The term ‘Maroon’ refers to enslaved people who ran away from slave owners and remained in the south to join or establish independent, hidden settlements. Maroons utilized the area’s topography to evade capture. While one might expect maroons to…

The house today marked 727-729 Burgundy Street, relatively unchanged since the early 1800s, has a history that reflects the tricky navigation of enslavement and freedom by a family called the Beaurepaires. On August 25, 1828, Louis Beaurepaire, a…

Harriet Martineau, Saxe Weimar, and numerous other antebellum writers described New Orleans free women of color as promiscuous, seductive characters who sought partnerships with wealthy white men so they could live a life of leisure. Indeed,…

Free people of color were instrumental to the creation of the ironwork and architecture that you see while walking throughout the French Quarter. The 1820 Census lists 1,319 free people of color employed in manufacture, almost equal to the number of…

There were times when enslaved people in New Orleans could no longer bear the intense burden that came with the constant suffering of bondage. Escape became the last hope for some of these slaves despite the dangers that they would surely face if…

Numerous 19th-century travelers who frequented New Orleans for business and pleasure described the slave auction block in St. Louis Hotel. Sensationalism aside, visitors recorded their surprise at the grandeur and spectacle of the Hotel’s exchange…

For many Congo Square is the site that inspires the most fantastical images of enslaved life in New Orleans. From the 1840s to the 1880s, intellectuals and artists like George Washington Cable, Louis Gottschalk, and Lafcadio Hearn brought Congo…