Category Archives: African-American history

by

Weighing In On A Confederate Past

It’s amazing to be alive at the moment of the tipping point for a social movement: For my lifetime, they already include the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of apartheid in South Africa, Arab Spring, the extension of legal rights for women and for same-sex unions among many others.
What all of these have in common is that they happened well before the formal governing entity signaled that it was ready for the change or even in some cases, before the solid majority had decided to back the change.
All were hard-fought and seemed destined to fail at many points in their campaign. All had active opposition.

The removal of statues of Confederate leaders from public space is another tipping point in a country that is heading toward a time when whites will be a minority (by 2043).
The affronted use mockery (“Why don’t we remove all traces of Washington? HE owned slaves! Where will this end?”) or condescending treatises on what they view as “the real history”, as understood through a lifetime of racist schoolbooks and likeminded family members (“The war was about states rights and not about slavery, duh.”)
To me, the arguments stated above mask the bigger truth: The public lionization of the Confederate past of the South is a barrier to working together for the future and signals to people of color that whiteness is a privilege earned, when it is not. I don’t care what version or scope of history you subscribe to, although I may pity you; have a statue of Lee in your backyard, but holding on the “Lost Cause” narrative in public places is a recipe for the continuing disintegration of our region. It also masks the true vibrancy of the South: that it is based on a multi-cultural, multi-generational belief in place, extreme socialization and culture handed down from person to person.
I wish we had the ability and forethought as a people to have created realistic evidence of the world of slavery and the brutality of the Civil War as Eisenhower ordered to be done with the concentration camps after WW2, but we did not. Instead we have inherited this soft and “heroic” narrative that does not truly represent the history of that ugly time.

Statues of those who brought a civil war to defend a system that allowed people to be sold as chattel should not be kept in public spaces.
Keep all of the statues and throw some Mardi Gras beads on em if you’d like, but put them in the Custom House or another place to properly frame their history as those who ignored the opportunity to expand human rights for their neighbors, along with information on when the statues were commissioned and by whom.

And thank you to Isabel Wilkerson, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of “The Warmth Of Other Suns:The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration” for writing this piece in the NYT about how symbols do help to define their time:

With the lowering of the Confederate flag in the state that was the first to secede and where the first shots were fired, could we now be at the start of a true and more meaningful reconstruction? It would require courage to relinquish the false comfort of embedded racial mythologies and to open our minds to a more complete history of how we got here. It would require a generosity of spirit to see ourselves in the continued suffering of a people stigmatized since their arrival on these shores and to recognize how the unspoken hierarchies we have inherited play out in the current day and hold us back as a country.

“Any time, any time while I was a slave, if one minute’s freedom had been offered to me, and I had been told I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it—just to stand one minute on God’s airth [sic] a free woman— I would.” — Elizabeth Mumbet Freeman secured her freedom in a precedent setting court case on 8/22/1781.

by

Jazz in the Park is calling all craft vendors and artists

People united for Armstrong Park is now accepting art market vendor applications for the seven season of Jazz in the Park. This year concert series runs Thursday, April 16th – June 4th, 2015.
Situated on Armstrong Park’s St. Ann Street promenade, the Jazz in the Park Art Market has enjoyed crowds of up to 3000 to 5000 people on a weekly basis. Attracting all demographics, this 8 week concert series is a favorite among local and regional artisans and spectators, alike. Vending spaces are limited; once gone, they will not make additional space so, apply early.

All work in this category must be 100% original and produced by the exhibiting artist. Offset reproductions of applicant’s original art may be sold, but should represent a very small percentage of the total work on display. No imported goods and or resale items will be accepted.

This is a juried show and as such, previous participation in this festival does not guarantee acceptance. Four digital images are required as part of your application. Image quality is essential and can make a difference in your acceptance, as the jury has only your digital images with which to judge your work. The best image is one that is full framed with the artist’s single work, is well lit and is representative of the body of work intended for exhibition. Your booth image should show your booth as it is set up for exhibition at an outdoor show. Images submitted this year will again be added to a google slideshow to facilitate in the jury process. For those accepted, these same images will be placed in a slideshow to post on the website and social media to create some excitement among the general public about art to be featured at the festival.

There is a $20 Non-refundable application fee (payable by credit card) due along with the online application no later than March 16, 2015.

Those accepted into the Arts Market will receive notification of acceptance along with a contract which will detail all the information needed to confirm participation. The booth fees for those accepted will be three hundred dollars ($300) to be paid and sent in along with the contract by Monday March 16, 2015. Booth sharing is allowed and all artists must be listed on this application. The cost is an additional $25 per additional artist.

APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS
1. Read the application in its entirety.
2. Complete the online application form including submission of artwork images and booth display.
3. Images must be submitted to info@armstrongpark.org and must be less than 2MB
3. Remit $20 application fee payable through Paypal link on People United for Armstrong Park website
4. Do not remit booth fee prior to notification of your selection and receiving your Jazz in the Park Art Market Contract.

The Jazz in the Park concert series will provide:

1. A 10ft. x 10ft.space
2. Security during and after the show
3. Promotion of the Art Market and participating artists
4. Audience of at least 3000 to 5000 people
5. One parking space near concert series site

The Artist will agree to:

1. Secure a special events occupational license
2. Provide your own WHITE 10 ft. x 10 ft. pop-up tent, with all necessary display hardware, signage, promotional materials and transport to the festival site as well as bring your own battery operated lighting(generators are NOT allowed)
3. Staff the booth from 4 pm to 8pm.
4. Supply your own 2A10bc fire extinguisher with proof of current inspection
5. Provide your tent brand along with fire retardant certification, if necessary
6. Submit the contract and payment within a timely fashion
7. Give the series staff notice of any cancellation of participation No later than Tuesday, March 31st, 2015 for a 50% refund.
8. Provide sales report and feedback form to Jazz in the Park at end of the series

For more information call 504-233-4276

by

Battle of the Battlefield

Important history from writer Eve Abrams on preservation and home, race and privilege as we celebrate the 200 year anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans:

About 30 families lived in Fazendeville, and all, like the Cagers, went back generations—perhaps to its beginning around 1870, when Jean Pierre Fazende, a free man of color, New Orleans grocer, and opera lover began subdividing the slim tract of land he’d inherited from his father—also named Jean Pierre Fazende—and selling off parcels to recently freed slaves.
————————————————————————-
In the mid 1800s, local citizens organized to erect a monument in honor of their ancestors’ sacrifice and Andrew Jackson’s victory. Dwindling funds and the Civil War stalled construction, but by the 1890s, the Louisiana Society of the United States Daughters of 1776 and 1812 passionately took up the cause.

The National Park Service had powerful allies. Among them was the Chalmette Chapter of the U.S. Daughters of 1812, headed by Mrs. Edwin X. de Verges, as well as her dear friend Martha Robinson, New Orleans’ grand dame of preservation, who headed the Louisiana Landmarks Society. –

…Wielding influence and tenacity, she (Robinson) convinced both the railroad and the previously intractable Kaiser Aluminum to donate valuable acreage. Protecting a chapter of history was clearly at the forefront of Robinson’s agenda, yet dispossessing a community was the next, necessary step. “Rather than get tangled up with Martha Robinson,” write Abbye A. Gorin and Wilbur E. Meneray, “politicians considered an alternate course.” Several of these politicians—Congressman F. Edward Hebert, Senators Russell B. Long and Allen J. Ellender—took up Robinson’s cause. They introduced legislation in Congress to purchase land for the park in time for the Battle’s 150th anniversary. The resolution passed, and President Kennedy signed it into law just months before he was assassinated.

“The government did eminent domain on us in 1964,” explains Valerie Lindsey Schxnayder, whose father was the last to leave Fazendeville. He moved his entire home —by trailer—to Reynes Street in the Lower Ninth Ward, where it was flooded the following year in Hurricane Betsy, and swept down the block in Katrina. In the mid-1960s, the market price for a new home in St. Bernard was around $16,000; residents of Fazendeville received around $6,000 per home. With Lindsey and the other citizens of Fazendeville gone, The Village was wiped away.

See more at: http://www.louisianaculturalvistas.org/defeat-fazendeville/#sthash.XAS9Bgam.dpuf
– See more at: http://www.louisianaculturalvistas.org/defeat-fazendeville/#sthash.XAS9Bgam.dpuf

by

Support Jazz In The Park

Today’s Schedule:

4:15 to 4:45 Joseph S. Clark Senior High School Marching Band

4:45 to 5:30 Second Line Parade Featuring the Sudan Social Aid and Pleasure Club and the All for One Brass Band

5:30 to 5:45 Line Dancing by Lady Dee

5:45 to 7:00 Kermit Ruffins and the Barbeque Swingers

7:00 to 7:30 Kevin Stylez performing My Hell of a Life

7:30 to 7:45 African Stilt Walking by Shaka Zulu and the Zulu Connection
7:30 Watch the Saints vs Panthers game in the Jazz Complex

7:45 to 8:00 Rebirth Brass Band plays a couple of songs on the Jazz in the Park stage then leads a second line to our after party and will play their remaining set in the Jazz Complex

8:00 to 9:00 Rebirth Brass Band finishes their performance at the Jazz in the Park 1st Annual Halloween Costume Ball

9:00 to 12:00 Dj Quickie Mart on the wheels and steels

Armstrong Park has several lights in a state of disrepair that leaves the park very dark at night. On Thursdays, we rent lights and generators to make sure our Jazz in the Park events are well lit, but on all other days the park is shrouded in darkness. Today, we will be collecting donations at the entrances to Jazz in the Park and will be passing the the donation buckets through out the crowd. Our goal is to raise $10,000 and we will give updates throughout the show on our progress. Please help us raise money to restore the lights in Armstrong Park so that we can safely illuminate our community park 365 days per year.

After Party:
We are also hosting an after party featuring Rebirth Brass Band and DJ Quickie Mart inside of the Jazz Complex inside of Armstrong Park. Suggested donation is $5 and all proceeds generated will go towards restoring the lights. We will be broadcasting the Saints game in the Jazz Complex as well.

Guests who attend our after party will have to exit through the St. Phillip Gate at the end of our after party. We will provide extra lights and security at the St. Phillip gate entrance and will have security on Rampart Street. Our French Quarter guests are encouraged to walk in groups to their French Quarter destinations.

Parking:
The Theater operators of the Mahaila Jackson theater (Ace Theatrical Group) will be charging $15 for parking because there is an event at the Mahalia Jackson theater. None of our Jazz in the Park guests will be allowed to park in the parking lots without paying.

by

Creole World by Richard Sexton

Great exhibit at the Historic New Orleans Collection’s Laura Simon Nelson Galleries of photographer Richard Sexton’s details of Caribbean life. It includes New Orleans, Colombia, Haiti, Ecuador and of course Cuba. The exhibit is designed well, with the New Orleans scenes hung next to their Caribbean counterpart, both photos sharing the exact same architectural or at least many composite details.

The exhibit reminds one that the Caribbean face of New Orleans is most likely another reason for its emotional distance from the rest of America. Those places have no great hold on  the American imagination, as seen in the lack of the same architectural styles of Washington DC, or in Savannah or even San Antonio.

America turned its back after its imperialism was slowed by Bolivar, Castro and others and left little New Orleans (and Miami too) without any older sisters to sit with, remembering the past.

On viewing this exhibit, I was reminded of one of my favorite quotes from those dark days of 2005 post-levee break reconstruction, said by a well known Cuban architect in a piece in The Atlantic. Andrés Duany, a co-founder of the Congress for New Urbanism, and a persistent advocate for traditional small-town design, gets to the essence of New Orleans as a Caribbean city said then:

“When I originally thought of New Orleans, I was conditioned by the press to think of it as an extremely ill-governed city, full of ill-educated people, with a great deal of crime, a great deal of dirt, a great deal of poverty,” said Duany, who grew up in Cuba. “And when I arrived, I did indeed find it to be all those things. Then one day I was walking down the street and I had this kind of brain thing, and I thought I was in Cuba. Weird! And then I realized at that moment that New Orleans was not an American city, it was a Caribbean city. Once you recalibrate, it becomes the best-governed, cleanest, most efficient, and best-educated city in the Caribbean. New Orleans is actually the Geneva of the Caribbean.”

Sexton’s Creole World Blog

exhibit and book information

And for those that remember the old Tally Ho Restaurant that was here at the corner of Chartres and Conti, it is a treat to walk through the gallery and remember the ghosts of past grits and red beans had at that counter….

by

People United for Armstrong Park

2014 Lineup

Food
We at People United for Armstrong Park are excited about the amazing local food options we have put together for Season 6 of Jazz in the Park, which starts September 4, 2014.
Join us at Jazz in the Park and enjoy some delicious food from the following vendors:

Harold’s Barbecue
barbeque chicken, pulled pork, ribs

Chocolate Devil
bacon-wrapped sausages, hamburgers

Direct Select Seafood
fried seafood plates, fried seafood salads

Ninja
yakiniku (garlic ribeye) poboy, shrimp yakisoba (fried noodles), crabstick & cucumber salad, seaweed salad, vegetarian poboy
drinks: iced green tea, cold sake

Mello D’s Catering, LLC
chicken Pasta, Apple Cobbler, Merliton Dressing
sides: white beans, loaded mash potatoes

Lil Dustin’s Italian Ice
Italian Ice in several different flavors and deep fried oreos

A & L Catering Services
crab cake with crawfish sauce, chicken and sausage Jambalaya, shrimp and crawfish fettuccine, seafood sausage (alligator, crawfish and shrimp) on a bun

Ms. Dee’s Catering
red beans and rice, fried chicken, hot dogs and homemade chili, file’ gumbo
sides: french fries, salad

NOLA Foods
ghetto burger, jerk chicken, ribeye steaks, BBQ shrimp

Ms. Ackie’s Meal on Wheels
snowballs, nachos and cheese, yaka-mein and hot tamales.

(2013 post is below and shows how delicate the funding and support for this wonderful series is in constant peril; take a second to write to your council and mayor to let them know how much you enjoy the activities there.)

People United for Armstrong Park needs your help now more than ever to keep the spirit of Congo Square alive!
Jazz in the Park’s future in danger as City fees double: Armstrong Park’s Nola for Life program suspended, musicians cut

Today (10/10), major programming cuts will take effect as the fees imposed on Jazz in the Park by the City of New Orleans double. Most notably, the at-risk trainees of Armstrong Park’s Nola for Life-funded Event Production Program (EPP) will lose hours. Additionally, the 2-4pm musical act has been cancelled and Thursday will be the final second line at Jazz in the Park from 4-5pm. If city fees remain at their new level, organizers say the spring series will only feature one performer per event instead of the four acts that currently perform weekly. Additionally, the event founders (themselves unpaid volunteers) have been forced to cover city fees through a personally-guaranteed emergency line of credit.

Jazz in the Park is produced by People United for Armstrong Park, a volunteer-led Treme-based non-profit now in its second year. Since the spring of 2012, PUfAP has produced 30 free public concerts, featuring more than 100 local performers and bringing over 70,000 residents and tourists into the newly renovated Armstrong Park. In four seasons, PUfAP has trained and hired 20 community members in need, many of them public housing residents, unemployed and with criminal records. All told, Jazz in the Park events provide weekly employment opportunities to over 100 community vendors, musicians and staff.

Fees levied on the free event have increased 100% this year and 1000% from 2012. Sadly, it will be those who depend on their Armstrong Park jobs the most that will pay the greatest toll. “There is no fat to cut,” says Founder Emanuel Lain Jr., “we are cutting into bone at this point.” Jazz in the Park provides its high-quality cultural programming on a bare-bones budget – approximately 80% lower than those of the concerts at Lafayette Square.

Through its community programming, PUfAP has significantly improved the perception and reality of Armstrong Park, Rampart Street and the Treme neighborhood. Their goal is to transform Armstrong Park into a premier hub of the city’s cultural economy by honoring the cultural traditions of Congo Square.

“People United for Armstrong Park has made Armstrong Park a real park instead of an under-used landscaped backdrop for the City’s performing venues. Jazz in the Park brings together such a diverse group of people – it is unlike any other event in the city,” says Treme resident Dabne Whitmore.

 

by

Ferguson is not forgotten in French Quarter

Malcom, one of the organizers, led a group of about 100 protestors from the cathedral to the river amphitheater, where they stopped for speeches, and then marched to the 1st District Police Station and eventually staged what organizers called a “die-in” or “lie-in.” 

 

peaceful protests continue in French Quarter