After Hurricanes and Pandemic, a New Orleans Museum Fights to Hold On

NEW ORLEANS — In 2 tiny rooms, the Backstreet Cultural Museum chronicled beingness and decease successful Black New Orleans.

One was filled wholly with elaborate beaded and feathered suits that debuted connected Mardi Gras mornings and were designed by makers known arsenic “Mardi Gras Indians” oregon “Black Masking Indians.” The different featured solemn photographs of jazz funerals and memorial T-shirts, displayed successful a handmade woody case, that honored lives mislaid to gunfire. A rudimentary basal held a reddish tuba played by Anthony “Tuba Fats” Lacen, a jazz instrumentalist who traveled the satellite performing but played for tips successful the French Quarter immoderate clip helium was home.

But implicit the past 16 months, the depository has suffered cataclysmic losses. In precocious August 2020, Sylvester Francis, its founder, fix-it antheral and visionary, died of appendicitis astatine property 73. The pursuing months saw a drawstring of venerable artists and performers whose enactment was featured successful the depository succumb to the coronavirus. And then, a twelvemonth aft Mr. Francis’ death, winds from Hurricane Ida uprooted 3 immense pecan trees that crushed the backmost extortion of the museum’s rented home, the erstwhile Blandin Funeral Home successful the city’s Tremé neighborhood.

Four months later, the postulation remains successful storage, portion the museum’s dark-green beforehand steps are roped disconnected by yellowish caution tape, with “No Trespassing” signs hung connected the building’s beforehand treble doors. Ms. Francis-Dilling is moving to rise wealth to motion a yearlong lease connected a caller abstraction nearby, but the process is dilatory going.

Beyond the museum’s ain travails, its near-death acquisition reflects the acute pressures connected Black institutions successful a metropolis severely battered by repeated hurricanes and the pandemic astatine a clip erstwhile gentrification, particularly successful Black neighborhoods little prone to flooding, is rapidly driving up prices for the precise radical the institutions were created to serve.

“I consciousness truthful sick successful my bosom to spot the Backstreet dark. Because everything astir it feels similar Disneyland,” said James Andrews, a trumpeter and Tremé native.

In the Tremé, a stronghold of escaped radical of colour earlier the Civil War and a bastion of the city’s Black civilization ever since, Hurricane Katrina supercharged a signifier of displacement that has rapidly shifted the demographics of the vicinity to astir fractional white.

Across the metropolis aft Katrina, prices roseate the fastest successful what’s called the “sliver by the river”— higher-ground neighborhoods that endured little flooding during the storm. In the Tremé, a 20-block country that sits adjacent to the French Quarter, Black families who had rented successful the vicinity for generations were replaced by achromatic tenants paying doubly arsenic much. Rows of historical homes were freshly painted — but often utilized arsenic short-term rentals oregon filled with newcomers.

As galore Black-owned businesses and nightclubs successful the vicinity were shuttered, Backstreet endured arsenic 1 of the past touchstones of aged Tremé for those who remained.

Mr. Francis had been determined to clasp on. “This is my dream,” helium would often say. “This is nobody’s imagination but Sylvester’s.”

He started his postulation successful the 1970s successful a two-car store successful his autochthonal Seventh Ward, past moved portion of it into the lobby of a carwash helium ran. Along the way, helium became known arsenic a one-man custodian of the city’s Black culture, and his postulation grew arsenic a assemblage archive for items neighbors wanted preserved.

It included photos and videotapes of parades dating backmost decades and cherished suits of members of section societal assistance and pleasance clubs — offshoots of aged Black benevolent societies — who formal up and big four-hour Sunday day parades done the city’s Black communities.

Finally, successful 1999, his person Joan Rhodes suggested that Mr. Francis rent her family’s erstwhile ceremonial location connected Henriette Delille Street successful adjacent Tremé.

As the vicinity changed astir him, Mr. Francis remained a constant. On immoderate fixed day, helium mightiness person worked connected repainting a wall, fixing a tube oregon utilizing a feather duster to support his exhibits looking sharp. But if visitors arrived, helium would rapidly ascent down from his ladder, brushwood disconnected his apparel — typically, a shot cap, a patterned garment and somewhat baggy trousers — and amusement them around. Despite the size of the place, his tours were not brief. They were encyclopedic, stem-winding explorations of his life’s passion: the city’s affluent Black culture.

It was not conscionable an archive, but a surviving assemblage of the rituals and beingness cycles of a changing community.

Museum-goers coming to spot the postulation would often beryllium greeted by those with enactment inside, who would beryllium connected the beforehand steps connected their days off, socializing. Sometimes, the postulation mightiness suffer a beaded suit for a time erstwhile the main who created it reclaimed the suit temporarily for a large gig.

Brass-band musicians with generations of household past wrong would halt done connected their mode to gigs. And radical who grew up successful the Tremé would routinely thrust down that artifact of Henriette Delille Street to spot Mr. Francis, who often passed on messages from person to friend.

“This is wherever our civilization is from. It belongs here. I privation the satellite to spot it. But the satellite needs to travel present to spot it,” said Victor Harris, who holds the rubric of large main of the radical Spirit of FiYiYi. His peacock-blue, beaded and feathered suit became the archetypal point successful the Backstreet’s postulation erstwhile Mr. Francis salvaged it aft Mardi Gras 40 years ago.

Mr. Harris has since had an full amusement devoted to his artwork astatine the New Orleans Museum of Art. But helium said that designation pales successful examination to the Backstreet. “If my suit was successful the Smithsonian, it wouldn’t mean arsenic overmuch to maine arsenic being successful the Backstreet,” helium said. “That was our assemblage headquarters.”

The postulation mightiness person been Mr. Francis’ dream, but galore radical felt a consciousness of ownership, said Jonn Hankins, a longtime section arts curator. “They cognize that postulation successful a mode that a household knows their sons and their daughters,” helium said.

When Mr. Francis died, Ms. Francis-Dilling heeded his instructions. First, she arranged a monolithic jazz ceremonial successful his honor. Then, she stepped successful astatine the museum, giving tours filled with the narratives she had heard increasing up. “He could enactment his manus connected each azygous happening successful present and archer a story,” she said. “He lived it. I learned it.”

Now, with the depository displaced, she feels the urgency of reopening swiftly to sphere her father’s legacy.

Remaining successful the Tremé is crucial, she said, some to support ft postulation from tourists and to fulfill her father’s imagination of maintaining the heavy civilization of the neighborhood.

Other assemblage members person leapt into action, too.

Jeremy Stevenson, a large main of the Monogram Hunters people who lives 2 doors down from Backstreet’s aged building, began moving side-by-side with Ms. Francis-Dilling, overmuch arsenic different chiefs had done for her father, to computerize handwritten stacks of Mr. Francis’ spiral-bound notebooks cataloging the collection.

A fewer blocks distant from the Backstreet’s darkened building, Gia Hamilton, a New Orleans autochthonal and enforcement manager of the neighboring New Orleans African American Museum, heard the quality and began exploring options. While a fewer larger taste entities person offered to bargain portion of the postulation from Ms. Francis-Dilling, Ms. Hamilton rejects what she calls a “colonizing” contented of depository collection, preferring to support an autarkic imaginativeness of “whose postulation it is and wherever it comes from.”

Not agelong earlier Christmas, Ms. Hamilton offered the Backstreet a yearlong lease connected a backmost location connected the African American Museum’s campus. While Ms. Francis-Dilling is inactive trying to rise funds to marque the woody possible, she is hoping to reopen successful the caller abstraction aboriginal adjacent year.

“I conscionable privation to marque my begetter proud,” she said quietly. “That’s each we talked about, is keeping the depository going.”