Congo Square - A Gathering Place
Take Me to the River: New Orleans › Congo Square and the Foundation of New Orleans Music › Congo Square - A Gathering Place

Lesson 1 Congo Square - A Gathering Place

Essential Question

What is the importance of Congo Square?

Objectives

Students will be able to:

  • Describe the history of Congo Square
  • Understand how historical events can impact music development and creation

Materials Needed

  • Computer or Tablet
  • Media links (see below)
  • Berklee PULSE Account
  • Headphones
  • Whiteboard

Media

Lesson 1: Congo Square - A Gathering Place

  1. Watch the video The Spirits of Congo Square, which provides students with context about Congo Square.
    • Note: The video utilizes language like slaves versus enslaved. When teaching about Congo Square, this lesson will utilize language like “enslaved people” versus “slaves” to help separate a person’s identity from the circumstance they were placed in. Using the terms enslaved and enslaver, are subtle but powerful ways of affirming that slavery was forced upon that person, rather than an inherent condition.
  2. Once the video concludes, facilitate a discussion about what stood out to students during the Congo Square video.
    • Why do they think the video talked about improvisation as it related to a place?
    • Are they familiar with other spaces like this where enslaved people gathered?
  3. Introduce students to the location of Congo Square using the Google Earth Image of Congo Square. Congo Square is located inside Louis Armstrong Park in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans.
    • What do they notice about Congo Square today? Does it feel similar to other parks or spaces that they’ve been in?
  4. Explain to students that they’ll be looking at the early New Orleans map. First, have students look at the 1728 La Nouvelle Orleans Map.
    • What do students observe about this map?
    • Why do they think it’s important that the earliest inhabitants of New Orleans were close to a body of water?
  5. Show students the 1794 Plano de la Ciudad de la Nueva Orleans map. Point out to students that the top of the map (marker 17 closest to marker 13) is where Congo Square is located.
    • Ask students what they observe on this map.
    • Why would Congo Square be located towards the back part of the city?
  6. Have students explore the 1883 Robinson’s Atlas of the City of New Orleans - Vieux Carre and 1883 Robinson’s Atlas of the City of New Orleans - Treme.
    • Note: Vieux Carre translates to “old square,” and refers to the French Quarter. Before 1788, the French Quarter encompassed the entirety of New Orleans. You can connect the two maps together, with the Treme map placed above the Vieux Carre map to get a full picture of what the city previously looked like.
    • Explain to students that the French Quarter was a predominantly European, white neighborhood and the Treme is a historically Black neighborhood.
    • In what ways has the city of New Orleans grown in this map versus the map from 1794?
  7. After students have an opportunity to view the maps, ask students how the layout of the city informed the location of Congo Square. What can studying old maps tell us about the history of a location?
  8. Ask students why they think Congo Square became a gathering space for enslaved people. Once students have an opportunity to respond, explain that enslaved people were able to gather in Congo Square due to the Code Noir.
    • Note: In addition to establishing the conditions of enslavement, the Code Noir also contains language regarding the expulsion of Jewish people from France’s colonies. The information that is specific to Congo Square is listed in Article VI.
  9. Explain that this code was first adopted in New Orleans in 1724, and the Code Noir predominantly focused on defining conditions of enslavement. Among some of these conditions was that all enslaved people should be Catholic, not Protestant.
    • Per Article VI, the Code Noir noted “We enjoin all our subjects, of whatever religion and social status they may be, to observe Sundays and the holidays that are observed by our subjects of the Roman, Catholic, and Apostolic Faith. We forbid them to work, nor make their slaves work, on said days, from midnight until the following midnight. They shall neither cultivate the earth, manufacture sugar, nor perform any other work, at the risk of a fine and an arbitrary punishment against the masters, and of confiscation by our officers of as much sugar worked by said slaves before being caught.”
    • The Code Noir dictated that Sundays were to be observed as holy days for all people of the colony, which included enslaved people. This provided enslaved people with liberty they didn’t have on other days.
  10. Explain to students that the individuals who were impacted by the Code Noir and who ultimately gathered in Congo Square were enslaved Africans who were brought to New Orleans through the Trans-Atlantic and Domestic Slave Trade.
    • Extension: Students can explore maps of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to trace what parts of the world enslaved people came to New Orleans from.
    • A majority of enslaved people were born in Africa, Haiti, Cuba, and other parts of the Caribbean.
  11. Display the The Bamboula - E.W. Kemble. This illustration is the most famous illustration depicting what Congo Square was like in the 1700 and 1800s. Explain to students that much of what historians know about Congo Square came from journal entries written by people who witnessed the gatherings.
    • Ask students what they observe in the photo.
    • What does the photo tell us about gatherings in Congo Square? Student Responses may include:
      • The musicians are sitting on the ground.
      • There are one or two people dancing at a time.
      • Their set-up is in a circle, with no line between the audience and participants.
      • There is a wall separating their gathering from the rest of the city.
  12. The most detailed account of Congo Square is from a February 1819 journal entry by architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe. In his account, he observed more than 500 to 600 individuals gathering.
    • Latrobe noted that the drummers sounded “horses trampling on a wooden floor,” and it was likely that they were creating the complex polyrhythms that characterize ritual drumming in West Africa and the Americas (See Lesson 3 on Polyrhythms below). While one group of women was “respond[ing] to the Song of their leader” in call-and-response fashion, others were “walk[ing], by way of dancing, round the music in the Center.”
    • Others who viewed these gatherings included James Creecy, whose 1834 account noted that “groups of fifties and hundred may be seen in different sections of the square, with banjos, tom toms, violins, jawbones, triangles, and various other instruments.”
    • In 1808, Christian Schultz observed that “they have their own national music, consisting for the most part of a long kind of narrow drum of various sizes, from two to eight feet in length, three or four which make a band.”
  13. This imagery of the music played in Congo Square was illustrated in Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s 1819 journal. Show students the illustrations from Benjamin Henry Latrobe:
  14. Ask students:
    • What materials might these instruments be made out of?
    • How might these instruments be played?
    • Do you know any similar instruments?
  15. Then explain to students that known instruments in Congo Square include the hand drums, the banza (the American banjo derived from this African string instrument), shells, the donkey and/or mule jaw bone, shakers, and gords.
  16. Play students a video from Odadaa! Excerpts from "Congo Square". After students watch this video, ask students:
    • How are the instruments in this video similar to the ones illustrated in 1819?
    • How are some of the instruments played in the video? How does this compare to how you thought the instruments in the illustration would be played?

Assessment/Extensions

Extensions

  • Have your students learn more about the music, dances, and economics of Congo Square by utilizing Come Sunday: A Young Reader’s History of Congo Square by Freddi Williams Evans.
  • Students can learn more about the enslaved people of Congo Square utilizing the Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy database created by Dr. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, a noted New Orleans writer and historian who uncovered the background of 100,000 enslaved people who were brought to Louisiana in the 18th and 19th centuries making fortunes for their owners.

Key Terms

  • African Diaspora
    • The movement of African people, whether voluntary through emigration or involuntary through enslavement, to locations throughout the world – largely the Americas.
    • The many locations to which slave traders took enslaved Africans to make up the African Diaspora.
  • Enslaved person - A person who was forced to perform labor or services against their will under threat of physical mistreatment, separation from family or loved ones, or death. We utilize language like “enslaved people” versus “slaves” to help separate a person’s identity from the circumstance they were placed in. Using the terms enslaved and enslaver are subtle but powerful ways of affirming that slavery was forced upon that person, rather than an inherent condition.