Before the first French settler ever stepped onto the muddy banks of the Mississippi River, the Choctaw people called this place the land of many tongues. This indigenous name, which translates to there are foreign speakers, described a vibrant crossroads where rivers and cultures collided long before the city of New Orleans existed. The French founder Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville arrived in the spring of 1718 to establish a settlement that would eventually bear the name of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, the regent of France. The city was built on land traditionally inhabited by the Chitimacha people, and its early years were defined by a constant struggle for survival against both the elements and rival European powers. The French Mississippi Company, which founded the city, faced immediate conflict with Native American tribes navigating the complex web of colonial interests. In 1729, the Natchez revolt erupted with an attack on Fort Rosalie, resulting in the deaths of over 200 French colonists and a retaliatory campaign that effectively destroyed the Natchez people. This violence soured relations between France and the territory's Native Americans, leading directly into the Chickasaw Wars of the 1730s. Native resistance continued into the 1740s under governor Pierre de Rigaud, marquis de Vaudreuil-Cavagnial, as tribes like the Chickasaw and Choctaw leveraged competing colonial interests. Raids intensified as French economic instability weakened colonial defenses, with some Chickasaw attacks reaching as far south as Baton Rouge. Meanwhile, labor shortages led the French colonists to turn to the Atlantic slave trade. By the early 1720s, enslaved Africans were arriving in significant numbers, and in 1724, the Code Noir formalized harsh laws governing their lives. A distinct Afro-Creole culture began to develop, blending African traditions with Catholicism and French language, giving rise to practices like Louisiana Voodoo and the Louisiana Creole language. New Orleans quickly emerged as a cultural and commercial hub in French Louisiana, its position as a key port making it the gateway for goods moving between the interior of North America and the Atlantic world. Institutions like the Ursuline sisters, founded in 1727 by nuns sponsored by the Company of the Indies, reflected the city's integration into French religious and educational networks. The convent educated girls and remains foundational to several modern schools in the city. Early city planning and architecture were shaped by military engineers like Pierre Le Blond de Tour and Adrien de Pauger, whose designs laid out the enduring street grid and fortifications. By the 1740s, public works programs under engineer Ignace François Broutin transformed the city's architecture, blending colonial governance with a distinct Creole character. After France ceded Louisiana to the Spanish Empire in the 1763 Treaty of Paris, New Orleans residents resisted Spanish rule. Local residents staged the Louisiana Rebellion of 1768, briefly seizing control of the city and sending a delegation to France to appeal for renewed French authority. Their efforts failed, and King Louis XV reaffirmed Spanish sovereignty. Nearly all of the surviving 18th-century architecture of the Vieux Carré dates from the Spanish period, notably excepting the Old Ursuline Convent. During the American Revolutionary War, New Orleans played a key role as a supply hub for the American cause, particularly under Spanish governor Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, Count of Gálvez, who led a campaign against the British from the city in 1779. From the 1760s onward, Filipinos also began settling in the region.
By 1840, New Orleans was the wealthiest and third-most populous city in the United States, yet its prosperity was built upon the backs of enslaved people. The city housed the largest slave market in the country, particularly after the United States ended the international slave trade in 1808. The domestic trade surged, with two-thirds of more than a million enslaved people forcibly relocated to the Deep South. The trade's economic value was immense as slaves were collectively valued at half a billion dollars, and the broader economy surrounding the trade, including transport and services, generated billions more. As a result, New Orleans benefited significantly, both financially and commercially, from this system. Despite its role in the slave trade, New Orleans at the time also had the largest and most prosperous community of free persons of color in the nation, who were often educated, middle-class property owners. Between 1791 and 1810, thousands of St. Dominican refugees from the Haitian Revolution, both whites and free people of color, arrived in New Orleans. A number brought their slaves with them, many of whom were native Africans or of full-blood descent. While Governor Claiborne and other officials wanted to keep out additional free black people, the French Creoles wanted to increase the French-speaking population. In addition to bolstering the territory's French-speaking population, these refugees had a significant impact on the culture of Louisiana, including developing its sugar industry and cultural institutions. As more refugees were allowed into the Territory of Orleans, St. Dominican refugees who had first gone to Cuba also arrived. Many of the white Francophones had been deported by officials in Cuba in 1809 as retaliation for Bonapartist schemes. Nearly 90 percent of these immigrants settled in New Orleans. The 1809 migration brought 2,731 whites, 3,102 free people of color, and 3,226 slaves of primarily African descent, doubling the city's population. The city became 63 percent black, a greater proportion than Charleston, South Carolina's 53 percent at that time. On January 8 to 11, 1811, about 500 enslaved Africans in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist parishes rose up in the German Coast rebellion against their enslavers, killing two white men in the process. They proceeded to march south toward New Orleans and were eventually controlled by the local militia, with numerous casualties on both sides. The uprising has been called the largest slave rebellion in US history. During the final campaign of the War of 1812, the British sent a force of 11,000 in an attempt to capture New Orleans. Despite great challenges, General Andrew Jackson, with support from the U.S. Navy, successfully cobbled together a force of militia from Louisiana and Mississippi, U.S. Army regulars, a large contingent of Tennessee state militia, Kentucky frontiersmen and local privateers, the latter led by the pirate Jean Lafitte, to decisively defeat the British in the Battle of New Orleans on the 8th of January 1815. The armies had not learned of the Treaty of Ghent, which had been signed on the 24th of December 1814, although not ratified by the U.S. government until the 16th of February 1815. The fighting in Louisiana began in December 1814 and did not end until late January, after the Americans held off the Royal Navy during a ten-day siege of Fort St. Philip.
The Beast And The Bee
In April 1862, following the city's occupation by the Union Navy after the Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, Gen. Benjamin F. Butler was appointed military governor. New Orleans residents supportive of the Confederacy nicknamed him Beast Butler, because of an order he issued. After his troops had been assaulted and harassed in the streets by women still loyal to the Confederate cause, his order warned that such future occurrences would result in his men treating such women as those plying their avocation in the streets, implying that they would treat the women like prostitutes. Accounts of this spread widely. He also came to be called Spoons Butler because of the alleged looting that his troops did while occupying the city, during which time he himself supposedly pilfered silver flatware. Significantly, Butler abolished French-language instruction in city schools. Statewide measures in 1864 and, after the war, 1868 further strengthened the English-only policy imposed by federal representatives. With the predominance of English speakers, that language had already become dominant in business and government. By the end of the 19th century, French usage had faded. It was also under pressure from Irish, Italian and German immigrants. However, as late as 1902 one-fourth of the population of the city spoke French in ordinary daily intercourse, while another two-fourths was able to understand the language perfectly, and as late as 1945, many elderly Creole women spoke no English. The last major French language newspaper, L'Abeille de la Nouvelle-Orléans, ceased publication on the 27th of December 1923, after 96 years. As the city was captured and occupied early in the war, it was spared the destruction through warfare suffered by many other cities of the American South. The Union Army eventually extended its control north along the Mississippi River and along the coastal areas. As a result, most of the southern portion of Louisiana was originally exempted from the liberating provisions of the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln. Large numbers of rural ex-slaves and some free people of color from the city volunteered for the first regiments of Black troops in the War. Led by Brigadier General Daniel Ullman, of the 78th Regiment of New York State Volunteers Militia, they were known as the Corps d'Afrique. While that name had been used by a militia before the war, that group was composed of free people of color. The new group was made up mostly of former slaves. They were supplemented in the last two years of the War by newly organized United States Colored Troops, who played an increasingly important part in the war. Violence in the South, including the Memphis Riots and New Orleans Riot of 1866, spurred Congress to pass the Reconstruction Act and Fourteenth Amendment, granting citizenship and civil rights to freedmen and free people of color. During Reconstruction, Louisiana and Texas were governed under the Fifth Military District, and Louisiana was readmitted to the Union in 1868 with a new constitution that established universal male suffrage, universal public education, and elected both black and white officials. P.B.S. Pinchback briefly served as Louisiana's Republican governor in 1872, becoming the first U.S. governor of African descent. New Orleans also maintained a racially integrated public school system during this period. However, wartime destruction, a financial recession, and the Panic of 1873 hindered economic recovery. From 1868, white insurgents used violence to suppress Black voters and disrupt Republican gatherings, culminating in the 1872 contested gubernatorial election and the rise of the White League, a paramilitary group supporting Democrats. In 1874, they seized state offices during the Battle of Liberty Place, and by 1876, Redeemers had reclaimed the state legislature. Federal troops withdrew in 1877, ending Reconstruction. In 1892 the racially integrated unions of New Orleans led a general strike in the city from November 8 to 12, shutting down the city and winning the vast majority of their demands.
The Nadir Of Race Relations
Dixiecrats and Democrats passed Jim Crow laws, establishing racial segregation in public facilities. In 1889, the legislature passed a constitutional amendment incorporating a grandfather clause that effectively disfranchised freedmen as well as the propertied people of color manumitted before the war. Unable to vote, African Americans could not serve on juries or in local office, and were closed out of formal politics for generations. The Southern U.S. was ruled by a white Democratic Party. Public schools were racially segregated and remained so until 1960. New Orleans's large community of well-educated, often French-speaking free persons of color, who had been free prior to the Civil War, fought against Jim Crow. They organized the Comité des Citoyens to work for civil rights. As part of their legal campaign, they recruited one of their own, Homer Plessy, to test whether Louisiana's newly enacted Separate Car Act was constitutional. Plessy boarded a commuter train departing New Orleans for Covington, Louisiana, sat in the car reserved for whites only, and was arrested. The case resulting from this incident, Plessy v. Ferguson, was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896. The court ruled that separate but equal accommodations were constitutional, effectively upholding Jim Crow measures. In practice, African-American public schools and facilities were underfunded across the South. The Supreme Court ruling contributed to this period as the nadir of race relations in the United States. The rate of lynchings of black men was high across the South, as other states also disfranchised blacks and sought to impose Jim Crow. Nativist prejudices also surfaced. Anti-Italian sentiment in 1891 contributed to the lynchings of 11 Italians, some of whom had been acquitted of the murder of the police chief. Some were shot and killed in the jail where they were detained. It was the largest mass lynching in U.S. history. In July 1900 the city was swept by white mobs rioting after Robert Charles, a young African American, killed a policeman and temporarily escaped. The mob killed him and an estimated 20 other blacks; seven whites died in the days-long conflict, until a state militia suppressed it. From the mid-19th century onward rapid economic growth shifted to other areas, while New Orleans's relative importance steadily declined. The growth of railways and highways decreased river traffic, diverting goods to other transportation corridors and markets. Thousands of the most ambitious people of color left the state in the Great Migration around World War II and after, many for West Coast destinations. From the late 1800s, most censuses recorded New Orleans slipping down the ranks in the list of largest American cities. In 1929, a streetcar strike took place in the city, during which serious unrest occurred. It is also credited for the creation of the distinctly Louisianan po' boy sandwich. By the mid-20th century, New Orleanians recognized that their city was no longer the leading urban area in the South. By 1950, Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta exceeded New Orleans in size, and in 1960 Miami eclipsed New Orleans, even as the latter's population reached its historic peak. As with other older American cities, highway construction and suburban development drew residents from the center city to newer housing outside. The 1970 census recorded the first absolute decline in population since the city became part of the United States in 1803. The New Orleans metropolitan area continued expanding in population, albeit more slowly than other major Sun Belt cities. While the Port of New Orleans remained one of the nation's largest, automation and containerization cost many jobs. The city's former role as banker to the South was supplanted by larger peer cities. New Orleans's economy had always been based more on trade and financial services than on manufacturing, but the city's relatively small manufacturing sector also shrank after World War II. Despite some economic development successes under the administrations of deLesseps Story Morrison and Victor H. Schiro, metropolitan New Orleans's growth rate consistently lagged behind more vigorous cities. During the later years of Mayor deLesseps Morrison's administration and throughout Victor Schiro's tenure, New Orleans became a focal point of the Civil Rights Movement. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was founded in the city, and lunch counter sit-ins took place in Canal Street department stores. Tensions escalated in 1960 during school desegregation following the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Six-year-old Ruby Bridges integrated William Frantz Elementary School, becoming the first child of color to attend a previously all-white Southern school. Racial controversy also surrounded the 1956 Sugar Bowl, when Georgia governor Marvin Griffin opposed the participation of Pitt Panthers African-American fullback Bobby Grier. Georgia Institute of Technology president Blake R. Van Leer defied the governor, and the game proceeded. The federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 restored key constitutional protections, but economic and educational disparities between Black and White residents remained. As more affluent residents left the city, its population became increasingly poor and predominantly African-American. Beginning in 1980, Black-majority leadership emerged, working to address entrenched socioeconomic inequities. By the late 20th century, New Orleans had grown increasingly reliant on tourism amid rising poverty, low educational attainment, and high crime, which hindered its adaptation to the broader U.S. shift toward a post-industrial service economy. Meanwhile, city leaders pursued geographic expansion through ambitious drainage efforts. Engineer A. Baldwin Wood designed a pump system that allowed development in formerly uninhabitable swamp and marsh areas, but over time, these areas subsided significantly below sea level. Although the city had always faced flooding risks, awareness of its vulnerability grew after Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and the 8th of May 1995 Louisiana Flood. These events exposed the limits of the drainage system, prompting upgrades. By the 1980s and 1990s, scientists warned that erosion of the marshlands and swamp surrounding New Orleans, exacerbated by developments like the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal, had left the city more exposed than ever to hurricane storm surges.
The Engineering Disaster
On the 29th of August 2005, storm surge from Hurricane Katrina caused catastrophic failure of the federally designed and built levees, flooding 80% of the city. Tens of thousands of residents who had remained were rescued or otherwise made their way to shelters of last resort at the Louisiana Superdome or the New Orleans Morial Convention Center. More than 1,500 people were recorded as having died in Louisiana, most in New Orleans, while others remain unaccounted for. Before Hurricane Katrina, the city called for the first mandatory evacuation in its history, to be followed by another mandatory evacuation three years later with Hurricane Gustav. The city was declared off-limits to residents while efforts to clean up after Hurricane Katrina began. The approach of Hurricane Rita in September 2005 caused repopulation efforts to be postponed, and the Lower Ninth Ward was reflooded by Rita's storm surge. Because of the scale of damage, many people resettled permanently outside the area. Federal, state, and local efforts supported recovery and rebuilding in severely damaged neighborhoods. The U.S. Census Bureau in July 2006 estimated the population to be 223,000; the city was estimated to have regained approximately 60% of its pre-Katrina population by summer 2007. Ten years after the hurricane, the population had recovered to 80% of what it was at the 2000 census. Several major tourist events and other forms of revenue for the city have returned. Large conventions returned. College bowl games returned for the 2006-2007 season. The New Orleans Saints returned that season. The New Orleans Hornets returned to the city for the 2007-2008 season. New Orleans hosted the 2008 NBA All-Star Game in addition to Super Bowl XLVII. Major annual events such as Mardi Gras, Voodoo Experience, and the Jazz & Heritage Festival were never displaced or canceled. A new annual festival, The Running of the Bulls New Orleans, was created in 2007. On the 29th of August 2021, coincidentally the 16th anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Ida, a category 4 hurricane, made landfall near Port Fourchon, where the Hurricane Ida tornado outbreak caused damage. On the 1st of January 2025, a truck attack occurred in New Orleans, killing 15 people and injuring 35. The attack was carried out as an act of domestic terrorism and was committed by Shamsud-Din Jabbar. On the 30th of December 2025, 350 Louisiana National Guard troops were deployed to New Orleans as part of wave of recent nationwide National Guard deployments. A report by the American Society of Civil Engineers says that had the levees and floodwalls not failed and had the pump stations operated, nearly two-thirds of the deaths would not have occurred. New Orleans has always had to consider the risk of hurricanes, but the risks are dramatically greater today due to coastal erosion from human interference. Since the beginning of the 20th century, it has been estimated that Louisiana has lost of coast, which once protected New Orleans against storm surge. Following Hurricane Katrina, the Army Corps of Engineers has instituted massive levee repair and hurricane protection measures to protect the city. In 2006, Louisiana voters overwhelmingly adopted an amendment to the state's constitution to dedicate all revenues from off-shore drilling to restore Louisiana's eroding coast line. U.S. Congress has allocated $7 billion to bolster New Orleans's flood protection. According to a study by the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council, levees and floodwalls surrounding New Orleans, no matter how large or sturdy, cannot provide absolute protection against overtopping or failure in extreme events. Rather, the city's levees and floodwalls should be viewed as a way to reduce risks from hurricanes and storm surges instead of eliminating those risks. For structures in hazardous areas and residents who do not relocate, the committee recommended major floodproofing measures such as elevating the first floor of buildings to at least the 100-year flood level. Due to rising sea levels, most of New Orleans is at risk of being permanently underwater by the 2050s.
The Caribbean City
New Orleans is often called the northernmost Caribbean city, a description that captures its unique blend of French, Spanish, African, and Caribbean influences. The city's colonial history of French and Spanish settlement generated a strong Roman Catholic tradition. Catholic missions ministered to slaves and free people of color and established schools for them. Within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans, 40 percent of the population was Roman Catholic since 2016. Catholicism is reflected in French and Spanish cultural traditions, including its many parochial schools, street names, architecture and festivals, including Mardi Gras. Within the city and metropolitan area, Catholicism is also reflected in the Black and African cultural traditions with Gospel mass. The statue of Our Lady of Prompt Succor is a notable symbol of the Catholic faith in New Orleans and throughout Louisiana. Influenced by the Bible Belt's prominent Protestant population, New Orleans also has a sizable non-Catholic Christian demographic. Roughly the majority of Protestant Christians were Baptist, and the city proper's largest non-Catholic bodies were the Southern Baptist Convention, the National Missionary Baptist Convention of America, non-denominationals, the National Baptist Convention, the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the National Baptist Convention of America, and the Church of God in Christ. New Orleans displays a distinctive variety of Louisiana Voodoo, due in part to syncretism with African and Afro-Caribbean Roman Catholic beliefs. The fame of voodoo practitioner Marie Laveau contributed to this, as did New Orleans's Caribbean cultural influences. New Orleans was also home to the occultist Mary Oneida Toups, who was nicknamed the Witch Queen of New Orleans. Toups' coven, The Religious Order of Witchcraft, was the first coven to be officially recognized as a religious institution by the state of Louisiana. They would meet at Popp Fountain in City Park. Jewish settlers, primarily Sephardim, settled in New Orleans from the early nineteenth century. Some migrated from the communities established in the colonial years in Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia. The merchant Abraham Cohen Labatt helped found the first Jewish congregation in New Orleans in the 1830s, which became known as the Portuguese Jewish Nefutzot Yehudah congregation. Ashkenazi Jews from eastern Europe immigrated in the late 19th and 20th centuries. By the beginning of the 21st century, 10,000 Jews lived in New Orleans. This number dropped to 7,000 after Hurricane Katrina, but rose again after efforts to incentivize the community's growth resulted in the arrival of about an additional 2,000 Jews. New Orleans synagogues lost members, but most re-opened in their original locations. The exception was Congregation Beth Israel, the oldest and most prominent Orthodox synagogue in the New Orleans region. Beth Israel's building in Lakeview was destroyed by flooding. After seven years of holding services in temporary quarters, the congregation consecrated a new synagogue on land purchased from the Reform Congregation Gates of Prayer in Metairie. A visible religious minority, Muslims constituted 0.6 percent of the religious population as of 2019. The Islamic demographic in New Orleans and its metropolitan area have been mainly made up of Middle Eastern immigrants and African Americans. New Orleans and its metropolitan area have historically been popular destinations for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities. In 2015, a Gallup survey determined New Orleans was one of the largest cities in the American South with a significant LGBT population. Much of the LGBT community in New Orleans lives near the Central Business District, Mid-City, and Uptown; several gay bars and nightclubs are present in those areas.
The Port And The Skyline
Tourism is a staple of the city's economy. Perhaps more visible than any other sector, New Orleans's tourist and convention industry is a $5.5 billion industry that accounts for 40 percent of city tax revenues. In 2004, the hospitality industry employed 85,000 people, making it the city's top economic sector as measured by employment. New Orleans also hosts the World Cultural Economic Forum, the forum, held annually at the New Orleans Morial Convention Center, is directed toward promoting cultural and economic development opportunities through the strategic convening of cultural ambassadors and leaders from around the world. The first WCEF took place in October 2008. According to current travel guides, New Orleans is one of the top ten most-visited cities in the United States; 10.1 million visitors came to New Orleans in 2004. Prior to Katrina, 265 hotels with 38,338 rooms operated in the Greater New Orleans Area. In May 2007, that had declined to some 140 hotels and motels with over 31,000 rooms. A 2009 Travel + Leisure poll of America's Favorite Cities ranked New Orleans first in ten categories, the most first-place rankings of the 30 cities included. According to the poll, New Orleans was the best U.S. city as a spring break destination and for wild weekends, stylish boutique hotels, cocktail hours, singles/bar scenes, live music/concerts and bands, antique and vintage shops, cafés/coffee bars, neighborhood restaurants, and people watching. The city ranked second for friendliness, gay-friendliness, bed and breakfast hotels/inns, and ethnic food. However, the city placed near the bottom in cleanliness, safety and as a family destination. The French Quarter, which was the colonial-era city and is bounded by the Mississippi River, Rampart Street, Canal Street, and Esplanade Avenue, contains popular hotels, bars and nightclubs. Notable tourist attractions in the Quarter include Bourbon Street, Jackson Square, St. Louis Cathedral, the French Quarter's vibrant nightlife, and the historic architecture that defines the city. The city is renowned for its distinctive music, Creole cuisine, unique dialects, and its annual celebrations and festivals, most notably Mardi Gras. The historic heart of the city is the French Quarter, known for its French and Spanish Creole architecture and vibrant nightlife along Bourbon Street. The city has been described as the most interesting in the United States, owing in large part to its cross-cultural and multilingual heritage. Additionally, New Orleans has increasingly been known as Hollywood South due to its prominent role in the film industry and in pop culture. The city's economy has always been based more on trade and financial services than on manufacturing, but the city's relatively small manufacturing sector also shrank after World War II. Despite some economic development successes under the administrations of deLesseps Story Morrison and Victor H. Schiro, metropolitan New Orleans's growth rate consistently lagged behind more vigorous cities. During the later years of Mayor deLesseps Morrison's administration and throughout Victor Schiro's tenure, New Orleans became a focal point of the Civil Rights Movement. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was founded in the city, and lunch counter sit-ins took place in Canal Street department stores. Tensions escalated in 1960 during school desegregation following the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Six-year-old Ruby Bridges integrated William Frantz Elementary School, becoming the first child of color to attend a previously all-white Southern school. Racial controversy also surrounded the 1956 Sugar Bowl, when Georgia governor Marvin Griffin opposed the participation of Pitt Panthers African-American fullback Bobby Grier. Georgia Institute of Technology president Blake R. Van Leer defied the governor, and the game proceeded. The federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 restored key constitutional protections, but economic and educational disparities between Black and White residents remained. As more affluent residents left the city, its population became increasingly poor and predominantly African-American. Beginning in 1980, Black-majority leadership emerged, working to address entrenched socioeconomic inequities. By the late 20th century, New Orleans had grown increasingly reliant on tourism amid rising poverty, low educational attainment, and high crime, which hindered its adaptation to the broader U.S. shift toward a post-industrial service economy. Meanwhile, city leaders pursued geographic expansion through ambitious drainage efforts. Engineer A. Baldwin Wood designed a pump system that allowed development in formerly uninhabitable swamp and marsh areas, but over time, these areas subsided significantly below sea level. Although the city had always faced flooding risks, awareness of its vulnerability grew after Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and the 8th of May 1995 Louisiana Flood. These events exposed the limits of the drainage system, prompting upgrades. By the 1980s and 1990s, scientists warned that erosion of the marshlands and swamp surrounding New Orleans, exacerbated by developments like the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal, had left the city more exposed than ever to hurricane storm surges.