Conjure 181gardener further inhibited the dancers, and fi nally they
ceased to congregate there.
By the time of the Civil War, what had once been the
venue for authentic African cultural practices had faded
into oblivion. Aft er Reconstruction, the New Orleans City
Council renamed the square for the Confederate general
P. G. T. Beauregard, and it, like many other public places,
was reserved for white use and remained so until the later
20th century.
In 1960, the city of New Orleans received federal urban
renewal funds, which they used to purchase nine blocks
surrounding the former Congo Square for a proposed cul-
tural complex. Aft er evicting the mostly black residents and
demolishing their houses, the authorities abandoned the
project. Th e plan was resurrected in 1971, and following
the death of New Orleans jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong,
the area was named Armstrong Park. Now attractively
landscaped, the park is occupied by a swimming pool, the
municipal auditorium, and the broadcast facilities of radio
station WWOZ. Th e original Congo Square is paved in
concentric rings, suggestive of the slaves’ dance circles, and
is used for musical performances and festivals.
See also: Africanisms; Laveau, MarieCarolyn Morrow LongBibliography
Cable, George W. “Th e Dance in Place Congo.” Th e Century Maga-
zine 31, no. 4 (1886):517–32.
Creecy, James R. Scenes in the South and Other Miscellaneous
Pieces. Washington, D.C.: T. McGill, 1860.
Estes, David C. “Traditional Dances and Processions of Blacks in
New Orleans as Witnessed by Antebellum Travelers.” Louisi-
ana Folklore Miscellany 6, no. 3 (1990):1–14.
Johnson, Jerah. “New Orleans’s Congo Square: An Urban Setting
for Early Afro-American Culture Formation.” Louisiana His-
tory 32, no. 2 (1991):140–47.
Latrobe, Benjamin Henry. Impressions Respecting New Orleans,
Diary and Sketches 181 8– 1820 , ed. Samuel Wilson Jr. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1951.
Schultz, Christian. Travels on an Inland Voyage in the Years 1807
and 1 808. New York: Isaac Riley, 1810.Conjure
Conjure is an African American form of folk healing and
folk magic that involves the use of organic materials, ele-
ments of the universe, and supernatural forces to manipulateactivities and dances at the Place des Nègres persisted dur-
ing Louisiana’s Spanish colonial period (1764–1803).
Aft er the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the American ad-
ministration continued to allow the slaves’ Sunday market
activities and dances. It was during the early 1800s, when
Gaetano Mariatini’s traveling “Congo Circus” from Havana
set up in the square during the winter season, that the site
came to be called Circus Square or Congo Square.
Th e African cultural practices at Congo Square drew
many white spectators and became a tourist attraction for
American and European visitors. Many 19th-century trav-
elers published reports of African costume, music, and
dances such as the calinda, bamboula, and congo. In 1808,
Christian Schultz described Africans dressed in a variety of
“wild and savage fashions,” who danced in circles accom-
panied by long, narrow drums. In 1819, Benjamin Henry
Latrobe reported seeing female dancers who circled around
the musicians in the center while singing a two-note re-
frain. Particularly valuable are Latrobe’s descriptions and
sketches of three drums, a banjo made from a gourd with a
carved human fi gure atop the fi ngerboard, and a calabash
studded with nails. Th ese instruments have been identifi ed
as being of Yoruba, Fon, Kongo, and Ashanti origin. James
Creecy wrote in 1834 of dancers adorned with fringes,
ribbons, little bells, and shells and of music provided by
banjos, tom-toms, jawbones, triangles, and various other
instruments. By the 1840s, African instruments, dances,
and apparel were being supplanted by the violin, by jigs and
reels, and by European-style clothing.
Many writers from the late 19th century to the present
have characterized the Congo Square phenomena as Voodoo
ceremonies, said to have been presided over by the famous
19th-century priestess Marie Laveau. All African music and
dance is sacred in nature, and Congo Square could certainly
have been a venue for New Orleans Voodoo, a blend of Afri-
can and European religious and magical traditions character-
ized by drumming, singing, dancing, and spirit possession.
As city authorities sought to regulate the slaves’ ac-
tivities, the Congo Square assemblies gradually declined.
In 1820, the square was fenced and gated. In 1845, a mu-
nicipal ordinance prohibited outdoor music and dancing
without permission from the mayor. Th e festivities still
occurred sporadically through the 1850s, but they were
conducted under police supervision and could take place
only from May through August between the hours of 4:00
and 6:30 p.m. A forest of young trees planted by the city’s