First Draft

Louisiana’s travelling electric chair, and the shift from public to private executions

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.

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 mansion at Nottoway Plantation burned to the ground, but related sites survive across the South.

As the 1961 Freedom Rides transfixed the nation, New Orleans civil rights activists played a crucial role.

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. 

The Ursulines brought education and health care to New Orleans, but they also helped to build and enforce Louisiana’s nascent racial caste system. 

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.

Nine Louisiana poets visited the landmark exhibition on the history of incarceration and created original work based on their experiences.

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. 

Along with food and music, fashion was used by Louisiana Creoles to declare and express their unique identity.

Two young scholars comb the archives to research a cabinetmaker, a boatbuilder, and a cooper.

How Juvenile and Gottschalk brought New Orleans music to the world, 150 years apart.

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. 

HNOC asked three New Orleans poets to craft 21st-century responses to 19th-century protest poetry.

We look into the surprising backstories of some of South Louisiana’s most famous dishes.

After the Union liberated New Orleans, Black activists fought for civil liberties and basic human rights.

We explore the roots of this complicated southern identity through 12 different stories.

For as long as dogs have been domesticated, there have been dog lovers. The evidence runs throughout HNOC’s holdings.

Every year, New Orleans kicks off Carnival season with a parade in honor of Joan of Arc. But what is her historical connection to Louisiana?

Disney Imagineers visited HNOC to research a new attraction based on The Princess and the Frog, set to open summer 2024.

South Louisiana is full of references to the Roman Empire.

Music educators are working to ensure that New Orleans’s marching band tradition continues for generations to come.

HNOC introduces a guide to preserving and displaying Black Masking Indian suits.

Eight Mardi Gras fashion designs inspired by history, pop culture, and even architecture

Bruce Sunpie Barnes, big chief of the North Side Skull and Bone Gang, describes a Mardi Gras Black masking tradition.

The debutante circuit was once the province of whites only, until Black New Orleanians found their own way to hold court.

Rene Brunet Jr. grew up in his father’s cinema, the Imperial. He went on to shape New Orleans’s movie landscape.

The mansion at Nottoway Plantation burned to the ground, but related sites survive across the South.

When one New Orleans couple unsealed the attic of their Algiers house, they discovered a remarkable set of family portraits going back 135 years.

Nathaniel Curtis Jr. designed the stadium to be a modern counterpart to the great domes of the world.

Masonic art and influence are all around us, but Freemasonry’s outsized mystique can make it difficult to separate fact from fiction. HNOC explains the real history of a world hidden in plain sight.

Society halls and temples have had a lasting impact on the local architectural landscape. Here’s where to find them.

South Louisiana is full of references to the Roman Empire.

An antique armoire gives insight into a New Iberia plantation's complicated history and road to preservation.

A video tour of significant sites of women’s activism