The New Orleans Slave Trade Marker and Tour App is a project of the New Orleans 2018 Tricentennial Commission. The Tricentennial Commission was formed to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the founding of the city of New Orleans in 1718.
In 2017, the city of New Orleans had just one marker testifying to the history of the domestic slave trade. It is a privately installed plaque on the side of Pierre Maspero’s Restaurant at the corner of Chartres and St. Louis Streets, and it is in the wrong location. Other sites, including properties in the present-day Central Business District, French Quarter, and Faubourg Marigny remained unmarked, the story of the people whose sale and labor fueled the Southern economy untold until the launch of this historic
project.
The Tricentennial Commission erected markers on or adjacent to (on the sidewalks) six structures with historic ties to the trade. The New Orleans Slave Trade Project, led by historian Erin M. Greenwald, was undertaken by a subcommittee of the Tricentennial Commission’s Cultural and Historical Committee.
To further contextualize this difficult history, the New Orleans Slave Trade Project Group developed this interactive app-based tour of the sites that incorporates historical overviews of the sites, explorations of intersecting themes, including the rise of
the cotton and sugar economies, and the first-person testimonies of enslaved individuals bought and sold in the New Orleans Market.
The New Orleans Slave Trade Marker and Tour App was produced and supported for the 2018 Tricentennial of New Orleans by the 2018 NOLA Foundation along with a dedicated group of citizens and elected leaders.
Project Team
Priscilla Lawrence and Sybil Morial, co-chairs of the Tricentennial Commission’s Cultural and Historical
Committee
Erin M. Greenwald, PhD, historian and also curator of programs at the New Orleans Museum of Art
Laura B. Tennyson, Producer, Lura Belle Productions
Freddi Williams Evans, historian and arts education consultant
Luther Gray, co-founder of the Congo Square Preservation Society and also community and cultural
programs consultant at Ashé Cultural Arts Center
Cathe Mizell-Nelson, editor at The Historic New Orleans Collection
Carroll Morton, Tricentennial Commission Manager, City of New Orleans
Joshua Rothman, PhD, professor and department chair of the department of history at the University of Alabama
Ibrahima Seck, PhD, director of research at Whitney Plantation
The New Orleans Slave Trade Marker and Tour App Production Team
Director: Kathy Randels, Artspot Productions
Jon Vogl, Post Production Supervisor & Re-recording Mixer
Aidan Dykes, Sound Effects Editor & ADR Mixer
Tyler Heath, Dialogue Editor & ADR Mixer
Micah Demby, Assistant Editor
Post Production Services provided by Apex Post Production, New Orleans, La
Terence Blanchard and Robin Burgess, Burgess Management/Over The Garage Productions