Congo Square in New Orleans (c.2006)
I’m pretty sure the Dispatch editors found the following document historical for the racial component. My added take: it’d be a lot better party by making sure the women got there; therefore, the 50% price reduction?
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch November 13, 1863:
An Historical Document.
–The following is a copy of a ticket to a Yankee 4th of July fete in New Orleans:
Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!
Saturday, July4th, 1863.
Grand Union Pastoral Festival,
On Congo Square, Second District.
No Distinction of Race! No Distinction of Color!
Admittance. Ladies, 25 cents.
Admittance. Gentlemen, 50 cents.
Admit one gentleman.
During the 18th century slaves, who were given Saturdays off by their Spanish and French masters, began using Congo Square as a market and music and dance place. “As harsher United States practices of slavery replaced the more lenient French colonial style, the slave gatherings declined. Although no recorded date of the last slave dances in the square exists, the practice seems to have stopped more than a decade before the end of slavery with the American Civil War.”
Today Congo Square is part of Louis Armstrong Park.
playing in Eureka, California
