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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During 2013 investigations in City Square 350, archaeologists excavated a large and well-constructed brick-lined privy shaft, producing a rich assemblage of glass containers and ceramic vessels, along with an abundance of personal items, including many items related to armaments that are not typical in urban assemblages, including wooden gun stocks, a trigger guard and assembly, a saber hilt and blade, a second sword handle, and numerous pieces of lead ball shot and bullets. Further hinting at a special function for the assemblage was a series of figural smoking pipe bowls, including two of the U.S. Presidents Ulysses Grant and Zachary Taylor, and another of a soldier.

The accuracy of historic map overlays becomes more questionable as one moves farther back into the nineteenth century. Initially, researchers thought the privy was associated with the 344/2314-2316 Erato Street address, where a series of police officers (named J.J. Bermingham, Henry Campbell, William H.C. Roust, and Robert Cheevers) are listed as residents in city directories in the early to mid-1870s. While the 1870 U.S. Census does not list addresses, there is also a policeman named William Moore listed in the vicinity of the address in that year. It is likely that all of these men served for the Metropolitan Police, the integrated police force that was responsible for security in the city during Reconstruction and was aligned with the Republican government. This seemed to suggest a connection with both the armaments and the pipe depicting Grant, a Republican leader unpopular with the former Confederates who had attempted to regain political power in New Orleans.

However, as archaeologists located other features on the block, and the map further refined as a result, they determined that the privy was more likely to be located at the rear property line of the 346/1307 S. Liberty Street address. Occupation of this property was much more stable in the period in question, with a widow named Mary Wilson owning and residing at the property for over 40 years. Sharing the house with her was a large extended family, typically including a number of her own children, along with her married daughter Elizabeth and son-in-law Emile Legien, and, eventually their children. In 1880 Census (the census nearest in time to the assemblage recovered, listed Wilson as a milliner and Emile as a plasterer. Many of Wilson’s sons went on to work as carpenters, while daughter Kate worked as a teacher. Many of the archaeological items recovered also suggest that a large family occupied the space, with a particularly rich array of items relating to toys and play, hygiene and health, and personal adornment in the assemblage.

The artifacts recovered are illustrated in more detail below. They provide no ‘smoking gun’ as to which household was responsible for the items in the privy, and ultimately, there may be no singular solution. The image descriptions present some hypothetical scenarios based on what is known from city directories, census records, and the artifacts themselves; the reader is invited to speculate as to what this combination of items meant for a household in New Orleans at the end of Reconstruction.

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In the Colonial Era, the area that eventually became the Melpomene neighborhood and later utilized for the Guste Homes was located in a low-lying backswamp zone at the rear of the Livaudais plantation tract, straddling land that became the Faubourgs Annunciation and de la Course in the first half of the nineteenth century. While developers first surveyed these tracts for subdivision in 1836, there seems to have been little development within them until after the completion of the New Orleans, Jackson, and Great Northern Railroad in 1853, with its rail yard near the project area at Calliope Street between Magnolia and Claiborne Streets. Areas along what was then the undeveloped edge of the city attracted working class immigrants and socially marginalized people, like Elizabeth Boyd, a free woman of color living on Howard/LaSalle Street in City Square 358 in 1860.

During the 2013 excavation of the Melpomene neighborhood, archaeologists did not find any material evidence of the indigenous peoples who lived in southeast Louisiana prior to colonial settlement. In urban settings, the density of later occupation typically obliterates such earlier deposits, even when archaeologists are able to specifically target where they might be located. Some of the architectural remains documented likely date to the first nineteenth century structures built on urban lots, but otherwise little evidence remained archaeologically of this earlier era of historic-period pre-Civil War development, as was the case at the address associated with Elizabeth Boyd.

The Melpomene neighborhood became much more densely developed after the Civil War. After Emancipation, freedmen and women moved to the city to escape the violent exploitation of plantation life, joining poor immigrants on the urban fringe. During Reconstruction (1867-1877) in Louisiana, federal occupation created new hopes for citizenship and political rights for the state’s Black residents. Eventually, this triggered a violent backlash from white supremacist forces, culminating in the so-called “Battle of Liberty Place”, which restored former Confederate elites to power. Archaeological assemblages that adequately reflect the turbulence of these years are rare, but one of the most unusual deposits uncovered in the Melpomene neighborhood likely gives a glimpse of daily life in the era.

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In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, many of the people who lived in the Melpomene neighborhood of Central City rented their residences with some addresses seeing rapid turnover. Even though people filled features like privy shafts rapidly (so that the date of the filling episode can be dated to within a few years), the neighborhood’s high resident turnover can make connecting archaeological assemblages to specific families tricky. This is the case at 1304 Howard Street in Square 350, the block historically bounded by Erato, LaSalle (or Howard), Thalia, and South Liberty Streets. In 2013, archaeologists excavated a large wood-lined privy shaft near what would have been the rear property line of the address. While most of the material within it dated to the end of the nineteenth century, it was probably filled in the early 1900s, perhaps as late as 1910.

The U.S Census enumerated a laborer named Leo LeBlanc living there in 1900 with his wife and two children; a year later, the City Directory lists them as still there, along with a laborer named Paul Manuel. The directories list at least three other residents at the address between 1902 and 1909. When the census came again in 1910, a large and complex household of renters were enumerated at the address, including William Smith, a laborer identified as Black, and his wife Virginia, a washerwoman, identified as Mulatto; another woman named Mattie Hawkins, and her teenage sons, both laborers (at a wharf and a lumber yard), all identified as Mulatto; and a lodger named Lem Diggins, also a laborer at a lumber yard. One can speculate about the connections that brought this household together: perhaps Hawkins was part of Virginia’s extended family, while one can also guess that Diggins worked with her son at the lumber yard. Such networks of extended family and friends were vital for sustaining Black families in the era. By 1912, the occupants of the address shifted again.

Who then was responsible for the artifacts within the wood-lined privy at 1304 Howard Street? It contained a rich assemblage of materials: large quantities of ceramic tablewares, in a variety of forms (plates, saucers, cups, bowls, and serving vessels), vessels for hygiene like wash basins and chamber pots, bottles from medicines, perfumes, soda and mineral waters, bitters and schnapps, perfumes, foods, and alcoholic beverages, glass tablewares, lamp parts, tools, cutlery, and numerous small personal items, like buttons, smoking pipe fragments, hair combs, and items of jewelry. Occasional highly distinctive items may give hints about the identity of the occupants, like the images featured below.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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In 1964, the Urban League of Greater New Orleans published the results of “A Survey of the Recreational, Social, and Economic Conditions of the Negro Population of the William S. Guste, Sr., Homes and the Adjacent Areas.” The Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) recently opened the Guste Homes and housed a population of 2,443 residents, not including the high-rise home for elderly residents that made up a part of the project. Many saw such housing projects as an important first step in addressing the needs of low-income residents of the City. However, the report recognized that housing covered only one aspect of neighborhood revitalization; of those 2,443 residents, 1,731 were young people, and the report emphasizes that for them “recreational and cultural opportunities in the area [were] woefully inadequate.”

Surveys like the one produced by the Urban League can give important glimpses into the demographics and social conditions in the neighborhoods that organizations identified as slums. In the seven tracts of the census considered part of the Guste area (roughly the blocks bounded by Dryades, Claiborne, First, and Calliope Streets, encompassing the Guste Homes and the adjacent areas) the overall population consisted of 28,293 people, 77% of whom the census classified as “Negro.” Streets other than major thoroughfares were unpaved, inadequately lit, and “cluttered with debris.” The survey deemed the tenement buildings adjacent to Guste Homes occupied by renters as “overcrowded and hazardous.” According to the survey, a woman with a family of seven children complained of rats almost as big as cats in the Melpomene neighborhood, saying that several of her children had been bitten and that the rodents occasionally invaded her broken ice box.

Of 103 households the Urban League surveyed in detail, only 29 had lived in New Orleans all their lives. Many of those living in the Melpomene neighborhood recently transplanted to the city from rural parts of Louisiana and Mississippi, and felt isolated from social life and economic opportunities in the city. Ironically, many cited the improved educational opportunities for their children as a reason to move to the city, but the two schools that served Black children in the neighborhood, McDonough No. 36 and No. 38, were so overcrowded that students attended in what was called the “platoon system,” splitting the student body into two groups, each attending only half a day, switching over at lunch time. For working parents, this was a hardship, and many residents complained about the adverse effects the lack of childcare facilities and community centers had on young people in the neighborhood.

Naturally, residents were not happy about these conditions. Tenants complained about the conditions of housing and their inability to get absentee landlords to make needed repairs, though the survey noted that the few owner-occupied properties showed “care and pride” in their upkeep. Many renters felt that landlords overcharged for rent, creating cycles of poverty from which it was almost impossible to escape.

Underlying all of this was segregation and structural inequality. A racist social, political, and economic structure -- meant to keep Black residents of the city in permanent second class citizenship -- limited their choices about where to live, where to work, where to go to school, and even where to shop and socialize. Soon enough, the Guste area would become one of many centers of organizing for the Civil Rights struggle in New Orleans. But the inequalities within it were not inevitable. The Melpomene neighborhood that became the Guste Homes was always a site of struggle for residents of the city, and we can trace those struggles over generations of change in the neighborhood.

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According to the U.S. National Historic Preservation Act, any time a federal agency does something that could affect historic resources, it must take into account the effects of those actions. In the case of archaeology, this typically means documenting sites and artifacts before they are disturbed or destroyed.

Many federal agencies took part in the redevelopment of the Guste Homes, a public housing project located in the New Orleans Central City neighborhood. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) administered the project through the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) because the federal government owns the land. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) provided some of the funds for the redevelopment. Two local archaeological firms, R.C. Goodwin and Associates and Earth Search, Inc., conducted tests to see the history preserved in the blocks where Guste Homes once stood. These archaeological firms targeted specific areas for excavation that had the most potential to tell us things about the history of the Melpomene neighborhood that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to know.

Before HANO completed the construction of the Guste Homes development in 1964, the Melpomene neighborhood it replaced looked much like the rest of the Central City area, with densely packed houses, corner stores, and other small businesses. When HANO demolished those buildings to make way for the Guste project buildings, old building foundations and footings remained below ground. Most importantly for archaeologists, pits that had previously been dug into the ground, like wells and old outhouse pits, were covered over. Before regular trash pick-up, an abandoned hole in the ground provided a convenient place to get rid of household refuse, like broken dishes, bottles, food remains, and all sorts of small everyday items. These holes become like time capsules, which, once excavated by archaeologists, potentially tell about the everyday lives of the people who once lived in the area.

In archaeology, as you dig downwards, you go back in time: the things that are on top are the newest and the ones that are more deeply buried are older. Archaeologists (and geologists) call this “the law of stratigraphic superposition.” In this tour, we will go back in time starting in 1964, when the Guste Homes opened, and focus on a few families who lived in the area over the previous hundred years.

From a combination of documentary sources and maps, we can trace the development of the Melpomene neighborhood in some detail over this period. Some of those who lived in the area left more traces than others in documents, but all of those discussed left material remains, or artifacts, recovered through archaeology. These artifacts allow us to get glimpses of the daily lives of the city’s residents in a way that other historical documents can’t.

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In 1961, the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) announced plans to construct the William J. Guste, Sr. Homes, named for the Housing Authority’s long-time general counsel. The 1961 Report of the Housing Authority of New Orleans declared:

“The project will consist of 993 dwelling units replacing ten squares of rock bottom slums where 500 negro families have been living in substandard housing. The Housing Authority is dedicated to the eradication of slums in New Orleans. Slums are a breeding place for crime and disease. To remove this slum is a great step forward for our City… it will not only remove this cancer from the heart of our City, but will improve the entire area.”

The proposed new construction included housing for elderly people, a first in the city, comprising a 12-story high rise building in a cruciform pattern containing 528 apartments. HANO presented the design for the Guste Homes as innovative, addressing some of the issues experienced by residents at other housing projects in the city. HANO was particularly proud of the attention given to plans for the exterior areas of the Guste Homes:

“Ten once-shabby squares in the congested heart of this old Creole Metropolis –before 1962 is over—will prove, in a test-tube of better living, that in this New Orleans area Nature, with her trees and vines and shrubs and bulbs, makes by far the most beautiful, the most versatile and useful of structural materials at the command of imaginative architects.” [Wilson Callender, “Horticultural Aspects of the William J. Guste Sr. Homes,” 1961 HANO Report, pg. 44]

The language used to describe the placement of Guste Homes was typical of the era. Since the 1930s, “slum clearance” served as a central feature of efforts to alter housing in American cities, often as a part of what would soon be termed “urban renewal” projects. Local and federal governments often targeted Black working class neighborhoods for clearance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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In the 1954 Supreme Court Case Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment prohibiting states from denying equal protection of the laws to any person. (1) This court decision declared separate educational facilities for white and African American students inherently unequal. Without clear instructions from the federal government on how public schools would integrate, public schools in southern states took full advantage of the lack of federal leadership and allowed schools to remain racially segregated. (2) Several years later, federal intervention forced the racial integration of public schools throughout the nation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Here — near the corner of Royal Street and Esplanade Avenue — a white riverboat captain named Stephen Herriman, originally from Long Island, made his home from 1843 until his death in 1854.

Stephen Herriman’s house is no longer standing. It possibly was torn down by businessman John Gauche when he purchased property at this corner in 1856, or it might have been destroyed during an 1893 fire. (A marker for the Gauche House can be seen around the corner at 1315 Royal Street.) Whatever his building’s ultimate fate, Herriman will not go down in history for his work as a captain, for his fundraising activity with his Masonic lodge during an 1853 yellow fever epidemic, nor for his amassing of sizable wealth — there were at least ten enslaved people in his house. What is most memorable about Stephen Herriman — and what makes the location of this house so remarkable — is his brief encounter with a Free Woman of Color named Justine Olivier.

Little is known of Stephen Herriman’s experiences with Olivier. No civil records tell of their union. Their connection would be lost to time if the New Orleans Archdiocese didn’t keep such comprehensive records, for Herriman and Olivier are identified as parents to George Herriman Sr. — the cartoonist’s grandfather — in numerous documents, including the Church’s records of Herriman’s 1846 wedding to Louisa Eckel.

Olivier’s first child with Stephen Herriman appears to have been Frederic Herriman, born in 1818; George Herriman Sr. arrived two years later. Within a few years of these births, Stephen Herriman would marry Janett Spencer, a white woman also from New York. At around the same time, Justine Olivier would begin a lifelong relationship with the son of a French tinsmith named Joseph Alexandre Chesse, and raise her two Herriman sons in the Chessé family.

What is perhaps most remarkable about this location is how it illustrates the close proximity of all members of these families. A matter of a few city blocks separated the Herriman and Chessé families. What did they know about each other? What contact was kept through the years? Did Stephen Herriman watch his two sons with Justine Oliver grow to manhood, and did he participate in their lives? Those questions will likely never be answered.

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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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The Herrimans were devoutly Catholic. They attended Masses and celebrated sacraments at numerous churches surrounding their neighborhood. Yet the historic St. Augustine Church was their “home” church.

Celebrated as the first African-American parish in the United States, St. Augustine was founded in 1841 on land that originally was part of Claude Tremé’s plantation. It is estimated that between half to two-thirds of its early parish was composed of people of color, including both enslaved and free people. (Slaves would sit in side pews that remain part of the church interior today.)

The Herrimans were among the earliest members of St. Augustine. In 1844 — just three years after the church’s founding — Frederic and Adelaide Herriman brought their one-month-old son Frederic Herriman here to be baptized by Guillaume Arthur Le Mercier du Quesnay, the Jamaican-born pastor of St. Augustine who would later move to St. Louis Cathedral. Frederic Sr. was brother to George Herriman’s grandfather (who also was named George Herriman). Their mother — cartoonist George Herriman’s great-grandmother — was a socially prominent Free Woman of Color named Justine Olivier. Their father — the cartoonist’s great-grandfather — was Stephen Herriman, a white steamboat captain from New York.

In the decades following St. Augustine’s founding, the Herriman family would return again and again to celebrate baptisms and weddings. Although the church was integrated, its records were not — the details of the Herrimans’ involvement with St. Augustine are recorded in archdiocese books that were reserved for people of color.

When cartoonist George Herriman was born in 1880, his parents opted for unknown reasons to bring their first-born child to Our Lady of Sacred Heart Church, located about the same distance from their house in the opposite direction. Yet the Herrimans remained involved with St. Augustine, returning here to celebrate the baptism of their second son, Henry Walter, in 1882 — presumably with two-year-old George Herriman in tow.

Other notable members of St. Augustine have included pioneers in the Civil Rights struggle such as Homer Plessy, whose challenge to segregated trains resulted in the 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson decision that enshrined “separate but equal” into law, and Alexander Pierre “A. P.” Tureaud Sr., whose work as the NAACP’s New Orleans attorney helped dismantle the tragic results of that ruling. Following a struggle over its future after Hurricane Katrina, St. Augustine Catholic Church remains an active parish to this day.

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The house where George Herriman was born no longer stands; in its place is a gate leading into a school parking lot. But it was here that, on August 22, 1880, George Joseph Herriman was born into a mixed-race, middle- to upper-class family headed by Clara Herriman and George Herriman Jr.

The Tremé neighborhood was, from its inception, a mixed neighborhood, with early lots purchased by Free People of Color such as the Herrimans and their cousins, the Chessés, along with immigrant families from France, Spain and other countries. Here, the Herrimans labored to build a home during decades of cultural and political upheaval.

It’s likely Herriman would have remembered his early years as a time of comfort and security, in a home and neighborhood filled with doting relatives. Also living in his house were his aunt and uncle, Alice and Ralph Hecaud, a musician and piano tuner. (This is the same family as Eulalie Hecaud, the godmother to Jelly Roll Morton.) The Hecauds brought another baby boy into the household just six months after Herriman’s birth. The next year, on July 13, 1882, Herriman’s brother, Henry Walter Herriman, was born. Next door resided Herriman’s grandparents with his aunt Josephine.

“It was a strange, mysterious, unpredictable world,” Herriman’s cousin Ralph Chessé would recall. “There were so many old people all round — people telling me what to do and what not to do; what to say and what not to say; where to go and where not to go. ‘Ne touche pas’ was the oft-repeated command.”

Although the homes on the Herrimans’ side of Villere Street no longer stand, the surviving buildings across the street give a good sense of the neighborhood at the time of Herriman’s birth. These include the former home of Herriman family friend Henry Louis Rey at 1447 N. Villere Street, and the restored Milné Estate at 1423 N. Villere Street, both buildings estimated to date from the 1860s.

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Of all the purposes of Black Greek organizations at UNO, perhaps the most important and impactful is the community service they provided to the UNO and surrounding community.

Founded in the early twentieth century, the founders of Black Greek organizations were surrounded by the ideals of racial uplift, the notion that the Black intellectual class can attain the education and resources usually only afforded to the White population. Black Greek organizations would then use those resources to educate and train the entire Black community to bring racial equality forward. With these ideals, the founders set up their organizations to be both social and service organizations.

The Black Greek chapters at UNO are no different, community service is at the core of their operations. While their community service focuses on the African American community, the service provided by Black Greek organizations benefits the UNO and New Orleans community at large. This service and the other functions performed by Black Greek organizations proves why these organizations continue to be important on campus.

Black Greek organizations were chartered by Black students, as a safe space for Black students on a campus where they faced hostilities continuously throughout the decades. While racial tensions may not be as severe as 1958, Black students at UNO are still in the minority, and still face racism and discrimination. This is why Black Greek letter organizations, as a safe space and as an act of resistance, continue to be of importance here at UNO.

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Black Greek letter organizations at UNO play an essential role for African American students as they do across the nation. Black Greek organizations provide a safe space for African Americans where communal bonds form, perform service and activism for the African American community and foster connections with the campus and its resources.

Services rendered by Black Greek organizations encourage the academic success of African Americans and function as a method of resistance against the hostilities African American students face.

Eight Black Greek organizations have chartered chapters at UNO, including:

Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. (Gamma Pi, rechartered 2006 as Rho Delta)

Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. (Eta Eta ,1973)

Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. (Theta Phi, 1973)

Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. (Mu Tau, 1976)

Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. (Iota Lambda, 1978)

Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. (Upsilon Iota, 1980)

Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. (Lambda Omicron, 1983)

Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. (Theta Mu, Unknown)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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“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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