Capturing New Orleans’s Vanishing Black Bars
Photographs and Text by L. Kasimu Harris |
| [This is a bonus edition of the newsletter for Fat Tuesday, as revelers take to the streets of New Orleans when Carnival season reaches its peak.] |
NEW ORLEANS — Victor Dawkins’s routine has varied little in 40-plus years of owning The Other Place, a brick two-story that is one of the last black-owned bars on St. Bernard Avenue. |
But outside, much has changed. Four of the six nearby bars — all of which were once owned and operated by black people and served black customers — now have white owners and cater to a primarily white crowd. |
Close to the French Quarter, this stretch of the avenue has long been a hub for residents of the Seventh Ward and the Treme, two historically black neighborhoods. |
 | | The front door of Sportsman’s Corner, an iconic black-owned bar in the Central City neighborhood of New Orleans. |
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 | | Marwan Pleasant, a flag boy for the Golden Eagles, at Sportsman’s Corner on Mardi Gras. |
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 | | Behind the bar at Verret’s Lounge another spot in the Central City neighborhood only about 4 blocks from Sportsman’s Corner. |
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I was born and raised in New Orleans. In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, I began documenting what remained after the floods. |
Two years ago, I turned my camera to the disappearing black bars and lounges on St. Bernard Avenue, as their ownership began to change. The trend is not limited to this avenue, though. Central City, a neighborhood in Uptown New Orleans that was once a bevy of black spaces, is experiencing a similar shift. |
Tradition is paramount — and I fear what will become of my city if these traditions are lost. |
 | | Angelo Jones, far left, and Diana Morris, with other couples at The Other Place. |
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 | | L. Kasimu Harris for The New York Times |
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 | | Many of the city’s famed second-line parades end outside the Mother-in-Law Lounge, whose exterior is adorned with colorful murals of prominent contributors to New Orleans culture. |
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Throughout Africa and the African diaspora, black bars tend to serve as more than hangouts, be they the shebeens of South Africa or the juke joints of the Mississippi Delta. They can be safe spaces, cultural institutions, even cultural catalysts. |
Some black-owned New Orleans bars are live music venues. Others serve as the official or unofficial headquarters for social aid and pleasure clubs — black organizations whose members have for generations banded together to cover members’ burial costs, support charities and put on the city’s famous second-line parades. |
L. Kasimu Harris is a New Orleans-based writer, photographer and artist. His series of photographs, “Vanishing Black Bars & Lounges,” which includes these images, can be seen through March 29 at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center in Pittsburgh. |
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