As New Orleans marks its 300th year, The Historic New Orleans Collection is exploring the city’s earliest decades in New Orleans, the Founding Era, an original exhibition highlighting the multiple perspectives of those living in and around the settlement.                    

As part of the exhibition, THNOC will host Eddie L. Boyd, a former faculty member of the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy, for an afternoon of demonstrations and discussions on herbs and their use in traditional medicine passed down through generations in the African American community. Some of these remedies date to the period in which enslaved Africans were laboring on Louisiana plantations.

For 30 years, Boyd researched the effectiveness of these home remedies—many of which he was taught as a child growing up on a Mississippi cotton farm. Boyd will also discuss the important use of herbs in the African American community when limited health insurance or funds made it difficult to see health care practitioners.

Visitors are invited to drop in any time between 1 and 4 p.m.