Congo Square — Louis Armstrong Park

Every Sunday throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, enslaved people gathered at this open space behind the French Quarter to drum, dance, and sing in African rhythms. New Orleans was unique in allowing these gatherings — the practice was suppressed everywhere else in the Americas. In 1817, the mayor issued an ordinance restricting all gatherings of enslaved Africans to this one location, where they could set up a market, perform, and earn money to purchase their freedom. The weekly assemblies became famous among visitors from across the United States, who marveled at what they heard: the beat of the bamboulas, the wail of the banzas, dances including the Bamboula, Calinda, Congo, Carabine, and Juba. Architect Benjamin Latrobe wrote in his 1819 journal about seeing 500 to 600 unsupervised enslaved people assembled for dancing, performers ornamented with tails of wild beasts, fringes, ribbons, little bells, shells, and balls. Clusters of musicians and dancers represented tribal groupings, each nation taking a different part of the square. The instruments spanned available cultures: drums, gourds, banjo-like instruments, quills made from reeds strung together like pan flutes, marimbas, violins, tambourines, and triangles. This mix of African and European styles helped create African American culture. The rhythms played here can still be heard in New Orleans jazz funerals, second lines, and Mardi Gras Indians parades. The preserved West African musical traditions became the foundation of jazz, blues, and eventually rock and roll. Creole composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk incorporated rhythms and tunes he heard in Congo Square into some of his compositions. The gatherings declined as harsher United States practices of slavery replaced the more lenient Spanish colonial style, stopping more than a decade before the Civil War ended slavery. In 1893, the city officially renamed the square for Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard in an attempt to suppress its mass gatherings, though most locals continued calling it Congo Square. In 2011, the New Orleans City Council voted to restore the traditional name. In the 1960s, an urban renewal project leveled a substantial portion of the surrounding Tremé neighborhood; after a decade of debate, the city turned the land into Louis Armstrong Park, which incorporates the old square. Congo Square is now a National Historic Landmark inside Louis Armstrong Park. A statue of Louis Armstrong stands near the park entrance on Rampart Street. The park also contains the Mahalia Jackson Theater. It remains a venue for music festivals and a community gathering place for brass band parades, protest marches, and drum circles. Every Sunday, the Congo Square Preservation Society gathers to celebrate the history and culture through drum circles, dancing, and musical performances, carrying on the tradition. The park is free and open daily; visit during daylight hours.