Congo Square
Benjamin Latrobe's 1819 journal gives one of the fullest eyewitness descriptions of the Sunday gatherings: some five to six hundred people dancing to drums, a stringed instrument and other African-derived instruments. Latrobe recorded music and dance; he did not identify what he saw as religious ritual.
Benjamin Henry Latrobe's journal (1819); Freddi Williams Evans, Congo Square: African Roots in New Orleans (2011)
A public square in New Orleans where enslaved and free Black people gathered to perform African-derived music and dance under a legal exception in the antebellum era.