Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007 - (Page 43)

New Orleans’ Faubourg Tremé Rooted in Tradition ST. AUGUSTINE’S CHURCH St. Augustine’s Catholic Church, at the corner of Governor Nicholls Street and Saint Claude Avenue, is another timeless institution in the color supplied much of the funding “Creoles ofAugustine’s Church, which opened into build the new St. 1841. Free blacks rented half of the new church’s pews, many of the aisle seats were reserved for slaves.” —James B. Bennett, from Religion and the Rise of Jim Crow in New Orleans above: Father Jerome LeDoux served as the last priest of St. Augustine’s until the parish was decommissioned by the New Orleans Archdiocese in 2006, one of many citywide Catholic church closures in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Despite its disolution, St. Augustine’s damaged copper-clad bell tower (left) was repaired and the church is host to occasional Masses on special occasions. PHOTO BY KEITH WELDON MEDLEY heart of Old Tremé. James B. Bennett wrote in Religion and the Rise of Jim Crow in New Orleans: “Creoles of color supplied much of the funding to build the new St. Augustine Church, which opened in 1841. Free blacks rented half of the new church’s pews, many of the aisle seats were reserved for slaves.” In the 1850s, Henriette Delille, Juliette Gaudin, and Josephine Charles took their vows as the Sisters of the Holy Family. This order of black nuns ministered to the poor and enslaved. Other noted parishioners included Tremé resident Homer Plessy of the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court case of 1896, jazzman Sidney Bechet, and civil rights attorney A. P. Tureaud Sr. The late Mardi Gras Indian “Chief-of-Chiefs” Allison “Tootie” Montana and his wife Joyce also attended services at St. Augustine. An evocative sculpture garden on the side of the church pays tribute to the slaves who built the city’s first levees and buildings. This “Tomb of the Unknown Slave” sculpture garden features a 1500-pound cross welded from a discarded marine chain that had been used to anchor a buoy in the Mississippi River. Fall 2007/LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES 43 PHOTO BY CHERYL GERBER of enormous accomplishment. For people of color, these achievements were even more compelling considering the restrictions placed on their movements and rights of association. In his 1911 book Nos Hommes et Notre Histoire (Our People and Our History), Tremé resident Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes, who lived at 923 Marais Street, wrote of the sculptors, writers, philanthropists, builders and others who populated the area. Pierre A. Desunes, Rodolphe’s brother, contributed his poems to La Cenelles — a 210-page book of poems written in the French romantic tradition in the 1840s that was the first anthology of poetry by people of African descent in the United States. Another Tremé standout, Arisitide Mary, owned a square block along Canal Street and led the fight against discrimination for over 30 years until his death in 1893. Basil Crockere once owned the lot at the corner of St. Claude and Ursulines. Crockere taught fencing at his Salle d’Armes in a city where dueling under oak trees was an acceptable way for men to settle questions of honor. Desdunes wrote about Crokere: “As a carpenter, he became one of the most skilled builders of staircases in New Orleans. It was, however, because of his success as a swordsman and as a mathematician that he won the honor he holds today in the history of distinguished men in Louisiana.”

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007

Contents Friends & Letters Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Big Charity: A History of New Orleans’ Public Hospital Historic New Orleans Collection Making Groceries: A History of New Orleans Markets New Orleans’ Faubourg Tremé: Rooted in Tradition Jazz Notes Louisiana Association of Museums Chinatown New Orleans Louisiana Foodways A Question of Secession Louisiana Architecture Louisiana State Museum The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish Terra Incognita Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007

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