Skip to content
The Historic New Orleans Collection
Topic
Black History & Culture
Filter
Al Jackson at the Treme Petit Jazz Museum
First Draft

Tremé’s Homegrown Historian

Founder Al Jackson’s scholarship and personal history come together in Treme’s Petit Jazz Museum.

A black and white photo shows Richard “King” Matthews leading the Avenue Steppers Marching Club at a second line parade in 1982.
Announcement

Celebrate Black History with HNOC

February 1, 2026
Celebrate Black history all year long with blog posts, podcasts, collection highlights, and much more from the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Detail of the back cover from the Elmwood Plantation menu, showing an illustration featuring the columns of the building.
Collection highlights

Elmwood Plantation Menu

This stylish menu from a restaurant in a former plantation home belies the site’s dark history of human enslavement.

Self portrait of Julien Hudson
Exhibitions

In Search of Julien Hudson: Free Artist of Color in Pre–Civil War New Orleans

January 20 to May 15, 2011

A special retrospective exhibition explores the second-earliest documented painter of African descent in the United States and the first known native Louisiana artist.

French Market coffee stand, between 1885 and 1900.
First Draft

Murder Before Breakfast: The French Market Killing That Shook New Orleans

Coffee maven Rose Nicaud declared that “everybody takes coffee at my stand,” regardless of race. After a man was shot near her stand, she entered the roiling Reconstruction-era debate over the limits of integration.

2025 New Orleans Film Festival logo
Announcement

HNOC to Host Two New Orleans Film Festival Screenings

October 17, 2025
On October 27, the free screenings will highlight the contributions of Creoles of Color to architecture, the arts, and culture of our region.
A black-and-white photo of a man wearing a fedora and holding a shotgun standing at the edge of a porch, silhouetted against the porch light behind him.
First Draft

Louisiana v. Voting Rights, Then and Now

With a Louisiana redistricting case on the Supreme Court’s 2025–26 docket, the Voting Rights Act is once again under scrutiny. It’s not the first time Louisiana has tested the boundaries of the franchise.

"The Problem We All Live With," 1963, oil on canvas by Norman Rockwell.
Events

The Problem We All Live With: The Story of an Iconic Illustration

November 15, 2025
Screening: 11 a.m.
Panel Discussion: 12 p.m.

HNOC will host the Norman Rockwell Museum’s documentary film screening and panel discussion considering questions about truth, memory, and power in visual storytelling.
1 2
...