Browse Items (105 total)

This monument was originally erected in 1891, as a "memorial to white supremacy," to honor those whites who died in 1874, during the attack of the Crescent City White Leage (all whites) on the New Orleans Metropolitan Police (blacks and whites). As a…

The bamboula was the drum used by slaves during their weekly Sunday evening gatherings in Congo Square where they would dance and make music.

This display opened an exhibit on slavery in New Orleans. Seen is an auction block, on which slaves would have stood during slaves auctions, such as that which is depicted in the central illustration. That illustration, by William Henry Brooke,…

This memorial at the Whitney Plantation contains all 107,00 names of the slaves recorded by Gweldolyn Mildo Hall in the Louisiana Slave Database. It is meant as a contemplative space on the plantation grounds.

Although not original to the Whitney Plantation, these slave quarters were original to the Myrtle Grove Plantation in Terrebone Parish. Before the Civil War, the Whitney Plantation had 22 slave cabins. Also on display are sugar kettles, which…

While not original to the Whitney Plantation, this slave jail from 1868 is similar to those used to restrain slaves. Its location at the Whitney is purposeful--it was placed so that one could catch a glimpse of the main house through the jail.

The St. Charles Hotel used to sit on this site at St. Charles Avenue and bounded by Gravier, Common, and Carondelet Streets. Today it is a Hilton Hotel which neither has any relation to the original hotel at this site, nor any marker indicating the…

The site where Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 now stands was once the site of the Livaudais Plantation, which was divided into squares in 1832. Before the land became a city cemetery, these two graves marked the final resting places of slaves who worked on…

This placard recognizes the cemetery was part of the Livaudais Plantation, but does not acknowledge the slave graves within, despite mentioning "Here are buried many persons of German and Irish origin who lived in the city of Lafayette."

Now considered uptown, or the Garden District, the neighborhood that Lafayette No. 1 sits in was once all plantation. Notably, the defendant in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case, Judge Ferguson, was buried here. He upheld the state law that segregation,…