Sunday Afternoons in Congo Square

In the southwest corner of Louis Armstrong Park is an open plaza with a long history. Under French and then Spanish rule, the Code Noir of 1724 made Sunday a day without work for enslaved people, and they gathered where they could, on levees, in backyards and in open ground, to trade and socialize. In 1817 a city ordinance confined gatherings of enslaved people for dancing to one place chosen by the mayor, and this field at the back of town became it. On Sunday afternoons people played drums, banjos and kalimbas and danced the bamboula, the calinda and the congo, keeping African music and dance in public over a longer period than anywhere else in North America. The ground has had many names, among them Place Publique and Circus Square; in 1893 the city renamed it for the Confederate general P. G. T. Beauregard. In 2011 the City Council officially named it Congo Square.