Recording Your Family History

In 1914, a group of Afro Creole professional men in New Orleans's Seventh Ward founded the Autocrat Club, and more than a century later it is still standing on Elysian Fields Avenue, one of the oldest continuously operating Black social clubs in the country. 🏛️

The Autocrat Club came out of a long New Orleans tradition of Black and Creole mutual aid and social organizations, groups that gave their members a place to gather, do business, and hold formal social events at a time when most white owned venues in the city barred them entirely. Through the Jim Crow decades, clubs like the Autocrat hosted debutante presentations, dances, and community meetings, and they became fixtures of Green Book era Black social life, the kind of address a traveling family could trust would welcome them.

What makes the Autocrat Club unusual is simple longevity. Plenty of similar clubs from that era have closed or lost their buildings, but the Autocrat has kept its doors open through more than a hundred years of change in the Seventh Ward, still run by its own membership, still hosting the kinds of gatherings it was founded for.

Did your family belong to a social club, benevolent society, or fraternal organization that mattered to your community, and does it still exist today?

On this day, September 1, 1963, Plaquemine police stormed a mass meeting at Plymouth Rock Church with tear gas and cattle prods, sending mounted riders into the crowd and pursuing CORE national director James Farmer in a manhunt.

That summer, CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) sent organizers to Plaquemine to launch voter registration drives after officials gerrymandered Black precincts out of city elections.

On August 19, Farmer led a downtown protest that ended in tear gas and arrests. He was released August 30 — the same day teenage marchers were attacked by police outside City Hall.

Two days later, organizers arranged a meeting at the Plymouth Rock Church, which congregants had renamed "Freedom Rock."

Local officers enlisted white citizens and state troopers who stormed the church on horseback, trampling, tasing and tear-gassing congregants. Farmer was smuggled out of town via hearse under threat of lynching.

When WWL in New Orleans interviewed Farmer the next day, he was asked, "Do you think there will be any more Negro demonstrations in Plaquemine, or do you think that the people were quelled by the alleged brutality of last night?"

Farmer replied, "Oh I don't think the Negros' demand for freedom can ever be quelled by brutality."

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Preserving living voices so history is never forgotten! Over four decades, university archivist Gloria Thomas traveled to rural churches, front porches, and community halls across the South with a portable audio recorder, documenting the firsthand memories of unsung marchers and organizers. Her digitized collection was formally added to the National Historic Registry this week. Have you asked your elders to tell their stories recently?

Jerome Smith, New Orleans civil rights icon, dies at 87, family members say New Orleans Civil Rights icon Jerome “Big Duck” Smith died after his battle with a lengthy illness, his family members confirmed Friday.