New Orleans Labor History Tour: From Slavery to Right-to-Work

Sponsored by the Southern Labor Studies Association

Thursday, October 9, 2008 3:30-5:30 P.M.; Friday, 9:00-11:00 A.M.

$10 per person; $5 for students or unemployed.

Departure: Sheraton Hotel, Local Arrangements table in the Registration area

Beginning in the slave market district, this walking tour provides an overview of the city’s diverse labor history. The route will include historic sites connected to waterfront workers, the 1892 General Strike, the building trades, the sugar district, and Exchange Alley and neighboring union hall locations. The French Quarter’s late- nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century status as an integrated neighborhood of working-class will feature prominently. The tour ends in the French Market with the stories of the origins of two significant sandwiches created in the market: the muffuletta and the “po boy.” The culinary legacy of early twentieth-century immigrant labor, these sandwiches offer opportunities to consider the long-term effects of post-Katrina worker migration patterns, especially the influx of new Latin Americans. 

Tour organizers: Darryl Barthe, a University of New Orleans history graduate student and descendant of the family that established and led the Plasterers’ union local for decades, and Michael Mizell-Nelson, assistant professor of history at UNO. The tour will also feature the research of UNO graduate students Anita Yesho, Leo Gorman, and Ryan Mattingly, all of whom will accompany the tour group.