“Where oak trees grew”
Parades, bands, costumes
A two piece popeye’s double
Underneath the bridge
Peter Boutte, author
Category Archives: African-American history
Leona Tate continues New Orleans’ education
Today, Tate is working with the exhibit designers to re-create her first-grade classroom. Almost certainly, visitors will see three small desks pulled close to the chalkboard in the corner classroom. All the windows will be covered in brown kraft paper, as they were in 1960, so that no one could see in or out.
But visitors to her classroom will see no other desks. At Frantz school, a handful of white students braved crowds of hecklers for the entire school year. But McDonogh 19’s enrollment quickly plummeted to three. “For the rest of the year, it was just me, Gail, Tessie, and Miss Meyer, our teacher,” Tate said.
At first, people expected the white students would return to New Orleans schools, after a few days or maybe a few weeks. That didn’t happen. It was a prime example of structural racism in action, Tate said.
Some students from the two desegregated schools in New Orleans transferred to newly built, all-white “private” academies that used state per-pupil funding to operate. Immediately after desegregation, school buses paid for by segregationists picked up white students from the city’s 9th Ward and took them across county lines to neighboring St. Bernard Parish, where the all-white schools took them in, with the state picking up the tab.
Kara Walker and Jason Moran: Sending Out A Signal
Golden Age of New Orleans Literature with Nancy Dixon
My pal and one of favorite storytellers and literary critics, Dr. Nancy Dixon was on Susan Larson’s Tricentennial Reading List this week. This whole series by Susan is magnificent. But start with “DoctorDix”
“Typography is my superpower”
Oh, I am digging this woman’s language and her approach.
The capital of the Confederacy should be known as the capital of the American slave trade, but civic leaders can’t agree on how to tell that story. So Free Egunfemi stepped in, armed with typography, historical knowledge and a spiritual commitment.
…She took his advice to heart and founded Untold RVA the next year with a mission to tell the city’s untold historic narratives in order to inspire self-determination in today’s Richmonders. A serial entrepreneur who has hustled as a face painter, loc twister, jewelry importer, and even a vegan iron-chef champion, she incorporated as an LLC, having no interest in grant-based non-profit fundraising….
…At first, Untold RVA was a self-directed effort and a money-losing proposition. In conjunction with a carpenter, she made wooden signs, called “portals,” at a cost of $600 each — a big expenditure, especially if any were stolen or vandalized. Then she discovered posters and had a revelation. “Typography is my superpower,” she says.
…Egunfemi maintains a hard-line stance in favor of the tactical-urbanism approach for commemorating the history of enslaved persons in Richmond. “I don’t think we should use Gilded Age methods to memorialize ancestors,” she says. “Why build a $1-million statue when the schools are falling apart?”
French Quarter block by block 
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