Department of History

New Orlean's Faubourg Treme is a arguably the oldest African American neighborhood in the Unites States, the birthplace of the black civil rights struggle in the South and the home of jazz. Its unique, little known past adds a revealing new dimension to black history from slavery to the problems of racial inequality today. While the Treme district was damaged by Hurricane Katrina, this is not another Katrina film. Every frame is a tribute to what African American communities have achieved under even the most hostile conditions.New Orleans had the largest number of free people of color in the Deep South. This population made up the majority of Treme and the neighborhood was also home of the Tribuen, the first black daily newspaper in the U.S. During Reconstruction, activists from Treme pushed for equal treatment under the law and for integration. And after Reconstrucition's defeat, a "Citizens Committee" legally challenged the resegregation of public transportation resulting in the infamous Plessy vs. Ferguson Supreme Court case which upheld segregation as constitutional.The black population was devastated by precisely during this dark period, a new kind of music was born in Faubourg Treme - jazz.Treme was a hotbed of New Orleans' civil rights struggles in the 1950s and 1960s but a highway built right through the neighborhood and "urban renewal" led to population removal. The in late August, 2005, Katrina hit. A deeply moved but defiant resident poet laureate Brenda Marie Osbey concludes, "This catastrophe is not greater than we as a people...Everywhere we go we must take with us the spirit of this city, the spirit