St. Augustine Church and the Tomb of the Unknown Slave

By the church wall lies a cross assembled from a heavy chain: it once held a navigation buoy on the Mississippi River, and shackles and iron weights hang from its links. A dedication plaque stands beside it, and behind it rises the church, named for Augustine of Hippo. The Ursulines owned the site; they gave the land to the parish only on condition that it be named for their patron saint. The cross was placed in memory of enslaved people buried without names in Tremé and elsewhere in the country.

Free people of color in Tremé—legally free Creoles of African and European descent—undertook the construction of this church. Many earned their living through trades and commerce, owned houses and workshops, and could enter into contracts, but they did not have the same civil rights as white people. In eighteen forty-one, they obtained permission from Bishop Antoine Blanc to establish their own parish and contributed money toward the construction.

The Ursulines, who owned the site, agreed to give up the land on one condition: the church would be named for their patron saint, Augustine. This was Augustine of Hippo, a North African bishop and theologian who lived at the turn of the fourth and fifth centuries. His name appeared here at the insistence of the women who gave the land.

When the building was being prepared for its consecration in eighteen forty-two, parishioners began reserving pews for families. A church fee was paid for such a seat: the money went to the parish, while the family received a permanent seat. White residents of the district began taking the central rows. Free people of color responded by buying pews—thus began the “pew war.”

They obtained half the seats in the central part of the church and all the pews along the side aisles. The purchasers left the side rows for enslaved people, who could not hold pews in their own names. In one nave, there were free families of color, white Catholics, and enslaved parishioners. For its time, this was one of the most racially mixed congregations in the country.

Buying a pew did not free a person or grant that person civil rights. It provided a seat on the church’s main floor, paid for by people who had themselves only recently fought for the right to establish a parish here. It is these two side rows that are mentioned on the plaque by the memorial outside.

In the nineteen nineties, parish priest Jerome LeDoux conceived of giving a public sign to people whose names had not survived. Together with parishioners, he raised funds, and in October two thousand four, the Tomb of the Unknown Slave was installed by the church wall.

The name does not refer to one person who was found and buried here. It is a memorial to enslaved people left in unmarked graves in Tremé and elsewhere in the United States. The parish linked it specifically to this church, where free people of color had once paid for seats for those who could not buy a pew in their own name.

A large cross lies on the ground. It was welded from a heavy chain that had previously held a buoy on the Mississippi River, rather than taken from a slave ship; shackles and iron balls are attached to its links. A dedication plaque stands behind the cross. It includes a date and the story of the two side rows, but no name of a person buried there: under the word “unknown” are gathered people for whom no individual inscriptions were left.