St. Augustine Church-interior after Sunday mass

St. Augustine Church-interior after Sunday mass

Memorialization of Urban Slavery in Southern Coastal Cities

slavery; memorials

St. Augustine Catholic Church, in the Treme neightborhood, was established in 1841, as a church for free black citizens in New Orleans, but welcomed both free and slave worshipers. A few weeks before the church's dedication in 1842, blacks began purchasing pews, to which whites responded by trying to buy them up, leading to the "war of the pews." The blacks won (three pews for every one white pew), and additionally bought up all the side pews, which they gave to slaves to use as their exclusive place of worship. It has remained one of the most integrated congregations in the country.

This project was funded by Bernard and Anne Spitzer Travel Fellowship for research projects involving travel abroad and incorporating the study of architecture, landscape architecture, or urbanism.

My goal was to research, witness, and record how each of my chosen Southern port cities has dealt with its past in regards to urban slavery, and to begin making a record of this history. Although all of the locations I visited were major hubs of the American slave trade, these cities remain mostly lacking in admitting their full and complete history. The inaccurate and incomplete narratives, lack of memorials, and white-washed histories designed to appeal to the tourist industry do not tell the stories of the slaves in an unbiased and forthright way. So much of what I witnessed revolved around a very racially divided tourist industry, but I know that change is possible. The story of urban slavery is not just the story of African Americans in the United States, but the story of all of us, and the more we can understand this, the better off we all will be.

Whang, Maura

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Whang, Maura

Architecture and City Planning

T0581

New Orleans, LA