Paper Monuments Project
Tour Description
Paper Monuments is a project designed to elevate the voices of the people of New Orleans in the process of creating new symbols for our city that represent all of our people.
During the process, you'll see posters and flyers across New Orleans showing some of the people, places, events, and movements that have shaped our city over the past 300 years.
We reached out to some of New Orleans greatest activists, historians, storytellers, and artists to honor these erased histories as we look towards the future.
This tour of Paper Monuments will expand as more are created.
Locations for Tour
La Village des Chapitoulas
New Orleans is an Indian town. When Frenchmen and Africans arrived in the bend of the Mississippi that would eventually be re-named New Orleans, they encountered a place that had been home to Native Americans for hundreds of years.
We know from…
The Natchez Uprising
Human history from the 15th-20th centuries is dominated by Europeans’ unrelenting encroachment on and theft of land and natural resources in the “new world” and the “global south”. Though chicanery was deployed from time to time to accomplish these…
Marie Baron and Les Forcats
Marie Baron was among thousands of forçats, or French criminals sent to Louisiana in the early 1700s as forced laborers. Most were convicted for life terms, but if they survived the first few years (the majority did not), they could acquire a de…
San Malo Maroons
The San Malo Maroons have the most remarkable and extensively documented history of runaway slave communities in the Western Hemisphere. These men and women lived in the swamps surrounding New Orleans. They established permanent settlements in Chef…
St. Louis La Nuit
The extraordinary life-history of Saint Louis la Nuit reads like a first draft of early New Orleans history. Born in Africa in 1728, he had a name, a family and an ethnic identity which defined his place in the world. Torn from his identity moorings…
Henriette Delille
Henriette Delille, a free woman of color, founded the Sisters of the Holy Family in 1842. Under her guidance the early Sisters, all free women of African descent, devoted themselves to the care of the poorest of the poor, the enslaved and free people…
The Enslaved Peoples' Uprising of 1811
The Louisiana Slave Revolt of 1811 was the largest slave insurrection in the history of the United States. The revolt was carried out by enslaved men and women, house servants and field hands, some born in Louisiana and others recently arrived from…
Bras-Coupé
When Bras-Coupé was a slave owned by General William DeBuys, he was known by the name Squire. Like so many other slaves in New Orleans, Squire refused to remain in bondage.
He escaped to the cypress swamps above the city where he joined the Maroons…
Couvent School
On January 29, 1858, student André Gregoire wrote the following in an assignment for his English class: “A man cannot do anything if he has no education to conduct himself in business; therefore, I make all my efforts to learn as soon as I can.” He…
Irish Canal Workers: Defying Odds and Defying Expectations
"Ten thousand Micks/They Swung their picks/To dig th’ New Canawl, But the choleray was stronger’n they/And twice it killed them awl"
And with that ditty, published in the Times-Picayune of July 18, 1937, the lore was born that thousands…
Oscar James Dunn
On March 13, 1872, the National Republican reflected upon the importance of the nation’s first Black executive officer, Lieutenant. Governor Oscar James Dunn, some four months after his untimely death writing, “He was to them [Black Americans], their…
Comité des Citoyens
Most famous for being the group that organized member Homer Plessy's violation of railroad segregation laws on a train in 1892, the Comité des Citoyens was a group founded by Rodolphe Desdunes and Louis Martinet, with aid and advice from…
Robert Charles Riots
In late 1865, Robert Charles was born a free man in Copiah County, southwest Mississippi. It was not long after the Union Army had dealt the treasonous insurrection its final defeat on the battlefield at Appomattox. Charles’ parents would have been…
Chinatown
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…
Streetcar Protest 1867
When the first mule-drawn streetcars were introduced to New Orleans in the 1820s, no black passengers, free or enslaved, were allowed to ride. Free blacks challenged this new indignity atop the erosion of long-held rights; under territorial…
Sicilian Lynchings at the Old Parish Prison
On March 15, 1891, a lynch mob of thousands descended upon the city jail. The destruction and terror caused by this well-orchestrated mob reverberated well past this day, affecting local and global politics in the decades to come. Armed with guns,…
The General Strike of 1892
125 years ago, one of the greatest united strikes happened here in New Orleans – the General Strike of 1892. The general strike grew out of the labor movement struggles for improved economic well-being and Black peoples’ continued struggles for…
Madre Francesca Cabrini
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini arrived in New Orleans in 1892, with a charge to help poor Italian immigrants at a time of intense xenophobia in the city. A year earlier, a local lynch mob had murdered 11 Sicilian immigrants. Yellow fever had also…
Sassy Servants and Belligerent Bridgets: Irish Domestic Workers in the 19th Century
Domestic servants were a permanent feature of middle class families in 19th century America. We tend to think of them as lacking agency over their daily lives and without power to shape their future. Yet, Irish immigrant women belie that image, as a…
Farewell to the Honorable Marcus Garvey
On December 1, 1927, an overall-clad longshoreman interrupted a Sunday evening gathering of the New Orleans Division of the Universal Negro Improvement Association: Marcus Garvey, the organization’s founder, was to be deported to Jamaica through the…
The Funeral of André Cailloux
Since its founding 150 years earlier, New Orleans had never seen anything like it: immense crowds of black residents, including members of thirty-some mutual aid societies, thronging Esplanade Avenue for more than a mile to witness the funeral…
Mother Catherine Seals
Mother Catherine Seals is a mysterious figure. There’s not much written about her, and only a few photographs of her exist. So a lot of what we do know about this spiritual mother is hearsay. And some say that once she created her Bethlehem in the…
Rosa Keller
Rosa Freeman was born into a wealthy New Orleans family in 1911. In 1932, she married Charles Keller Jr., and seemed destined to follow the conventional path of a young society matron.
But around the time of World War II, she started becoming…
1946 Flambeaux Strike
New Orleans calls them the flambeaux — French for “flaming torches” — the contingent of mostly African-American men who carry 70-pound, kerosene-fueled wooden crosses used to illuminate Carnival parade routes. It’s a tradition as old as Mardi Gras…
Lincoln Beach
“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…
Sit-In at McCrory's
In September 1960, the New Orleans chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE, staged two high-profile sit-ins in an attempt to desegregate Canal Street lunch counters.
Integration had slowed to a standstill. “We were fed up,” said Rudy…
City Hall Cafeteria Sit-In
Born June 29, 1910 in Terrebonne Parish, Avery Caesar Alexander grew up in a poor family. He entered the workforce as a boy, taking odd jobs until he earned work as a longshoreman. His family relocated to New Orleans and because he was forced to work…
McDonogh Day Boycott
John McDonogh was a wealthy businessman and owner of enslaved people during the early 19th century, when New Orleans was one of the nation's most prosperous cities. Upon his death in 1850, he donated much of his fortune to the education of "poor…
Les Pierres
Juanita Pierre and her partner Leslie Martinez opened Les Pierres, the first Black lesbian owned bar in New Orleans, in the 1980s. Located on the corner of Pauger and Rampart Streets in the Marigny, their Saturday night crowd spilled out of the bar’s…
Free Southern Theater
In the late summer of 1963, propelled through treacherous rural Alabama by spirituals from his previous post in the civil rights battlefields of south Georgia, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) field secretary and playwright John…
Dorothy Mae Taylor
Dorothy Mae Taylor was the first Black woman elected to Louisiana State Legislature in 1971, with Oretha Castle Haley managing her campaign. Taylor served as an advocate for children, mothers, and the incarcerated, and was the builder of a network of…
Saint Katharine Drexel and Xavier University
Katharine Mary Drexel, born on November 26, 1858, into one of the wealthiest families in Philadelphia was destined to be a socialite and a member of privileged society. He father, Francis A. Drexel and his brothers owned an international banking…
Commander Noel Carriere
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…
Desire Standoff
On September 15, 1970, one of America’s largest standoffs took place between the New Orleans chapter of the Black Panther Party and multiple branches of law enforcement within the Desire housing projects in the city’s Ninth Ward. Leading up to the…
H.E.R.E. (Human Rights for Everyone) Activists Unite Against Anita Bryant
A former beauty pageant queen and popular singer, by 1977 Bryant was the official spokesperson of the Florida Citrus Commission. She was also a fundamentalist Christian who became incensed when Miami-Dade County passed a non-discrimination ordinance…
The Pythian Temple
The Pythian Temple building at Gravier and Loyola (formerly Saratoga) streets was erected in 1909, and was soundly celebrated throughout the United States in the African American press as a true monument to the literal heights of the “Negro race.”…
Dew Drop Inn
The Dew Drop Inn "opened" its doors in 1939 under the ownership of Mr. Frank Pania. The Dew Drop would become a major player in the development of Rhythm and Blues.
The "Drop," as it was called, became the hub of social and civic…
Arson Attack on the UpStairs Lounge
The UpStairs Lounge was a gay bar that occupied the second floor of a building at the corner of Chartres and Iberville Streets in the French Quarter. It was a friendly, neighborhood bar that afforded gay men a safe space to gather and enjoy each…
Charity Hospital
Charity Hospital did not have to close. It was restored to working order within a few weeks of Katrina with the extraordinary volunteer effort of more than 200 doctors, nurses, technical professionals, citizens and military staff. UMC at $1.1 billion…
Dr. Norman C. Francis
In August of 1948, a young man from Lafayette, Louisiana named Norman C. Francis moved to New Orleans to further his education at Xavier University. While at Xavier he remained grounded in the life lessons his parents taught him as a young boy, which…
John Thompson: Resurrection After Exoneration
John Thompson had a sharp wit and irreverent humor. John Thompson was a proud New Orleanian who cursed the dysfunction of his city every day. John Thompson loved his wife, his family, and his friends. John Thompson was an exoneree, a death-penalty…
Circle Food Store
Centrally located in the Seventh Ward, the St. Bernard Market began as a public market, part of an expansive network of public markets across New Orleans, in 1854. It carried everything from produce to livestock, including — as lore has it — enslaved…
A Movement Without Marches: Black Women in Public Housing
Starting in the 1920s and increasing exponentially in the 1930s, and onwards, the urban landscape of New Orleans, like many urban municipalities across the country, began to change as a result of a series of racially restrictive covenants and zoning…
Claiborne Avenue
Claiborne Avenue, from Treme to the 7th Ward, is a corridor packed to the rafters with memory, resistance and a refusal to be assimilated, dominated and denigrated. It is rockin’ – from one side to the other - with a resounding sense of life and…
Tour Postscript
For more information on Paper Monuments, visit PAPERMONUMENTS.ORG and on Twitter @Paper.Monuments or email them at INFO@PAPERMONUMENTS.ORG#papermonuments #peoplesmonuments #monumentsforall