New Orleans, a city renowned for its unique blend of cultures, boasts a particularly rich and complex African American history. This history, deeply intertwined with the city's founding and development, has left an indelible mark on its music, cuisine, traditions, and social fabric.
Congo Square in the 19th century
The Arrival of Africans and the Era of Enslavement
People of African ancestry first arrived in New Orleans in 1719, just a year after the city's establishment. They were forcibly removed from the Senegambia region of West Africa. The first enslaved people from Africa arrived in Louisiana in 1719 on the Aurore slave ship from Whydah, only a year after the founding of New Orleans.
During the 1720s, roughly five thousand Africans survived the Middle Passage en route to French Louisiana. This was followed in the 1780s by a similarly sized group brought by the Spanish from the Benin and Congo regions. Between 1723 and 1769, most African slaves imported to Louisiana were from modern-day Senegal, Mali, Congo, and Benin and many thousands being imported to Louisiana from there. A large number of the imported slaves from the Senegambia region were members of the Wolof and Bambara ethnic groups. Saint-Louis and Goree Island were sites where a great number of slaves destined for Louisiana departed from Africa.
Enslaved Africans of the colonial era cleared forests, raised crops, and built the city infrastructure. When New Orleans became an American city in 1803, enslaved Africans and their descendants made up over one-third of the population. After the Civil War, New Orleans also received thousands of new domestic black migrants from Mississippi, rural Louisiana, and elsewhere.
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One vital place for this cultural continuity was Congo Square, now part of Armstrong Park on the edge of the French Quarter in the Faubourg Treme. Here on Sunday off-days, hundreds of African slaves and laborers congregated to trade goods, play music, dance, and socialize.
The Rise of Free People of Color
Spanish policies on slavery opened opportunities for manumission-the ability for slaves to attain freedom-which gave rise to a substantial population of gens de couleur libres (free people of color). A second large influx of new African arrivals came in the 1780s, halfway through the period from 1763 to 1802 when the city fell under Spanish rule. The colony's transfer marked the beginning of the most liberal period in Louisiana's history in regard to free people of color.
Following the resettlement of over 3,000 free people of color from Haiti in the early American period, the population tripled. By 1860, New Orleans had the largest free Black population in the Deep South. Most free people of color were French-speaking, and many owned property.
Another distinctive aspect of New Orleans’s black diaspora developed in the late 18th century as Spanish legal practices increased the population of free people of color through much more liberal rules allowing masters to manumit or free enslaved people. Many, although by no means all, of those manumitted were people of mixed race. The presence of this large population of sometimes white-appearing mulattoes, looked similar to patterns in parts of the Caribbean, and contributed to New Orleans’s often-exaggerated reputation as a city of widespread racial mixture and greater racial tolerance than elsewhere in the United States.
Dr. Louis-Charles Roudanez
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For all the significance of the large population of people of mixed race, most residents of the city continued to fit generally into communities defined largely as black or white, in ways similar to racial experience elsewhere in North America. Dr. Louis-Charles Roudanez was a prominent New Orleanian who founded two bilingual Black newspapers, L’Union and La Tribune de La Nouvelle Orleans, in the 1860s. These papers helped foster early civil rights movements in New Orleans.
Cultural Contributions
Instead of disappearing or homogenizing, some aspects of African culture persisted in New Orleans, influencing everything from food to music to religion.
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Music
Of all the African-American contributions to American culture, music tops the list. The Crescent City is the birthplace of jazz, which, from its emergence in back-of-town New Orleans neighborhoods in the late 1800s, became the most popular musical genre of most of the Western world well within two generations. The roots of American music are found in drumming circles of Congo Square-the only place in New Orleans where enslaved Africans could gather openly for an extended period.
New Orleans African-American musicians have been leaders in creating a distinctive rhythm & blues style that helped birth rock ’n’ roll, in gospel and funk, and in rap, hip hop, bounce and brass band. Jazz was one of America’s first original art forms, and Louis Armstrong was arguably America’s first Black superstar.
Mardi Gras Traditions
Many beloved Mardi Gras traditions are African-American, including the “skull gangs” that roam early on Fat Tuesday morning, the street party “under the bridge on North Claiborne Avenue in the Faubourg Treme later that afternoon, the famed Mardi Gras Indians, and the Krewe of Zulu parade, which rolls on Mardi Gras morning. Zulu grew out of social aid and pleasure clubs-that is, benevolent societies providing insurance for illness or funerals, which would hold street parades (“second lines”) for members to advertise the club.
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Cuisine
African Americans have contributed to Louisiana's culture, music, and cuisine. Home to a number of phenomenal Black chefs and legendary cuisine, New Orleans takes great pride in the food they serve. Dooky Chase's Restaurant played a vital role in the Civil Rights Movement.
Civil Rights Movement
New Orleans also played a crucial role in advancing civil rights in education. Xavier University of Louisiana, an HBCU, also helped the cause. Xavier’s civil rights activists included students arrested during sit-in protests. The modern civil rights movement brought about sweeping changes in the city, as Black New Orleanians, following a local tradition of activism that was over a century old, fought for and asserted their rights in education, equal access to businesses and public transportation, and political participation.
In November 1960, four girls-Leona Tate, Gail Etienne, Tessie Prevost, and Ruby Bridges-desegregated New Orleans public schools. They faced harassment and threats to their safety from white New Orleanians. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a leading civil rights organization whose first president was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., got its start inside the New Zion Baptist Church in New Orleans.
Ruby Bridges
The conference organized and supported civil rights protests, and its members fought for African American voting rights as well as desegregation. The TEP (Tate, Etienne, and Prevost) Center is a renovated mixed-use facility housed in what used to be the historic McDonogh 19 Elementary School in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. The new mixed-use facility is a safe space built on anti-racist principles. It features education & exhibition space dedicated to the history of desegregation in New Orleans Public Schools, Civil Rights, and restorative justice.
Exploring African American History in New Orleans Today
In addition to beautiful Armstrong Park and Congo Square, you can visit the African American Museum at 1418 Governor Nicholls Street in the Faubourg Treme, among the oldest black neighborhoods in the nation; the Le Musee de f.p.c. For additional learning, consider download the Slave Trade App, which provides in-depth detail about sites throughout the city that played a significant role in the slave trade in New Orleans.
Here are some must-visit places to explore African American history in New Orleans:
- Armstrong Park and Congo Square: The historic gathering place for enslaved Africans to maintain their cultural traditions.
- African American Museum (1418 Governor Nicholls Street): Located in the Faubourg Treme, one of the oldest Black neighborhoods in the nation.
- Le Musée de f.p.c.: A museum dedicated to the history and culture of free people of color.
- Whitney Plantation: A house museum focused on the history of slavery in Louisiana.
- St. Augustine Church: Founded in 1842 by free people of color, a historic church with a diverse congregation.
- Dooky Chase Restaurant: A culinary landmark that played a crucial role in the Civil Rights Movement.
New Orleans also offers walking tours and museum visits that dive into Black history. From the neighborhoods and streets you stroll, to the dances and songs you sing, and even the dishes you eat - Black History has and continues to pioneer the culture of the Crescent City.
Statistics
Within the US, Louisiana has the fifth largest overall African American population. As of 2011, the population statistics were as follows:
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Total Population | 4,533,372 |
| African American Population | 1,474,053 |
| Percentage of Total Population | 32.5% |
