First Draft
Stories from the Historic New Orleans Collection
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East Meets West
Over the course of a century, two iterations of Chinatown in New Orleans shaped the city’s landscape and culture.
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Browse our latest posts or search by topic.
Death on Display
Louisiana’s travelling electric chair, and the shift from public to private executions
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.
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.
Beyond Nottoway
The mansion at Nottoway Plantation burned to the ground, but related sites survive across the South.
Into the Heart of the Beast
As the 1961 Freedom Rides transfixed the nation, New Orleans civil rights activists played a crucial role.
From the French Quarter to the Vatican
Shortly after Robert Francis Prevost was announced as the first American pope, HNOC’s Jari C. Honora uncovered a surprising New Orleans connection, revealing the pontiff’s maternal grandparents to be Creoles of color from the Seventh Ward.
Reading Between the Lines of the Ursulines Nuns’ Prayer Books
The Ursulines brought education and health care to New Orleans, but they also helped to build and enforce Louisiana’s nascent racial caste system.
Processing Hope and Loss in the Prison Portraits of “One Big Self”
Deborah Luster’s portrait series, taken inside prisons across Louisiana, confronts viewers with the human lives at stake in the incarceration capital of the world.
Poets Respond to “Captive State” in Verse
Nine Louisiana poets visited the landmark exhibition on the history of incarceration and created original work based on their experiences.
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Cajuns & Creoles
Sally Miller or Salomé Müller?
An enslaved woman named Sally Miller went to the Louisiana Supreme Court to sue for her freedom. She won, then she was forgotten.
Identity Theft
Nearly 35 years ago, a heedless conservator altered a rare portrait of a free woman of color. Now, it has been restored and is on view again—and this time, HNOC is telling the story.
What’s the Difference Between Cajun and Creole—Or Is There One?
The answers are tied up in race, class, language, and, of course, history.
New Orleans Icons
Richard Simmons, New Orleans’s Hometown Hero
How a native son who grew up in the French Quarter sweated his way into the spotlight
Shades of Blanche
An experimental theater production sheds new light on one of Tennessee Williams’s most beloved characters.
Danny Barker’s Folk Heroes
The jazzman was also a gifted writer and storyteller who put his own spin on the archetypes of African American folklore, from badmen and blues mamas to “day people and night people.”
Carnival Chronicles
DJ Soul Sister’s Personal Mardi Gras Playlist
In liner notes to a playlist curated for HNOC, the “Queen of Rare Groove” leads a tour through Mardi Gras music history, drawing on her memories as a New Orleans native.
The Renaissance Man Who Changed Mardi Gras
Before he became the father of the Carnival doubloon, H. Alvin Sharpe was a sailor, maker, prospector, and poet.
Carnival Couture
Eight Mardi Gras fashion designs inspired by history, pop culture, and even architecture
North Side Skull and Bone Gang: “You Next!”
Bruce Sunpie Barnes, big chief of the North Side Skull and Bone Gang, describes a Mardi Gras Black masking tradition.
The Defiance of New Orleans’s Black Debutante Tradition
The debutante circuit was once the province of whites only, until Black New Orleanians found their own way to hold court.
The Breadth of Carnival Artistry in Nine Photographs
Snapshots of Carnival through photographic history, from Mardi Gras Indian big chiefs to ‘Tit Rex
How to Catch Beads during Mardi Gras (No, Not That Way)
In a charming DIY pamphlet from 1969, one Carnivalgoer gives humorous tips for how to survive and thrive during Mardi Gras.
HNOC Quarterly
Our members-only magazine, full of pretty pictures, interesting articles, and inside info
New Orleans Stories,
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