Are you a history buff about New Orleans? Have some historical passages you'd like to share? We'd appreciate reading everything you have to share. If you can document your source that'd be great. If it's something about your family history, include that. Thanks!
N'Alisn is a historic town to be visited... I made one of these walking tours where ea fine Lady explained the history of the city and of each single house we visited... going this way by foot all a morning long you are in touch with all what you see and in N'Alins you may do it as it is packed densely with history and scenics...
Melody, thanks for this thread, I hope also some exilees will look into it and see they are not forgotten!!! No no, we remember you well!
Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans?
By ANNE RICE
La Jolla, Calif.
WHAT do people really know about New Orleans?
Do they take away with them an awareness that it has always been not only a great white metropolis but also a great black city, a city where African-Americans have come together again and again to form the strongest African-American culture in the land?
The first literary magazine ever published in Louisiana was the work of black men, French-speaking poets and writers who brought together their work in three issues of a little book called L'Album Littéraire. That was in the 1840's, and by that time the city had a prosperous class of free black artisans, sculptors, businessmen, property owners, skilled laborers in all fields. Thousands of slaves lived on their own in the city, too, making a living at various jobs, and sending home a few dollars to their owners in the country at the end of the month.
This is not to diminish the horror of the slave market in the middle of the famous St. Louis Hotel, or the injustice of the slave labor on plantations from one end of the state to the other. It is merely to say that it was never all "have or have not" in this strange and beautiful city.
Later in the 19th century, as the Irish immigrants poured in by the thousands, filling the holds of ships that had emptied their cargoes of cotton in Liverpool, and as the German and Italian immigrants soon followed, a vital and complex culture emerged. Huge churches went up to serve the great faith of the city's European-born Catholics; convents and schools and orphanages were built for the newly arrived and the struggling; the city expanded in all directions with new neighborhoods of large, graceful houses, or areas of more humble cottages, even the smallest of which, with their floor-length shutters and deep-pitched roofs, possessed an undeniable Caribbean charm.
Through this all, black culture never declined in Louisiana. In fact, New Orleans became home to blacks in a way, perhaps, that few other American cities have ever been. Dillard University and Xavier University became two of the most outstanding black colleges in America; and once the battles of desegregation had been won, black New Orleanians entered all levels of life, building a visible middle class that is absent in far too many Western and Northern American cities to this day.
The influence of blacks on the music of the city and the nation is too immense and too well known to be described. It was black musicians coming down to New Orleans for work who nicknamed the city "the Big Easy" because it was a place where they could always find a job. But it's not fair to the nature of New Orleans to think of jazz and the blues as the poor man's music, or the music of the oppressed.
Something else was going on in New Orleans. The living was good there. The clock ticked more slowly; people laughed more easily; people kissed; people loved; there was joy.
Which is why so many New Orleanians, black and white, never went north. They didn't want to leave a place where they felt at home in neighborhoods that dated back centuries; they didn't want to leave families whose rounds of weddings, births and funerals had become the fabric of their lives. They didn't want to leave a city where tolerance had always been able to outweigh prejudice, where patience had always been able to outweigh rage. They didn't want to leave a place that was theirs.
And so New Orleans prospered, slowly, unevenly, but surely - home to Protestants and Catholics, including the Irish parading through the old neighborhood on St. Patrick's Day as they hand out cabbages and potatoes and onions to the eager crowds; including the Italians, with their lavish St. Joseph's altars spread out with cakes and cookies in homes and restaurants and churches every March; including the uptown traditionalists who seek to preserve the peace and beauty of the Garden District; including the Germans with their clubs and traditions; including the black population playing an ever increasing role in the city's civic affairs.
Now nature has done what the Civil War couldn't do. Nature has done what the labor riots of the 1920's couldn't do. Nature had done what "modern life" with its relentless pursuit of efficiency couldn't do. It has done what racism couldn't do, and what segregation couldn't do either. Nature has laid the city waste - with a scope that brings to mind the end of Pompeii.
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I share this history for a reason - and to answer questions that have arisen these last few days. Almost as soon as the cameras began panning over the rooftops, and the helicopters began chopping free those trapped in their attics, a chorus of voices rose. "Why didn't they leave?" people asked both on and off camera. "Why did they stay there when they knew a storm was coming?" One reporter even asked me, "Why do people live in such a place?"
Then as conditions became unbearable, the looters took to the streets. Windows were smashed, jewelry snatched, stores broken open, water and food and televisions carried out by fierce and uninhibited crowds.
Now the voices grew even louder. How could these thieves loot and pillage in a time of such crisis? How could people shoot one another? Because the faces of those drowning and the faces of those looting were largely black faces, race came into the picture. What kind of people are these, the people of New Orleans, who stay in a city about to be flooded, and then turn on one another?
Well, here's an answer. Thousands didn't leave New Orleans because they couldn't leave. (part1)
What's more, thousands more who could have left stayed behind to help others. They went out in the helicopters and pulled the survivors off rooftops; they went through the flooded streets in their boats trying to gather those they could find. Meanwhile, city officials tried desperately to alleviate the worsening conditions in the Superdome, while makeshift shelters and hotels and hospitals struggled.
And where was everyone else during all this? Oh, help is coming, New Orleans was told. We are a rich country. Congress is acting. Someone will come to stop the looting and care for the refugees.
And it's true: eventually, help did come. But how many times did Gov. Kathleen Blanco have to say that the situation was desperate? How many times did Mayor Ray Nagin have to call for aid? Why did America ask a city cherished by millions and excoriated by some, but ignored by no one, to fight for its own life for so long? That's my question.
I know that New Orleans will win its fight in the end. I was born in the city and lived there for many years. It shaped who and what I am. Never have I experienced a place where people knew more about love, about family, about loyalty and about getting along than the people of New Orleans. It is perhaps their very gentleness that gives them their endurance.
They will rebuild as they have after storms of the past; and they will stay in New Orleans because it is where they have always lived, where their mothers and their fathers lived, where their churches were built by their ancestors, where their family graves carry names that go back 200 years. They will stay in New Orleans where they can enjoy a sweetness of family life that other communities lost long ago.
But to my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us "Sin City," and turned your backs.
Well, we are a lot more than all that. And though we may seem the most exotic, the most atmospheric and, at times, the most downtrodden part of this land, we are still part of it. We are Americans. We are you.
I have a link to the article posted in Newspaper and Magazine Ariticles and Reviews as well with a photo of Anne, but this article is so full of history it definitely overlaps here. She is definitely up on her history! Thanks for copying it and putting the whole thing upfront on this thread.
Anyone else who sees the need for this kind of constructive documentation, please help. It is my hope that this group will provide some sort of healing for us now and maybe for some of the survivors at a future date should chance bring their attention to it.
Peace, Melody 
http://www.auntsallys.com/history.html
Pralines bubbling in a copper pot, horse drawn carriages passing by, hot music drifting from ancient doorways, the taste of rich gumbo, hot beignets, and of course, sweet pralines still warm from the kitchen... the sights, the sounds, and flavors that makeup the dreams of New Orleans...this is what Aunt Sally's® founders wanted to share...
other links:
What is a Creole Praline?Media, Ads and Articles
The founders of Aunt Sally's® Praline Shops, Pierre and Diane Bagur, had a vision to share the mystique of their home, New Orleans, and opened their first shop in the early 1930s. They were both second generation New Orleanians of French Creole descent. Their store resembled a log cabin and their merchandise was selected to remind visitors to New Orleans of the charms, rich history and delights of the city. Among these, of course, were the unique Creole candies called “pralines.” With the help of talented candymakers, the Bagurs developed their own delicate version of New Orleans signature candy, made over a gas stove in a copper pot and hand-poured, praline after praline onto marble surfaces, just as it is today.
The Aunt Sally's® pralines were sold individually or by six and twelve pralines packaged in hand-made cotton bales and by roving vendor with donkey and buggy throughout the French Quarter. But even in the early years, visitors requested and received shipments of pralines by mail worldwide, long before mail order became popular. Today, visitors may see what a New York Times reporter recently acclaimed as the best of those “disks of pure joy” being made daily at 810 Decatur Street in the historic French Quarter at the corner of Jackson Square and next to Café du Monde. So, if you're ever in the neighborhood, please come in to try a warm sample of our pralines and browse our selection of New Orleans food, spices, cookbooks, music, and memorabilia. Visitors can't seem to leave New Orleans until they've stopped by Aunt Sally's® Praline Shop to take home a box of our delicious pralines. We still ship orders all over the world and now, by popular demand, our pralines are available wholesale.
The third and fourth generations are dedicated to carrying out Pierre and Diane's dream. It is our home, our past, our future, and the heart and soul of what we do. We proudly share our unique delicacy and deep roots of New Orleans with each and every person who wants to experience what we love and cherish — the mystique and rich flavors of New Orleans, the most heavenly pralines you will ever taste.
Our Creole and Cajun food has a long history....it has been influenced throughout the years by many cultures. It is interesting to note that the Ursuline Sisters from France introduced French cooking to our city! Sister Xavier Herbert of their order was the first woman pharmacist in the country, and taught settlers the benefits of using herbs in their cooking. When the Spanish began to settle here, they brought us the pepper and the tomato...the beginnings of our "Shrimp Creole!" Refugees from the West Indies, Sicilians and Indians have all been influential in the evolution of what we believe is the best spicy and delicious food anywhere!
New Orleans even has traditions related to food One of them is eating Red Beans and Rice on Mondays. Many of us grew up never knowing the reasons why ... we just enjoyed it. However, Monday is "clothes" day, and Red Beans and Rice is the perfect meal because it cooks slowly while we are doing the laundry.
Our tradition of eating seafood on Fridays is based on the Catholic practice of fasting from meat on that day, especially during the Lenten season. (In this city, it is no sacrifice!)
A short history of New Orleans
From Sharon Keating
