Basile, Achilles, Congo and many other enslaved people labored on Étienne de Boré’s plantation within today’s Audubon Park. Alongside planting and harvesting sugar cane, enslaved labor on the Boré Plantation included fishing, masonry, woodworking, blacksmithing, and bringing cypress logs from the swamps to cut and use for building. [3] Though these enslaved people cultivated the land that Audubon Park now resides, it is Boré who continues to receive the credit.

Between 1847 and 1875, Charles-Étienne Arthur Gayarré, the grandson of Étienne de Boré, published five books about antebellum Louisiana. Gayarré, with his connections as the Louisiana Secretary of State and reputation as a historian, produced a lengthy, romanticized publication about Étienne de Boré’s sugar development and industry, named “A Louisiana Sugar Plantation of the Old Regime.” [1] Within this text Gayarre dubbed Boré the master of sugar in New Orleans. And the "savior of Louisiana,” stating that Boré’s sugar industry was a "bourgeois epic.” [2] With Gayarré’s political and social influence, his historical writings shaped the public memory of Boré and slavery in Louisiana.

Unwittingly, Gayarré’s work also highlights the work of enslaved people that labored and lived on the Boré Plantation. Although Gayarré drives romanticism into the stories of those enslaved by Boré, this may be the only time the names of the enslaved are mentioned within the historical record.

Among the stories of enslaved people told in “A Louisiana Sugar Plantation of the Old Regime,” is mention of Basile, a “commander” over those enslaved on the Boré Plantation. Gayarré describes Basile as an enslaved man invested with “limited power” and “armed with an enormous whip, at least twenty feet in length.” [3] Gayarré states, however, that Basile did not command with the whip but with words and songs to the enslaved working the sugarcane fields.

Basile was likely a slave driver for the Boré Plantation. Slave drivers were usually enslaved men who worked as an assistant to the white overseers and enslavers. [4] Typically, slave drivers had some power in directing the work happening within the fields. Though experiences differed among enslaved people, some slave drivers used their power as a “go between” to protect the enslaved from punishment from the overseers. [4]

Like Basile, Achilles also worked on the Boré Plantation. Gayarré states that Boré named this enslaved man Achilles for his fiery attitude, implying that this was not his birth name. [4] His story presents a reminder that enslaved people lived within and outside of slavery, creating their own identies, families, and homes while simultaneously subjugated to the violence of slavery.

The last named enslaved person within “A Louisiana Sugar Plantation of the Old Regime” is Congo. Gayarré tells a story of Congo that represented him as a Sambo character, stating that the overseer tasked Congo to pass a note to Boré, who in turn gave it to a portrait of Boré rather than Boré himself. The Sambo character myth, created by Stanley Elkins in his book Slavery: A problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (1959) describes enslaved people as “docile, infantile, lazy, and irresponsible.” [6] Like Elkins, Gayarré portrays Congo as unintelligent and reliant on enslavers and overseers for direction. [5]

Other historians, such as Deborah Gray White, combat this stereotype by countering the Sambo character with an actor of resistance. Enslaved people would fake illnesses, “misplace” or destroy tools, work slowly, or act unintelligent to create daily acts of resistance. [6]

Though remembered within a white supremist text, each of these enslaved men labored, lived, resisted and cultivated what is now Audubon Park.

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Today’s Audubon Park was once the location of the Boré Plantation. In the late eighteenth century, Étienne de Boré converted his plantation crop from indigo to sugar cane due to significant financial struggles. This conversion was only made possible by Antoine Morin, a chemist and a free man of color originally from Saint-Domingue. [3]

On the Boré Plantation, Morin innovated a new process that allowed for sugar granulation. This innovation led not only to the increased wealth and status of Étienne de Boré, but also jump-started the Southern Louisiana sugar industry. While the ability to granulate sugar in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries caused an economic boom for plantation owners and the local economy, it came with the aggressive expansion of the slave trade and deadly working conditions for people enslaved on sugar plantations. The domestic slave trade expanded to meet sugar plantation owners increased demand for enslaved labor. The sugar industry directly contributed to the forced relocation of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children from the Upper South to the Lower South, disrupting lives and tearing apart families.

After the introduction of the sugar industry to Louisiana in 1795, New Orleans became a hub for the domestic slave trade. [5] Sugar production in eighteenth century Louisiana was labor-intensive and brutal for enslaved people. Sugarcane grows in tropical climates and requires a full eleven or twelve months to reach maturity. Louisiana differs from other sugar-producing regions in the Caribbean belt, such as Saint Domingue or Jamaica, in that Louisiana experiences annual frosts in the winter months. Facing the possibility of losing their crop to frost, Louisiana enslavers and plantation owners forced enslaved people to work day and night during the harvest months between October and December because of sugarcanes’ short window of harvest. [1] Sugar harvesting proceeded at a furious pace, each day enslaved people worked sixteen to eighteen-hour shifts. [2] Nobody was too young or too old to work. Child labor in sugar production was common, leaving children exposed to boiling kettles, hot furnaces, and machetes. [2]

While harvest season was brutal in its breakneck pace, labor on sugar plantations was difficult for the rest of the year as well. The spring and summer months were not restful, as enslaved people tended to other crops and maintained farm equipment and plantation buildings. Combined with the dangers of harvesting, the furnaces, and mills, environmental factors on sugar plantations also made a dangerous life for enslaved people. While the possibility of disease was a risk all year for enslaved people, the hot and swampy summer months created an increased risk for diseases like malaria, cholera, and yellow fever. [2]

Across the United States, Louisiana sugar plantations were the only plantations where the death rate of enslaved people exceeded the birthrate. The dangers of disease, the violence of the slave trade, and the sugar production’s grueling labor for enslaved people were all exasterbated by Boré’s sugar plantation. [4]

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In 1794, Étienne de Boré (1741-1820) forced enslaved men and women to convert his failing indigo fields into a sugar plantation. [4] This forced labor camp sat across the lower parts of today’s Audubon Park. The plantation history is memorialized through historical markers in the park depicting Étienne de Boré as the man that revolutionized sugar production in Louisiana. These markers leave out historical figures essential to Louisiana's sugar industry.

Beginning in the 1730s, plantations around New Orleans produced mostly tobacco and indigo. [3] But by 1795, sugarcane became an enormous money-making crop around the Caribbean as the demand for sugar escalated in Europe. Beyond its use as a sweetener, people used sugar for food preservation and medicinal purposes. [1]

Because the sugarcane crop grew well in the subtropical environment of Louisiana, Boré aimed to capitalize on what people of the time considered “white gold.” [2] Before 1795, refining sugar cane into granulated sugar on a large scale had not yet been done successfully and was only done in experimentation. [3] To ensure his sugar plantation’s financial success, Boré hired Antoine Morin, a chemist and a free man of color originally from Saint-Domingue. [3] Boré heard of Morin’s engineering success through Antonio Mendez a contemporary of Boré and the owner of the Terreaux-Boeufs Plantation located in St. Bernard Parish. [7] Morin, through his work with the Terreaux-Boeufs Plantation, cultivated a reputation for having the best technical knowledge of sugar production and granulation. [4] According to historian Richard J. Follet, Antoine Morin was “an alumni of distinguished Parisian colleges” and “proved an excellent chemist and botanist who enjoyed considerable fame in New Orleans as the premier sugar maker in the colony.” [4]

Today, historians have little knowledge of Morin’s sugar making process. To begin his sugar industry, Boré purchased sugar cane from Antonio Mendez. In 1795, Boré commissioned Morin as his sugar maker. [5] This commission required Morin to organize the work of enslaved people to build a sugar mill and factory, as well as planting the sugar cane fields. [4] Morin innovated a new sugar-making process and produced the first granulated sugar for commercial sale in Louisiana through the Boré Plantation. [5]

In 1796, Morin and Boré’s first sugar crop yielded twelve-thousand dollars profit, which is worth the equivalent of over three million dollars today. So how did Boré become the memorialized revolutionary of the Southern Louisiana sugar industry? During the nineteenth century, Charles Gayarre, Boré’s grandson, was a writer, historian and the Secretary of State in Louisiana. Gayarre grew up on the Boré plantation and wrote a lengthy, romanticized version of Boré’s sugar development, innovations, and industry. [6] Through Gayarre’s political and social influence and historical writings, Boré’s name lived on as master of sugar in New Orleans, with Gayarre naming Boré as the hero of a "bourgeois epic" and the "savior of Louisiana.” [4]

Gayarre’s works do not include any information on Antoine Morin. It is clear that Antoine Morin and his work as a chemist shaped the Southern Louisiana sugar market. However, popular histories continue to memorialize Étienne de Boré as the sole contributor and maker of the Louisiana sugar boom. Without Antoine Morin or the labor of enslaved people, Boré would not have developed a successful sugar plantation.

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Today, Audubon Park is a space dedicated to leisure in New Orleans. Every day, hundreds of New Orleans tourists and locals enjoy the public jogging path, lagoons, picnic shelters, golf course, playgrounds, and the Audubon Zoo. However, during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the land that is now Audubon Park was the Boré Plantation (lower Audubon Park) and the Foucher Plantation (upper Audubon Park). [1] The Boré and Foucher were “sister” plantations, meaning that the Borés and Fouchers were related by family ties. The Audubon Nature Institute highlights the plantation history of the park with plaques, markers, such as the “de Boré” oak tree, and artifacts like eighteenth-century sugar kettles placed throughout the park. 

From 1776 to 1794, the Boré Plantation produced mostly indigo. [2] After a failed indigo harvest in 1794, Étienne de Boré (1741-1820) ordered enslaved people to convert the fields into a sugarcane plantation in order to avoid financial ruin. [3]

Popular histories often credit Étienne de Boré, an enslaver and the first mayor of New Orleans, with establishing the sugar industry in Southern Louisiana. This historical narrative ignores the grueling and deadly work that the sugar industry required of enslaved people. This tour reframes Boré’s contributions to the sugar industry and centers the work of enslaved and free people of color who made the industry’s growth possible. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[3 pg.85]

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

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While Marie Laveau worshipped at Catholic Mass in St. Louis Cathedral, she likely practiced Vodou at Congo Square. While no official documents place Laveau at Congo Square, many eyewitness accounts reported seeing her there. Congo Square is an important site of spirituality in New Orleans and has become associated with Marie Laveau throughout the years.

Congo Square is located in Louis Armstrong Park at the corner of North Rampart and St. Peter streets. For much of its history, Congo Square was not much but a field. Its earliest use was as a public market space where people could sell wares or services. Enslaved Africans during the French colonial era were exempt from work on Sundays as codified in the Code Noir. On Sundays, enslaved people would participate in the market to gain personal money. It was in this meeting place that Africans and Afro-Creoles began to dance and perform their African culture, drawing the ever-curious eyes of Europeans and Americans. [1]

While no official records place Marie Laveau at Congo Square, it is very likely she had been there numerous times throughout her life. Catherine Henry, Laveau’s grandmother, earned money as a marchande, or street vendor, and probably frequented the markets at Congo Square with her young granddaughter in tow. Numerous WPA interviewees discussed Marie Laveau’s role in leading Congo Square dances on Sunday afternoon. One interview stated, “She come walkin’ into Congo Square wit’ her head up in the air like a queen. Her skirts swished when she walked and everybody step back to let her pass. All the people-white and colored- start sayin’ that’s the most powerful woman they is. They say, ‘There goes Marie Laveau!” [2] Another interviewee stated, “Sometimes them policemans tried to keep Marie Laveau out, but she jest hypnotized ‘em and walked in. She could do that to anybody what got in her way. I seen her make polices get down and bark like dogs.” [3]

Whether or not Marie Laveau led dances at Congo Square, this specific square would have held great importance from her. One block away in her home, she would have heard the drums and dancing at Congo Square if she was not already there. As the leader of the Vodou community in New Orleans, Congo Square would have held immense importance to Laveau, as this area was where enslaved people and free people of color could unapologetically celebrate their African heritage, even if just for a few hours. In a society where enslavers purposely repressed the ethnic and religious heritage of enslaved people, Congo Square was where many people learned about their African roots.

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

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

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

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

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Aimée Potens was the mother of Louis Charles and Jean Baptiste Roudanez, the founder and publisher of  L’Union, the South’s first black newspaper, and the New Orleans Tribune, America’s first black daily newspaper. She was born to an enslaved woman in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) in the late eighteenth century. [1] Aimée eye-witnessed the long arc of Atlantic and Carribean world history: slavery; the Haitian revolution; exodus to colonial Louisiana; the Louisiana Purchase; territorial plantation life; all things de couleur libre in antebellum New Orleans; the Civil War; emancipation; the birth of the South’s first Civil Rights movement via her sons’ activism; and in her final years the triumph and failure of Reconstruction.

Jean Baptiste Roudanez (1815-1895), a free man of color, served as publisher of L’Union, the South’s first black newspaper, and the New Orleans Tribune, America’s first black daily newspaper. Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez, the Tribune’s founder, was Jean Baptiste’s younger brother. Jean Baptiste Roudanez’s home still stands on Dumaine Street in the Faubourg Tremé. 

Faubourg Tremé is home to the oldest existing cemetery in the City of New Orleans, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez, founder of the New Orleans Tribune, America’s first black daily newspaper, is entombed in the Roudanez family tomb located in Alley 9. The doctor’s wife, Célie Saulay, and several of their children are also in this tomb. Access is permitted only with approved tour guides. When in the cemetery, be sure to ask your guide to see the Roudanez tomb.

Like many free people of color in New Orleans, Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez was wealthy, grew up with the French language, attended Catholic Church, and received much of his education in Paris. Roudanez’s parents were racially mixed refugees from the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti), leaving after the island’s successful slave rebellion began in 1791. [1] 

On July 30, 1866, black Republicans attempted to reconvene the Louisiana constitutional convention in an effort to secure voting rights. Held at the Mechanics' Institute, a large crowd of black spectators was present as well. The gathering was attacked by an angry white mob that included police and firemen. [1] According to the Tribune, "black men were assassinated by scores. They fell inside of the hall, outside of the building, in the neighboring streets, and even in distant parts of the city, where they were tracked like dogs." [2] Tribune editor Jean-Charles Houzeau witnessed the bloodbath and heard the assassins shout "To the Tribune!" He claimed the newspaper was saved by a detail of black soldiers. [3]

You are standing in front of the L’Union and the New Orleans Tribune building, the birthplace of civil rights history in the Crescent City. Here, surrounded by the howling madness of the Civil War, these two radical journals condemned slavery and fought for the rights of all of African descent. The black community rallied around the Tribune and organized one of the most important freedom movements in American history. The Tribune’s crusade led to black enfranchisement, integrated public schools, the creation of a groundbreaking state constitution with strong equal rights provisions, and the election of many black state representatives.

The New Orleans Tribune (la Tribune de la Nouvelle Orléans) proclaimed itself an “organ of the oppressed” and defiantly vowed to “spare no means at our command” to promote equality for all people of African descent. [1] Bravely challenging the very foundations of white supremacy, the Tribune was in the vanguard of a monumental struggle for racial democracy. 

Both newspapers were founded by Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez, a free man of color. L’Union was unleashed in 1862 soon after Union forces seized the city. The New Orleans Tribune debuted on July 21, 1864. Publishing over 1,300 issues in the five years of its existence, the Tribune concentrated on matters of central importance to all of African descent: suffrage; an equitable labor and land system to replace slavery; the condition of the emancipated; the creation of integrated public transportation and school systems; the black military; Union policies of accommodation with planters; Louisiana’s constitutional conventions; local and national elections; Reconstruction politics and legislation; and much more. 

The Tribune arose from les gens de couleur libres, the community of free people of color who lived in the Vieux Carré and the Faubourgs Tremé and Marigny. Racially mixed, French-speaking, and Catholic, this prosperous, politically astute and assertive group was one of the largest of its kind in the United States. [2] Of African, Caribbean, European and First Nations ancestries, free people of color resulted from unlawful but tolerated inter-racial relationships during the colonial and antebellum periods. Their very existence contradicted the foundational idea of slave society, that racial inferiority was part of the natural order. Moreover, white elites worried that free people of color offered the enslaved hope for their own liberation.

The Tribune was bilingual from the start, two pages in English and two in French. The English-language section was a strategic effort to expand the journal’s message outside of the francophone community of free people of color that had been served by the newspaper’s predecessor, L’Union. That new audience grew to include those who had been enslaved, with whom the Tribune identified. “They are of us, and we love them as we do ourselves. We are the organ of the oppressed, without distinction.” [3]

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Madame Delphine MacCarthy Lalaurie was a wealthy New Orleans socialite and notorious enslaver. In 1832, Madame Lalaurie moved into a neoclassical mansion at the intersection of today’s Royal and Governor Nicholls Streets with her third husband Dr. Leonard Louis Nicolas Lalaurie. Madame Lalaurie hosted many lavish parties there. However, through the years, information surfaced about her gross mistreatment of enslaved people. According to historian Carolyn Marrow Long, Madame Lalaurie was first investigated in 1828 for cruelty towards enslaved people. Though court records related to this investigation have not been found, there is documentation that Madame Lalaurie paid for legal services and sold a number of enslaved people following the investigation. [1] On April 10, 1834, a fire broke out in the Lalaurie mansion. A group of onlookers gathered outside of the home as it burned. According to The New Orleans Bee, the city’s French-language newspaper, firefighters discovered “seven slaves, more or less horribly mutilated” locked inside the building as they attempted to control the flames. [1] The Bee went on to condemn the “barbarous and fiendish atrocities committed by the woman Lalaurie upon the persons of her slaves.” [1] The firefighters brought these enslaved people to the Cabildo. As word of Lalauries’ abusive actions surfaced, neighbors became enraged. According to The Bee, a crowd of 4,000 people gathered at the Cabildo. [2] Neighbors ransacked the mansion and destroyed what was left of the burned mansion. The Lalauries fled to Lake Pontchartrain and ultimately relocated to Paris. Madame Lalaurie died in Paris, but it is believed her body was brought back to New Orleans and buried at the St. Louis Cemetery. [2] Today, many tourists visit the Lalaurie Mansion because it is supposedly haunted. Historian Tiya Miles has criticized the manner in which tourism and pop culture have glorified the mistreatment of enslaved people through ghost stories used to entertain visitors. [2]

The structure that stands at 1140 Royal Street today was constructed in 1838 as a private residence and later used as a school and apartments.

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In the last years of the 18th century, enslavers feared that the practice of enslavement would soon end. It could have, if not for the advent of the cotton gin, which created immense demand for enslaved labor. America purchased Louisiana, the plantations cultivated cotton and the enslaved knew their bondage would not end. Their desire for freedom brought about Deslondes’ 1811 Revolt.

In 1812 America declared war on the British. They saw the British as too focused on France to fight in America and thought they would win easily. They were wrong. The Battle of New Orleans took place in February 1815, at the end of this war.

In battle, it is an effective move to come at your enemy from two sides, like pincers. In New Orleans there were two prongs, one on the west bank and one on the east bank of the Mississippi River. That’s why there were two battles, the Battle of Chalmette [which everyone knows about, because Jackson won] and the Battle of Algiers, which is less known. In each battle the maroons [Africans who had escaped enslavement to live in the swamps] played a crucial role. To induce the maroons to fight on the American side, Jackson promised the enslaved their freedom. He did not keep his promise.

The Battle of Algiers was fought in the vicinity of Whitney Avenue and L.B. Landry Avenue, around the Verret Canal which led from the Barataria Bay to the Mississippi River. The British lost the Eastbank battle to the Americans, but they won on the Westbank, with the help of maroons and enslaved men.

Enslaved men played a crucial role in the fortification of Chalmette. Jackson would not have been able to win without their construction of the fortifications. In Algiers the maroons and the enslaved fought with the British, who promised them their freedom. Unlike the Americans, they kept their promise. When the British were forced to retreat, these free men and women went with them, to Mobile, where the British had defeated the Americans. When the British lost Mobile, these free men and women went with them to Nova Scotia, Canada, and then to Sierra Leone, also a British colony.

Sierra Leone’s history reflects this heritage. The nation’s capital is called Freetown, the same as the maroon settlement of upper Algiers [also called McDonoghville]. The people who made this journey developed a language, which is today called Krio - Creole - which shares roots with the language of Afro-Louisianans.

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Commander Noel Carriere was decorated for bravery in the American Revolution, a black hero in his own time, forgotten in ours. Carriere was born into slavery at English Turn in 1745 to African parents who came to New Orleans in chains. His intelligence and leadership were evident even in slavery.

As a teenager, he became a barrel maker, a lucrative, highly regarded trade. The free black militiamen who owned plantations a stone's throw away from the place where Carriere grew up taught him what it was to be a soldier and a man. He must have impressed them: they listed him as a member of the free black militia before he gained his legal freedom in 1771. He rose quickly through the ranks to become an officer. When he was barely in his teens, people began to ask him to serve as godfather to their children, a mark of esteem and trust. His frequent appearances at the baptismal font earned him the respect of Church leaders. The priests must have been struck, too, by the military honor guards that Carriere led at the weddings of the men under his command, a visible testimony to the dignity of the free black community and its leader.

Spain allied with the thirteen colonies against Britain in the American Revolution. Carriere was decorated for bravery in all three of the battles Spain fought, including the successful siege of Pensacola that freed the French fleet to sail north to Yorktown to seal the defeat of the British. Carriere fought in the war that Americans waged to secure freedom and equality. The white soldiers he fought beside were rewarded with citizenship. Tragically, that was denied Carriere and his men when New Orleans became part of the United States in 1803. That, and he should be remembered now.

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