Page 57 - All About History - Issue 27-15

Sex, Voodoo & Murder in New Orleans

The New Orleans
Melting Pot

With immigration from Europe, black
slaves were replaced by Irish, German
and Italian labourers as New Orleans’
working class. The ethnic composition
of New Orleans in 1850 was:

Foreign-born 42.8%
Whites 36.8%
Mississippi steamboats on the
Enslaved blacks 15.1%
docks at New Orleans in 1853.
Slaves and free blacks unload
Free blacks 5.3%
cargo while two white men
converse in the foreground

New Orleans in the
early 1850s, looking
east from the spire of
St Patrick’s church