday. You would do to same thing when you came back, when you would go through Bogalusa.”

Moving back to New Orleans in the 1960s, Barker sparked a local brass band revival when he established the Fairview Baptist Brass Band to mentor a new generation of young men in New Orleans' distinct brass band traditions. Local musicians Leroy Jones, Greg Stafford, Michael White, and many others played in the Fairview, and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band evolved from former members in the 1970s.

From the 1960s until his death in 1994, Danny Barker and his wife Blue Lu Barker often worked as educators, recorded music, and performed together. An authentic New Orleans raconteur, Barker educated audiences with his entertaining stories and detailed memories. The annual Danny Barker Banjo and Guitar Festival celebrates his multifaceted and enduring legacy.

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During the 1920s, the Lyric Theater was New Orleans premiere African American vaudeville theater.

Formerly located at the downtown-lake corner of Burgundy and Iberville streets in the French Quarter, the Lyric Theater was touted as “America’s Largest and Finest Colored Theater." The playhouse catered to great musicians and featured the orchestra of locally prominent violinist and bandleader Professor John Robichaux. The orchestra was adept at performing both hot jazz and more formal orchestral music. Pianist Margaret Maurice, drummer Zutty Singleton, clarinetist Alphonse Picou, and cornetist Andrew Kimball all performed in the orchestra.

From 1919 to 1927, the theater hosted well-known singers, dancers, and entertainers working the Theater Owners Booking Assoc. (TOBA) black vaudeville circuit, including Esther Bigeou, Sara Martin, Josephine Baker, and Ethel Waters.

The theater often held "midnight frolics" for white-only audiences. Local white newspapers promoted these midnight performances as the latest popular entertainment for their white patrons.

Cornetist/Trumpeter Punch Miller, in a Hogan Jazz Archives interview, remembered: "The Lyric used to be crowded every day in the week, upstairs and downstairs. A group would come for a week, start a new show Monday, play it Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Then on Thursday they would change the show, have the same cast, but a different show. Friday and Saturday they had "midnight rambles" which were different, a little nasty. They started at 11, ended at around 2 am. They would let the white people in on "ramble" nights." [3]

Louis Armstrong also remembered the Lyric with fondness: "I went to the Lyric Theater quite often. Located downtown on Iberville and Burgundy streets. Robichaux Orchestra was always the best. They all read music. John Robichaux. They used to play for the stage shows. Andrew Kimball was the cornetist in the band (my choice)." [4]

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In the 1910s and 1920s, the Tango Belt was a popular entertainment section of the upper French Quarter, and where dance halls featured local jazz.

Named after the Argentine dance that swept the globe in 1913, the Tango Belt spanned several blocks bound by St. Louis, Dauphine, Iberville and North Rampart.

A mix of bars, cabarets, nightclubs, vaudeville houses, saloons, dance halls and theaters—of which the Lyric Theatre was one, the Tango Belt was the densest collection of jazz clubs in the city during its prime in the 1920s.

Some of the most popular jazz clubs in the 1920s included the Fern Dance Hall and Pup Cafe (1000 block of Iberville), the Dog House (Bienville at Rampart), the Orchard (900 block of Conti), and the Cadillac Club (300 block of N. Rampart). Many of these clubs hosted jitney dances, in which patrons paid to dance with women, and which also provided jobs for musicians.

After the closing of Storyville in 1917, the Tango Belt inherited much of the prostitution trade. Norma Wallace, known as the “Last Madame,” operated her brothel at 1026 Conti from the 1920s through the 1960s, and it was considered one of the last hold-overs of that trade from the 1920s.

"The women in [the Budweiser] they was a bunch of characters. There was "Broken Dishes" that was her name. [Clarinetist Irving] Fazola's broad was Bebe, she was little....The big shot guys, they'd pick up the girls in the front,...But that love - it ain't for keeps."

-Drummer Sal Gutierrez, Hogan Jazz Archive

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Preservation Hall is a French Quarter concert hall with nightly performances by esteemed local jazz musicians.

Established in 1962 by young Philadelphia natives Alan and Sandra Jaffe, the space provided a safe place for older jazz musicians to perform in New Orleans at a time when state laws prohibited inter-racial performances.

After the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Preservation Hall became widely known as a family-friendly concert hall in which New Orleans-style jazz is performed nightly. Through recordings, tours, and film the Preservation Hall band gained international recognition, and continues to present New Orleans music traditions to the world today..

Still family run for over 50 years, Preservation Hall hosts performances 350 nights a year, and includes educational programs aimed at preserving the legacy of Jazz in New Orleans.

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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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401 South Rampart, site of the Eagle Saloon, anchors this historic block in theonce diverse neighborhood of African Americans, Jewish and Chinese immigrants that is closely associated with Louis Armstrong's youth and musical upbringing.

Louis Armstrong grew up here near Perdido Street in the "Back of Town" neighborhood with businesses stretched along South Rampart Street.

The Odd Fellows, an African American fraternal group, leased the top floor of the Masonic Hall here and used it for dances where the bands of cornetist Buddy "King" Bolden and violinist John Robicheaux performed in the early 1900s. Bolden, considered one of the first and most influential jazz musicians, left a huge musical impression on the first generation of jazz players.

Music was prevalent in public spaces in this neighborhood -- The Odd Fellows lined up for parades on Perdido street, and the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club was founded in 1909 in this block. Louis Armstrong wrote of standing in front of the Zulu Social Club at a young age, listening to the band from the street.

On New Year's Eve, 1913, an adolescent Louis Armstrong was arrested for shooting a pistol into the air at the corner of Perdido and Rampart streets here in front of the Eagle Saloon. His sentencing required him to attend 18 months at the Colored Waif's Home near City Park, where the structured environment provided his first formal musical training on bugle and cornet, and performance opportunities in parades.

Interpretive panels on the street in this block cover the histories of the neighboring Iroquois Theater (413) and Karnofsky House (427), also important sites in the youth of Louis Armstrong. As Armstrong recalled,

"On Liberty, Perdido, Franklin, and Poydras there were honky tonks at every corner. and in each one, instruments of all kinds was played. At the corner of the street where I lived was the Famous Funky Butt Hall where I first heard Buddy Bolden play. He was blowing up a storm." - Louis Armstrong [1]

Continue your tour by heading to the red brick building next door to The Eagle Saloon, the former home of The Iroquois Theater.

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The red brick building next door to The Eagle Saloon is the former home of The Iroquois Theater.

This African American vaudeville and movie theater operated from 1911-1920. One of the first theaters to feature jazz in a concert setting, it was eventually eclipsed by the larger Lyric Theater that opened in 1920.

In the era of Jim Crow, new, independent theater houses dedicated to African American performers and audiences opened throughout the South. The "Back of Town" neighborhood in the 400 block of South Rampart was a hub of African American entertainment and socializing in New Orleans.

As a young teen growing up in the "Back of Town" neighborhood, Louis Armstrong frequented movies at the theater, and he once won a talent show after he dipped his face in flour, an ironic twist on the usual practice of performing in blackface.

"Some nights we would see moving pictures at the Iroquois Theater---10 cents each for May Ann + Tom, 5 cents for Mama Lucy, + me. (I won an amateur contest --- dip face in flower [flour]." - Louis Armstrong [1]

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Mahalia Jackson

Often referred to as the “Queen of Gospel,” Mahalia Jackson was one of the most influential figures for contemporary gospel and blues singers. Born in 1911, Jackson grew up in a shotgun home in New Orleans. She quickly found her greatest refuge at Mt. Moriah Baptist Church where she sang at least six times a week. It was at Mt. Moriah that her talents were first recognized. At the age of sixteen, Jackson moved to Chicago with her aunt in order to seek better employment opportunities. In Chicago, Jackson joined the Greater Salem Baptist Church.

Jackson's career would not take off until the late 1940s, after a failed record deal and many years of touring. With her success, she frequented radio stations and performed as the headliner at Carnegie Hall. In the 1950s, Jackson regularly appeared on television shows hosted by Ed Sullivan, Dinah Shore, and Steve Allen, and departed on her first European tour.

Jackson was involved in the Civil Rights Movement, she lent her voice to rallies, marches, and demonstrations throughout the country. In 1963, during the historic March on Washington, Jackson performed "I Been 'Buked and I Been Scorned" before Dr. Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. Jackson later sang at John F. Kennedy’s presidential inauguration, as well as his funeral, and the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King.

After collapsing in 1971 on tour in Munich, Jackson died early the next year of heart complications in her home in Chicago.

The Theater

Designed by architect William Bergman, the theater was first opened in 1973 as The New Orleans Theater for the Performing Arts. Its 2,100 seats were filled up with those citizens of New Orleans who sought to be entertained by some of the finest performers in the city. Jazz and gospel singers, brass bands, ballet companies, and other performers of the fine arts regularly performed here. The first performance to play at the theater was The New Orleans Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, and they entertained a full house with Giuseppe Verdi's Manzoni Requiem.

In 1995, the New Orleans City Council and Mayor Marc Morial, with grants from New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation and the Louisiana Division of the Arts, renamed the New Orleans Theater for the Performing Arts after the New Orleans-born Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson.

Theater Renovation

The Mahalia Jackson Theater suffered significant water and wind damage during Hurricane Katrina. The theater was renovated and reopened in 2009.

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In August 1861, Harry Macarthy, also known as "The Arkansas Comedian," arrived in New Orleans to perform a three-month stint of "Personation Concerts" at the Academy of Music, a then popular play house located on St. Charles Avenue. Macarthy debuted “The Bonnie Blue Flag” at these concerts, a song Macarthy wrote in honor of the young Confederacy. On August 9, 1861 The Daily Picayune praised Macarthy as a man of "great versatility of talent" with "a fine voice.” Throughout his stay in New Orleans both Macarthy and his Confederate anthem were met with excitement and became quite popular.

The Bonnie Blue Flag refers to one of the first unofficial Confederate flags. However, the flag has a history in Louisiana that pre-dates the Civil War. The blue banner with a single white star in the center closely resembles the flag raised by the short-lived Republic of West Florida. The Republic included territory from Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, and only lasted a few months before its annexation by the United States. The flag reappeared decades later in Texas, a United States territory gained through similar means as the West Florida territory, and is commonly called the "Lone Star Flag" in that context. However, the popularity of Macarthy's song forever linked the flag to the memory Confederacy.

The chorus of “The Bonnie Blue Flag” intended to unite Southerners from different states under the principles of the new Confederacy:

"We are a band of brothers, And native to the soil,

Fighting for the property, We gain'd by honest toil;

And when our rights were threatened, The cry rose near and far,

Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag, that bears a Single Star!"

Macarthy also compared the South's fight to the American Revolution; "Like patriots of old, we'll fight our heritage to save."

This line is perplexing in light of the Confederacy’s recent break from the United States, but is not an uncommon sentiment in Confederate rhetoric. America’s revolutionary past seemed to legitimize the South's fight for independence, casting the Northern states in the same imposing light as the English crown. Also, the perceived connection to "patriots of old" reminded Southerners of the founding principles of the United States that the South was fighting to regain.

During the Civil War, a repertoire of Confederate anthems was created to re-identify the seceded Confederate states as something new and separate from the Union. "The Bonnie Blue Flag" became one of the most popular of these anthems, particularly in New Orleans. The creation of cultural materials, such as national anthems, is one of the most important aspects of building a young nation. Alice Fahs, Civil War and material culture historian, points out, however, that by creating parallels between the Confederate cause and the cause of the American patriots, Confederate songwriters were essentially "inviting the very dependence on Northern culture that they spurned."

E. Lawrence Abel, a historian of Civil War music and expert on Harry Macarthy, claims that a riot took place during one of Macarthy's Personation Concerts. Abel writes that a group of Texas soldiers attended a Personation Concert on their way to the battlefield. When Macarthy sang "The Bonnie Blue Flag," a symbol that would have been recognizable both for their home state of Texas and the new Confederacy, the soldier’s excitement devolved into riot. The Daily Picayune reported on Macarthy's performances regularly, but never made explicit mention of this riot. However, on September 24, 1861, The Daily Picayune published the arrest of a Charles J. Muller who was fined ten dollars for "willfully [disturbing] the peace of the Academy of Music" and that others in attendance had to pay five dollars for "mere outside disturbances." This event may have been the one mentioned by Abel, or simply the effects of a rowdy crowd on a night out. Regardless, the riotous reaction to Macarthy's performance is now part of the historical memory of "The Bonnie Blue Flag."

Not long after Macarthy finished his stint at the Academy of Music, Federal forces arrived in New Orleans and occupied the city. Despite Union presence, "The Bonnie Blue Flag" remained part of the soundscape of New Orleans as a song protest throughout the war.

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The popularity of sheet music in the United States had reached its peak by the start of the Civil War. Well before the development of recording and broadcasting technology, the commercial music industry centered upon the circulation of sheet music played by both amateur and professional musicians. To enjoy popular music, consumers either had to perform the songs themselves, attend public concerts, or participate in informal gatherings. This made music a more interactive and socially engaging experience than the passive role today’s recording industry creates for listeners.

The nationalization of the sheet music industry in the late nineteenth century stifled the production of songs created by local musicians and composers. In the mid-1800s, however, music created by local and regional musicians readily found its way to audiences via the many music publishers found in various US cities. These conditions allowed a song popularized through performance in New Orleans to become a controversial anthem of the Confederacy. Historian E. Lawrence Abel speculates that A.E. Blackmar and Bro. ran the South’s most successful sheet music publishing house. Among other tunes, such as "Missouri, or a voice from the South," and "Dixie," Blackmar published one of the earliest imprints of Harry Macarthy’s popular song “Bonnie Blue Flag.”

In May 1862, Union forces entered New Orleans and the city became one of the first occupied territories in the South during the Civil War. From May to December 1862, General Benjamin Butler ruled over the city. His legacy is marked by his severe social policies. General Order No. 40 states that "Any person who has in his possession...any property of any kind or description whatever, of the so-called Confederate States...shall be liable to imprisonment and to have his property confiscated." With this order, owning or singing one of the most popular songs of the period became an act of treason. Arrest records from New Orleans papers reveal that men and women were regularly arrested for singing "Bonnie Blue Flag," and were charged with a range of penalties, from a fine to time in the workhouse to a full pardon.

A few months before Butler took over the city, advertisements for A.E. Blackmar and Bro. disappeared from the newspapers. Henry, the oldest Blackmar brother, relocated his publishing operation to Atlanta, where it remained successful for the duration of the war. Armand Blackmar stayed to run the shop in New Orleans, but was not quite as lucky. Butler, acting on General Order No. 40, is said to have arrested Blackmar and ransacked his shop, destroying all Confederate materials inside. By the time we see Blackmar in New Orleans again, Butler had been removed from the city and replaced by General Nathaniel Prentiss Banks, who is known to have pursued a more socially lenient approach to running New Orleans than his predecessor.

In November 1863, advertisements for Blackmar reappeared in the newspapers of New Orleans, but no longer promoted "The Bonnie Blue Flag." These advertisements also reported a change of address from 74 Camp Street to 167 Canal Street, where Blackmar continued to publish music for the duration of the war. Paper and ink were in scarce supply by this point in the war, forcing some publishers to print on recycled materials such as wallpaper and develop new ways to make ink for printing. However, despite material shortages and Union presence, Blackmar's success in the final years of the war suggests that the demand for sheet music remained strong in occupied New Orleans.

After the Civil War and the collapse of the Confederacy, "The Bonnie Blue Flag" developed a life of its own. In the second decade of the twentieth century, the song was revived as a symbol of Lost Cause mentality in the midst of fifty-year commemorations of the War. During the Civil Rights era, "The Bonnie Blue Flag" once again became a song of protest, this time against the integration of public spaces. It even found its way back into the classroom, as one New Orleans resident remembers learning it at his elementary school in the 1950s. It can even be heard in current movies such as Gods and Generals and, more perplexingly, the video game Bioshock. The long afterlives of this song have sometime divorced it from its original meaning, but its memory also reveals how music played a role in the city's experience of the Civil War.

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Bernard Walter Lomax was a Mardi Gras Indian who lived from 1927-1955. In 1950 he composed "Shallow Water," a song that is still popular with Mardi Gras Indians today. The words "Shallow Water" are repeated to form the chorus of the song by the same name. It is one of the most recognizable songs that the Mardi Gras Indians sing today.

Mr. Donald Harrison, Sr., Big Chief of the Guardians of the Flame, stated in a 1991 interview that:

"My earliest influence was Bernard Lomax, a gentlemen that introduced the song 'Shallow Water.' His mother is still alive. She lives Uptown. She's elderly—she's just like a second mother to me. When I started masking in 1949, I was influenced mainly by Bernard Lomax."

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Music has played an important role in the history of Palmer Park. A band stand was built in 1923 and every summer a series of concerts was held in the park featuring military bands, marching bands, and bands representing diverse groups. The Works Progress Administration’s federal music project, local dairy farms, and police organizations all at times featured bands performing in the park. The bandstand was torn down in 1946 after years of neglect during World War II.

Carroltonian John Paul Bordes remembered the concerts in his 1978 Carrollton Columns collection: “Who could forget the band-stand in the park, where every Thursday night a band played and kids came to sit on the grass and listen, or play games and eat candy and ice cream, or just walk around and flirt with each other! Friends from all over Carrollton came. It was real good fun” (1978, 48). It should be noted that only white families were allowed to attend the concerts.

Music did continue to be part of the park during celebrations like the annual Memorial Day commemorations in the years after World War II. Concerts were brought back to the park in the early 1970’s with free shows sponsored by the New Orleans Recreation department and featuring performances from local groups like high school and college bands, the Mardi Gras Chorus, the In His Name Singers, and the Storyville Jazz Band. In recent years, bands have performed in the park as part of the monthly Arts Market, held the last Saturday of each month, as well as an annual concert by the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra.

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In October of 1924, Cloverland Dairy opened a facility on South Carrollton Avenue. The giant milk-bottle sign towering above the building was a local landmark. The bottle is said to have held 35,000 gallons of water used to wash milk trucks and rinse the dairy driveway.

The Cloverland Dairy employed many people, including the legendary jazz musician Louis Armstrong. In his memoir, Swing that Music, Armstrong recalls that at fourteen he took a job at Cloverland Dairy. “While I was a newsboy I got a chance at a steady job at the Cloverland Dairy, and I took it and went to work there for a while.” (p. 25) He delivered milk on a Cloverland Milk wagon and received payment on Friday mornings around 10 o'clock. Armstrong recalls that a lot of the delivery boys would take their money around the corner from the dairy and play craps. He accounts in his book Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans, that one Sunday his foot missed the step of the wagon, caught his foot underneath the wheel, and crushed his foot, grinding it into the oyster shells that were broken up to make the road. The pain was so bad that the driver he worked with took him to Charity Hospital. (p. 117)

Following the Cloverland Dairy facility's closure, the U.S. Postal Service converted the building into a post office. The post office maintained the dairy's original white stone façade but removed the famous towering milk bottle.

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In 1940, the patient population was between 400 and 450 and a massive renovation was underway. The improved hospital created individual rooms for 450 patients and the 13” thick concrete walls made the buildings as fireproof as possible. Fire was always a concern.

Here’s a list of what was built in 1940:

• 17 two-story dormitories

• 20,000 square-foot recreation building with library, theater, canteen and ballroom

• Over two miles of two-story corridors that link all patient buildings together

• Facilities' engineering building

• Staff dining hall

• Residence for Daughters of Charity, a Catholic nursing order

All of these improvements cost around 4 million dollars.

To your right, the two-story buildings with the orange metal awnings are female patients’ dorms. The dormitories are arranged in two quadrangles connected via covered corridors. This provided patients, many in wheelchairs, access to all buildings. Creating a fireproof hospital was a major aim of the last renovation, so even the patients’ room furnishings were metal instead of wood.

Every dorm had 30 individual rooms--each with an oscillating fan and radiated heat for winter. Each floor had shared bathrooms and a common parlor. The original design provided men and women with separate dorms. Later on, when patient couples ran away and returned married, they developed a thriving “suburbia” of homemade cottages towards the rear of the facility so that they could live together.

A Carville “date” often involved a hot-plate in the woman’s room, a card table across the threshold with the man sitting in the hall. In the 1960s, one of the dormitories was remodeled into apartments to allow for the cohabitation of couples. Each apartment had a private kitchen and bathroom.

Dormitory #24 was designated the “Carville Mall,” where free enterprise thrived. A patient could open her own shop to provide goods or services to fellow patients.

Some popular patient-run businesses included a radio repair service, a barber shop, a bicycle repair shop, a beauty parlor, a photography shop, and even a dry cleaner's.

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Emma Barrett, a self-taught jazz pianist and vocalist, was born on March 25, 1897, and began performing in venues across New Orleans at just twelve years old. [1] Despite being unable to read music, Barrett was often in high demand and quickly became a fixture in the New Orleans Jazz scene. [2] In addition to recording her own work, Barrett performed and toured with The Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

When she first began gracing New Orleans with her unique voice, she was known as the "Bell Gal" for her sense of style. She had a habit of, "...wearing a red dress, red woven skull cap and attaching bells on her garters that jingled as she tapped her feet to glorious jazz rhythms." [1] Barrett's sense of style never faded and she could be seen performing in clubs on Bourbon Street dressed in her trademark outfit into her eighties. [2]

Barrett's fashion sense was not the only thing that caught the attention of jazz-enthusiasts along Bourbon Street, however. At a time when it was considered “…unladylike to play the trumpet or saxophone,” Barret flocked to voice and piano. [2] By 1923, Barrett was playing with, 'Papa' Celestin and later, Bébé Ridgley's Original Tuxedo Orchestra. [1] During her time working with these, and many other, major names in Jazz, she further developed her musical style. Her favored approach with the piano was known as the "pile-driver attack" and can be best described as blunt, while her vocals were noted for their, "...naughty double entendres with...perfect delivery." [1]

By 1947, the Bell Gal was also often referred to as "Sweet Emma", and she was working steadily at Happy Landing, a local club. [1] Throughout the 1950s, she created and worked with her own band Sweet Emma and the Bells [1]. Barrett began recording her music in the 1960s. She released her first recording for, "...her own album for Riverside Records New Orleans: The Living Legends in 1961," and at this time, she also began working with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. [1] The Preservation Hall Band specialized in Dixieland-style jazz, and could almost always be found somewhere on Bourbon Street, especially at the Preservation Hall on Saint Peter Street in the French Quarter, where they were hired as an attraction to draw patrons to the new art gallery, which they quickly outshone. [1]

Despite the multiple tours she and her Preservation Jazz Hall Band went on - including a one to Disneyland in 1963, and a few overseas - and a write up about her in Glamour magazine, Barrett remained true to her city, spending most of her time in the French Quarter. [1] She and the Preservation Jazz Hall Band even briefly appeared in the movie "Cincinnati Kid," which was filmed in the city in the mid-1960s. [1] Even a stroke that left her partially paralyzed could not slow Barrett down, and she continued to contribute to the French Quarter's jazz scene right up until her death on the 28th of January, 1983. [1]

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The Maple Leaf Bar, one of the city's longest operating music clubs, is a haven for local music and has been drawing crowds from New Orleans and throughout the world since the venue opened in 1974.

The artifacts, oral histories, images, and other materials pictured below illustrate the Maple Leaf Bar's early history.

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Club My-O-My was a female impersonator club that originated and ended in the French Quarter. It flourished after first being kicked out of an informal, after-hours home in a fur warehouse in the Vieux Carre in the early 1930s, according to oral history in the New Orleans gay community. The Club My-O-My joined the older Wonder Bar in the West End area of New Orleans. The Wonder Bar eventually closed; from the 1930s through the 1960s, the My-O-My served as a popular part of New Orleans nightlife for tourists as well as residents.

The New Orleans club was one of several in the United States whose impersonators performed for heterosexual as well as homosexual audiences. Grayline Tours brought tourists by the busload for decades until a 1972 fire destroyed its lakefront location. The club relocated to the French Quarter for a short while before closing for good. The once risque club had been rendered too tame by the sexual revolution and changes in dress and mores. For the majority of its existence, the club allowed only white patrons and white performers.

The videos featured below were produced in association with New Orleans PBS Affiliate WYESTV-12 in 1996 and edited by Courtney Eagan and Billie Norris.

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