- Congo Square: African Roots in New Orleans by Freddie Williams Evans
The site of performance of indigenous African cultural practices comes alive in Freddie Williams Evans’s book Congo Square: African Roots in New Orleans. Using newspaper articles, historical records, eyewitness accounts, travel narratives, and contemporary scholarship, Evans paints a vibrant picture of Congo Square as a place of cultural expression for free and enslaved people of African descent in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century New Orleans. Along with a chronology of the historical events and ensuing laws that impacted the weekly gatherings at Congo Square, Evans includes images and maps of the site and photographs of the performers, spectators, and other participants partaking in the festive mood the square continues to inspire.
In the foreword, Dr. J. H. Kwabena ‘Nketia sums up the importance of Evans’s work with her reference to the evolution of African cultures across the diaspora as “survivals” (xii). The inhumanity and brutality of the transatlantic slave trade failed to erase the oral histories and belief systems those that survived the tumultuous voyage carried with them. As Evans states, “such conscious and willful continuation of African culture in Congo Square conveys the agency of the gatherers in celebrating and preserving their heritage” (2). This is evident in the syncretism of Catholicism and Vodou. While the Code Noir decreed that all persons under French colonial rule be baptized in the Catholic or Protestant faith, Evans’s examination of the distinct cultural practices among various African ethnic groups and Haitian immigrants reveals the preservation of traditional belief systems along with the integration of Western religious practices.
Evans begins by providing an overview of the indigenous groups that occupied what is now New Orleans before French rule, the city’s reconfiguration as the population increased, and Congo Square’s significance as a historical landmark that celebrates the musical genius of Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, Sidney Bechet, and many other talented New Orleans natives. Originally part of a common route for Native Americans to access the Mississippi River to trade, fish, and hunt, as well as the area where they honored their ancestors and held celebrations, the vicinity of Congo Square was mainly an Indian portage that delineated the city limits (9).1 As Evans’s research shows, it became a place where enslaved Africans congregated on Sundays for a brief reprieve from their daily toil; a space that signified cultural memory, traditional spiritual practices, and artistic expression. [End Page 746]
Hence, Congo Square: African Roots in New Orleans is a compilation of the various musical, dance, and spiritual forms brought to the New World by African peoples of the Fon, Bambara, Yoruba, and Congo tribes, among others in the Senegambian region, that influenced New Orleans culture. Evans took on what was no doubt an arduous research project and encapsulated the many facets of African cultural traditions into a brilliant body of scholarship. Yet, she cautions that her book is not a romanticization of the gatherings in Congo Square. While the square served as an outlet for creativity, the practice of African religious traditions, and as a way for slaves to gain a sense of agency by selling their own wares or labor, it was also utilized as a slave market and a place for executions in the early 1800s (20). Additionally, the square was regulated by rigid, ever-changing laws to tighten the reins on free and enslaved people of color in New Orleans. As Evans notes, blacks outnumbered whites in New Orleans by the nineteenth century, and the fear of insurrection came to fruition with the 1811 slave revolt right outside of New Orleans, documented as the largest in United States history (25–26).
Evans is equally cautious in terms of the language and terminology found in original documents. She prefaces her study by explaining why she has chosen to replace the derogatory term “nigger” (which she only alludes to) for the more acceptable term, Negro. Where Negro is written in lowercase, she uses the editorial notation, sic, to denote the original transcription, although...