During the major slave-trading season, September through May, yards surrounded by high brick walls called slave pens bustled with activity in the areas surrounding the French Quarter. Slave traders forced enslaved men, women, and children to line up…

Jean Pierre Cazelar, a white man of French descent, was the wealthy patriarch of a prominent multi-racial family in 19th-century New Orleans. Though Cazelar intended his children to inherit his entire estate, including real estate, possessions, and…