The African American Experience in Louisiana

Habitation spaces for slaves were found throughout the cities. To the rear of urban
dwellings such as those in New Orleans’ Vieux Carré were two story service buildings that could
house any number of functions, such as kitchens and washrooms on the first floor with living
space for slave, servants, or young men of the household above. One-story houses in the New
Orleans’ faubourgs or the smaller towns tended to have one-story service buildings that could
serve the same functions. 66 Households on the more rural outskirts of the city could resemble
small versions of plantations without the agricultural production or numerous quarters. Behind
his home on Bayou St. John, New Orleans’ first elected mayor, James Pitot, had two cabins for
six slaves, a kitchen, barn, and stables. 67 Not all slaves lived with their masters in the cities. In
Baton Rouge and New Orleans, despite laws prohibiting slaves from living anywhere without a
free person responsible for their oversight, landlords rented to slaves without any attempt to
supervise them. 68
“Living out” was common practice for slaves who hired themselves out for
wages. 69 Outside of daily work in households, foundries, sawmills, and just about every line of
work, slaves were able to pursue recreational activities even though there were restrictions on
providing liquor to slaves and on slaves of different masters congregating together. Perhaps the
best known and most significant site for slave gatherings in an urban setting was Congo Square
in New Orleans. This site became open land c. 1804 and a public square in 1812 and was the site
of Sunday slave dances throughout the antebellum period. 70 The movements and music of these
dances were distinctly African as attested to by the accounts of visitors to the city. In 1819, a
traveler stated, “On sabbath evening, the African slaves meet on the green by the swamp, and
rock the city with their Congo dances.” 71 By far, the most detailed portrayal of Sunday activities
was provided that same year by architect Benjamin Latrobe. Latrobe noted the use of many
different instruments – presumably of African origin – which he described in detail and sketched.
He also explained that the slaves danced in circles and he heard a language that he believed to be
an African dialect. All of this was an incredible retention of African culture by Louisiana’s
enslaved Africans and African Americans.
While slavery had its own architecture that supported its hierarchy of power and control,
there was not a distinctly separate mode of building for Free People of Color. In general, rural
and urban Free People of Color lived like their white counterparts, inhabiting houses that were
66 Faubourg is a term referring to the neighborhoods outside of the central urban part of the city. Translated
essentially as “false city,” faubourg is similar in meaning to suburb.
67 Kingsley, 89.
68 William L. Richter, “Slavery in Baton Rouge, 1820-1860,” in The African American Experience in Louisiana:
Part A, ed. Charles Vincent (Lafayette: University of Southwestern, LA, 1999), 511, first published in Louisiana
History 10 (1969): 125-45; Virginia Meacham Gould, “’If I Can’t Have My Rights, I Can Have My Pleasures, and If
They Won’t Give Me Wages, I Can Take Them’: Gender and Slave Labor in Antebellum New Orleans,” in The
African American Experience in Louisiana: Part A, ed. Charles Vincent (Lafayette: University of Southwestern,
LA, 1999), 351, first published in Patricia Morton, ed., Discovering Women in Slavery: Emancipating Perspectives
on the American Past (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), 179-201.
69 Gould, in Vincent, 351.
70 National Register Nomination for Congo Square, New Orleans, Louisiana, (Louisiana Department of Culture,
Recreation, and Tourism, Office of Cultural Development, Division of Historic Preservation, Baton Rouge,
Louisiana, 1993).
71 Henry C. Knight, Letters from the south and west, by Arthur Singleton (Boston: Richardson and Lord, 1824),
cited in Ned Sublette, The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square (Chicago:
Lawrence Hill Books, 2008), 3.
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