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…

Soon after Union forces seized New Orleans from the Confederacy in 1862, calls for equality reverberated among free people of color. Hundreds assembled at frequent mass meetings and rallies at Economy Hall in the heart of Faubourg Tremé. There,…

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 Roudanez, publisher of L’Union, the South’s first black newspaper, and the New Orleans Tribune, America’s first black daily newspaper, is entombed alongside his mother Aimée Potens, a free woman of color, in Square 3 of St. Louis…

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…

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…

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…

In November 1866, the Tribune moved from its offices on Conti Street to 122-124 Exchange Alley. These new digs were in the shadow of the St. Louis Hotel (site now occupied by the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel). The St. Louis Hotel housed a large…

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…