Black Life in Old New Orleans

“It’s a cultural encyclopedia that’s long overdue.” —Louisiana Book News “Keith Weldon Medley creates a context for the cultural understanding of our city.

Whether it’s the legal scholars, the families that integrated the public schools, innovative musicians, young people resisting segregation across the South, or Zulu maskers, Skeletons, Baby Dolls, and Indians, Medley shines a light on all of the players with an intimacy born of acute observation and careful research.” 

—New Orleans Tribune/Orissa Arend, author of Showdown in Desire: The Black Panthers Take a Stand in New Orleans Two hundred years ago, on a barren plot of land just outside New Orleans proper, enslaved and free black people would gather on Sundays to freely practice religions both ancient and new. It was a sight unseen anywhere else in the country. This was Congo Square, where the heartbeat of New Orleans was born.