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Valued Lives in Violent Places: Black Urban Placemaking at

a Civil Rights Memorial in New Orleans
REBECCA LOUISE CARTER
Brown University

Abstract
This article explores the history, use, and significance of a civil rights memorial to
Martin Luther King Jr, located in the Central City neighborhood of New Orleans.
Situating this memorial as an important site for black urban placemaking, I focus on a
religious vigil against urban violence that was held there in late 2008. Using historical
and ethnographic data, I demonstrate how participants in the vigil claim and inhabit the
memorial in order to raise awareness about the impact of violence, while simultaneously
asserting the social value of black people and communities. I argue that this action
unfolds with particular urgency in the post-Katrina period, to counter the perceived
devaluation, criminalization, and social exclusion of black people. Participants in the
vigil thus rework spatial, social, and symbolic boundaries to shift relatedness and
to ensure survival and social membership. The article goes beyond traditionally terri-
torialized understandings of place and placemaking to demonstrate how the actions,
interactions, and moral frameworks emerging at this particular place are part of a larger
black geography and spatial imaginary, one with the capacity to transform the concep-
tualization and experience of urban space, place, and community. [urban violence,
placemaking, black geographies, New Orleans]

Introduction

T
here is a place that I know in New Orleans. It is a small paved surface
on a grassy median, at the center of a busy intersection in the
neighborhood known as Central City. To many it is a place of no
consequence, where South Claiborne Avenue, Josephine Street, Felicity
Street, and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard come together in close
proximity. Thousands of people rush through here on any given day and
many rush through with purpose, to minimize their time in what is
largely characterized as a poor, African American, and historically
violent neighborhood. They mostly keep to South Claiborne, accommo-
dated by three lanes for traffic on two sides of a long, narrow, central strip
of land (see Figures 1 and 2).
If one were to pause, however, at this intersection and venture onto
the median itself, one would discover a memorial to Martin Luther King
Jr., dedicated in 1981 (see Figure 3). Lingering further, one would encoun-
ter the people who visit this place from time to time—local residents
resting on benches, day laborers cutting through, and city workers main-
taining the median or “neutral ground” as such spans are locally called.
The memorial is also a favored location for civic demonstration and public
City & Society, Vol. 26, Issue 2, pp. 239–261, ISSN 0893-0465, eISSN 1548-744X. © 2014 by the American
Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI:10.1111/ciso.12042.
 City & Society

Figure 1. Central City, New Orleans. Map data: Google, Sanborn, 2014.

protest, especially for issues impacting the surrounding black community.

Events held there range from religious vigils, to protests about neighbor-
hood conditions, to closing speeches after the annual Martin Luther
King Jr. Day March, when participants reach the memorial as their final
destination.
Despite the use and local significance of this memorial, such places in
the city are frequently overlooked—rendered invisible by a dominant
trend to diminish the significance of black urban landscapes and the
mobilizations within them. Some go so far as to label black contributions
to urban society as limited or even undesirable. In New Orleans the
current impact of these characterizations has critical weight given the
ongoing reconfiguration of urban space and society in the extended wake
of Hurricane Katrina. The 2005 storm claimed the lives of at least 1500
people, precipitated the displacement of hundreds of thousands more,
and caused widespread destruction to property and infrastructure (Knabb
et al. 2005:11). As state-sponsored relief and recovery efforts moved
forward, some residents felt abandoned and then pushed out. City offi-
cials, developers, and others asserted a repopulation agenda based on a
vision of a new and improved New Orleans, which seemed to many
residents like a strategic and racist project to exclude certain groups. The
negative perception of this agenda was strongest in poor black commu-
nities, where relief and recovery was not prioritized, and where people
felt maligned by the increased depiction in media and public discourse of
blacks as dangerous and unwelcome residents.
It is thus important to examine the process of social exclusion
in post-Katrina New Orleans, particularly given how blacks and other
historically marginalized groups must navigate a complex and contested
urban landscape, while still contending with disproportionately high
levels of social and environmental vulnerability and violence. Such
examinations should attend to the ways that people, and the places and
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Violent Places

Figure 2. Neutral ground at the intersection of South Claiborne Avenue, Felicity Street, and
Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, New Orleans. Map data: Google Earth, 2014.

communities they inhabit, are rendered insignificant within the larger

urban sphere. It is also important to explore how these processes are
countered, as the members of marginalized groups create and claim space
for interaction, expression, resistance, and mobilization. This requires
close attention to everyday life, including the paths people forge in
private and public domains, the practices they enact in places they deem
significant, and the ideologies they assert to fuel social change.
This article examines how black residents claim space and place in
post-Katrina New Orleans, focusing in particular on the history, use, and
significance of the memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. on the South
Claiborne neutral ground. I anchor this case study in an analysis of the
mobilization of a small group of residents who gathered at the memorial
for a religious vigil in late December 2008. The vigil was organized and
led by the late Reverend John C. Raphael Jr., then Pastor of New Hope
Baptist Church, a predominantly black church located in the same
Central City neighborhood. While the purpose of the vigil was to raise
awareness about the impact of urban violence, participants used the
memorial to assert more fundamentally the social value of black people
and communities in the city moving forward and to call for reconcilia-
tion and unity. Scheduled to coincide with the New Year’s Day holiday,
the vigil began on New Year’s Eve and lasted for three days and nights
into the early part of January 2009.
My analysis draws on ethnographic research I conducted at the vigil,
with data culled from multiple sources including recorded interviews,
participant-observation, and field notes. I also draw from fieldwork I
conducted in New Orleans before and after the vigil, including inter-
views with clergy, church members, and residents, and archival research
on neighborhood history, geography, and social and environmental con-
ditions.1 As I demonstrate, the history of the memorial is inseparable
from the history and social geography of racial oppression, vulnerability,
and violence that underlies urban development and decline in New
Orleans’ inner city. However, the memorial is also deeply connected to
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Figure 3. Memorial to Martin Luther King Jr., South Claiborne Avenue, New Orleans. Photo by
author.

the long legacy of religious and social justice activism that remains
central to the fight for civil rights in this community. I argue, therefore,
that the vigil takes place at an important spatial and symbolic crossroads,
and participants engage in a critical form of black urban placemaking.
This case study illuminates two particularly salient dimensions of this
placemaking and its impact. First, it reveals how participants claim and
use the memorial to shift the spatial, social, and symbolic boundaries of
exclusion, asserting their beliefs and moral frameworks through ritual
and other interactive practices in both private and public domains.
Second, it is through this work that participants move beyond the
boundaries of place altogether, imagining and creating new structures of
social relatedness that ground themselves within the community and the
city. Thus their placemaking gives shape to a black human geography
that encompasses a range of sites and mobilizations across New Orleans.
This geography, both real and imagined, transforms the way in which
urban space is understood, shaped, and experienced.

Black urban placemaking: Boundaries,

geographies, and spatial imaginaries

I
n New Orleans, and within the history of the United States more
broadly, racial identity is arguably the most prominent factor deter-
mining the structure and lived experience of the city. For city dwellers
it is “the key variable in shaping opportunities and life chances” (Lipsitz
2011:1). This remains true, despite the progress that has been made
through civil rights work over the last half century. Determinations of
racial identity underlie, for example, most patterns of urban settlement
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from the early planning of streets and districts, to the setting of priorities
for urban growth, to the processes of segregation and inner city decline.
This racial grounding of the city, intersected closely with spatial and
other demarcations of socioeconomic class, is so fundamental to everyday
life that it determines the people and places that are valued at the
“center” of urban society and those that are devalued, relegated to the
margins, or altogether excluded. This phenomenon is well documented,
from studies of racial formation (Omi and Winant 1994 [1986]; HoSang
et al. 2012), to explorations of the relationship between racism, culture,
the city, and the state (Cross and Keith 1993; Haymes 1995), to studies
of how racism is determined by specific social and spatial relations
enacted within everyday places (Rios 2006; Lipsitz 2011).2
The racialization of urban space correlates closely with the distribu-
tion of resources and patterns of social inequality. As George Lipsitz
argues, “the racial imagination that relegates people of different races to
different spaces produces grossly unequal access to education, employ-
ment, transportation, and shelter. It exposes communities of color dis-
proportionately to environmental hazards and social nuisances while
offering whites privileged access to economic opportunities, social ame-
nities, and valuable personal networks” (2011:6). Thus, in cities like
New Orleans, poor blacks have been forced to settle in high-nuisance
and mostly low-lying areas prone to flooding, where they suffer from
unequal access to essential services (Campanella 2007).
Closely intersected with the racialization of space is the criminaliza-
tion of black people and places. Khalil Gibran Muhammad frames this
as an overall “condemnation of blackness,” fueled in large part by the
cultivation and use of statistical data to identify and track blacks as
a “distinct and dangerous criminal population” (2010:3). Within an
increasingly punitive society, mass incarceration then becomes one of the
most powerful vehicles for continued social-geographic marginalization
and exclusion. Its influence is confirmed by overwhelmingly high rates of
incarceration for poor blacks and for poor black men in particular, which
reflect and enforce the related racial hierarchies on which the scale and
reach of the American prison system depends (Loury 2008).3
Despite the power and strength of these systems, the members of
impacted communities do not sit idly by. Their histories and movements
intervene and disorder, generating new kinds of identities, relations, and
geographies that fuel social and political transformation. The theory of
black urban placemaking thus begins with the reconfiguration of domi-
nant theories of place. Place here is not a fixed or bounded entity apart
from human dwelling. Instead, people and place are mutually constituted
and “physical geographies are bound up in, rather than simply a backdrop
to, social and environmental processes” (McKittrick and Woods 2007:3).
It would be limiting, therefore, to frame a history of New Orleans as the
racialized production of an urban landscape wherein black people are
then relegated, marginalized, and confined. Rather the idea of black
urban placemaking recognizes the extent to which black histories,
bodies, and experiences “disrupt and underwrite human geographies” and
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are thus already “implicated in the production of space” (McKittrick and

Woods 2007:4). This view also moves beyond a purely “interanimated”
and phenomenological understanding of people, place, and experience
(Casey 1996; Feld and Basso 1996; Ingold 2011). Instead, black urban
placemaking is grounded “in the realm of day-to-day life, of daily sur-
vival” as individuals contest social and spatial structures and claim the
place and space necessary for progress (Haymes 1995:10). This includes
the creation of private enclaves as well as the establishment of subaltern
counterpublics to support resistance and social movement.
The study of black urban placemaking in New Orleans is well estab-
lished. A multi-disciplinary inquiry focuses in particular on the claiming
and transformation of black communities via the streets—through
parades, second lines, and other processions (Lipsitz 1988; Regis 2001;
Breunlin and Regis 2006; O’Reilly and Crutcher 2006). Also important
are the diverse forms and sites of creative cultural expression and their
role in crafting social identity and citizenship both before and after
Hurricane Katrina. The inquiry thus includes intersecting studies of brass
bands, and other ensembles and performers from multiple genres (Le
Menestrel and Henry 2010; Sakakeeny 2013). Such research is grounded
in neighborhood studies from numerous vantage points, focused on the
local history of black communities, social conditions and their impact,
and ways of resistance and social change (Dennis 2005; Nine Times
Social and Pleasure Club 2009 [2006]; Crutcher 2010; Crawford and
Russell 2010). In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the inquiry has
expanded further to include an examination of neoliberalism in disaster
recovery; specific studies have focused on the sites of privatization, exclu-
sion, and the struggle for rights and citizenship, seen, for example, in
policy and debate about public housing (Johnson 2011; Arena 2012;
Graham 2012).
However, additional research is needed, particularly on the various
sites and methods of black urban placemaking in the post-Katrina period.
This article expands the inquiry by focusing on the memorial to Martin
Luther King Jr. on South Claiborne, a site that to date has not received
much attention. The case study of the religious vigil that took place at
this site in late 2008 sheds light on two important aspects of black urban
placemaking. First, it reveals the skill with which residents work to
challenge and shift the spatial, social, and symbolic boundaries that
structure and segregate urban society. The concept of “boundary work”
is relevant here for its focus on the conceptual nature of boundaries,
beyond the more obvious spatial demarcations of difference. The inquiry
considers the symbolic distinctions people make in their everyday lives
and their role in “creating, maintaining, contesting, or even dissolving
institutionalized social differences” (Lamont and Molnár 2002:168).
While symbolic boundaries are defined as “distinctions made by social
actors to categorize objects, people, practices, and even time and space,”
social boundaries are “objectified forms of social differences manifested in
unequal access to and unequal distribution of resources (material and
nonmaterial) and social opportunities” (Lamont and Molnár 2002:168).
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 Valued Lives in
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Symbolic boundaries, especially when they are collectively determined
and accepted, can constrain and pattern social interaction and create
social boundaries, translating for example into “identifiable patterns of
social exclusion or class and racial segregation” (Lamont and Molnár
2002:169). These patterns, of course, are reinforced by spatial boundaries
and other physical markers of place and position.
Underlying the notion of boundaries and the concept of boundary
work, however, is a fundamental process of relationality, “at work across
a wide range of social phenomena, institutions, and locations” (Lamont
and Molnár 2002:169). As David Thelen notes, boundaries are not just
“sites for the division of people into separate spheres and opposing
identities and groups, but sites for interaction between individuals
from many backgrounds, hybridization, creolization, and negotiation”
(Lamont and Molnár 2002:184). Boundary work thus calls attention to Boundary work
the forms of relatedness that maintain social and spatial exclusion, as
well as the places, spaces, and modes of interaction that might shift calls attention to
relatedness in the creation of an inclusive and just urban society.
the forms of
The boundary work that takes place at the memorial sheds light on
a second important dimension of black urban placemaking in New relatedness that
Orleans. As participants mobilize, they also contribute to the broad
production of urban place and space by forcing a more expansive view of maintain social
human geography—one constituted by black histories and experiences
and spatial
and supportive of black futures. Even though the production of urban
space frequently renders black communities invisible or insignificant, the exclusion, as well
“invisible/forgettable is producing space—always, and in all sorts of ways”
(McKittrick and Woods 2007:4). Black urban placemaking is thus a as shift relatedness
generative process that “reconfigure[s] classificatory spatial practices”
(McKittrick and Woods 2007:5). The geographies that emerge, while in the creation of
still connected to place, are not fixed or bound to territory or terrain. an inclusive and
Such geographies, and encompassing spatial imaginaries, are inherently
transformative as black people respond to the conditions of racial, politi- just urban society
cal, and socioeconomic oppression. In doing so they envision and enact
“more decent, dignified, humane, and egalitarian social relations for
everyone” (Lipsitz 2011:6).

Streets and medians in the history of a memorial

T
he Martin Luther King Jr. memorial sits at a busy crossroads, framed
on the neutral ground by the intersection of four streets: South
Claiborne, Josephine, Felicity, and Martin Luther King Jr. Boule-
vard, just a few yards beyond Felicity. While the intersection is firmly
located within Central City, the corridor is viewed as a transition zone
with Claiborne providing a fast connection between the downtown
business district, the universities uptown, and the Jefferson Parish line.
Tranverse routes, however, extend more directly into the surrounding
neighborhood, for example along Felicity or Martin Luther King Jr.
Boulevard, across Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard (formerly Dryades
Street), and over to Saint Charles Avenue.
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A distinct yet familiar history of urban development and decline can

be traced along these streets. It begins with the earliest days of U.S.
Southern land acquisition and division and proceeds with the forced
labor and municipal expansion that accommodated population growth
outside of the city center. As such it is a history that is, above all,
constituted by the experiences of black people. This includes the painful
history and legacy of slavery, the racialized development of the inner city,
the cumulative effects of structural violence and social-environmental
vulnerability, and the uneven impact of disease and “natural” disaster. It
also includes the many actions of urban recovery and resistance that
work to improve conditions and empower black communities. A com-
plete history of Central City is beyond the scope of this paper; instead I
offer a localized street-level view of urban life and social movement,
which highlights in particular the history of the South Claiborne memo-
rial to Martin Luther King Jr.
In the early 1800s, shortly after the Louisiana Purchase, municipal
expansion in New Orleans was inspired in large part by the growth of
the American sector upriver from the central business district and
downtown core. At the time this land was low-lying and sparsely popu-
lated, with several large sugar plantations fanning out from the river’s
edge. A local planner named Barthélémy Lafon designed the new
sector, envisioning a classical space inspired by Greek mythology and
complete with wide boulevards and public squares. As plantation land
was parceled off and sold, many of the property boundaries and rural
roads were obscured but Felicity Street remained, marking the upriver
edge of the Faubourg Annunciation and the lower border of the Faubourg
Religieuses, land that was previously owned by the Ursuline Sisters
(Campanella 2002:89).
Lafon’s plan included a system of canals to drain the surrounding
swamp for residential development, which advanced in the 1830s with
the excavation of the Melpomene Street Canal. While wealthy whites
settled in low-nuisance areas along elevated ridges and in places with
easy access to the downtown core, the drained swamp became home to
newly emancipated slaves and European immigrants, most of whom
resided in simple shotgun structures slightly elevated on brick piers.
Felicity Street was a prominent political boundary during this time,
forming the upper edge of the city and parish until 1852 (Campanella
2002:89).
Among the routes developed to accommodate population growth
was Claiborne Avenue, which began as a rural dirt road in the Tremé
neighborhood. A canal was excavated along the center of this road in the
1850s, to drain “the rears of the crescent’s plantations and faubourgs into
the Melpomene Canal” (Campanella 2002:103). Thus a long navigable
path was established through the swamp, “dictated in part by drainage
needs, cadastral patterns, and existing streets” (Campanella 2002:104).
Named after William C. C. Claiborne, the first U.S. governor of Louisi-
ana, Claiborne Avenue grew into a major thoroughfare over nine miles
long. The directional name of the street changes at various points, with
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 Valued Lives in
Violent Places
South Claiborne Avenue extending uptown from Canal Street, through
Central City, to the Jefferson Parish line.
A prominent feature of Claiborne Avenue today is its wide center
median, or neutral ground, which covers the drainage canal. Neutral
grounds are important spatial elements, found in the centers of many
main streets across the city and region. The term is most commonly
traced back to the history of Canal Street, in downtown New Orleans.
In 1807 a central stretch of land known as the City Commons was
transferred from the European Crown to the U.S. government and sub-
sequently ceded to the City of New Orleans. With the transfer came the
stipulation that a canal be built to create a long-desired link between the
river, Lake Pontchartrain, and the Gulf (Laborde and Magill 2006:21).
“Canal Street” was thus surveyed with a wide center median carved out
for the canal. Administrative and financial problems prevented the
canal from being built; nonetheless, the street developed—and the The median
median became an active space for exchange among merchants and
residents at the heart of the city (Chase 1979:95, Laborde and Magill became an active
2006:22).
space for exchange
As early as 1862, the Canal Street median was commonly referred to
as “the neutral ground.” This was most likely due to its location between among merchants
two separate and somewhat hostile social and political jurisdictions: the
mostly Creole French Quarter on one side of the median and the rapidly and residents at
growing American sector on the other (Chase 1979:97, Laborde and
the heart of
Magill 2006:26). The use of the term spread as corresponding roads
across the city were surveyed and additional drainage canals were dug the city
and covered. Thus, the neutral ground became fixed and populated—a
prominent space for daily movement and interaction across the city.
From this intersected planning of streets, drainage systems, and
public space, the Central City neighborhood began to emerge. The first
residents were newly emancipated slaves, immigrants, and their descen-
dants, forming a diverse and relatively stable district at the turn of the
twentieth century and for a period of about forty years after. A central
hub of activity developed at the intersection of Melpomene and
Dryades, which became an important commercial center for blacks,
who could shop and frequent establishments without the same level of
harassment they experienced in other places (Medley 2001; Devalcourt
2011).
Despite this relative degree of access and exchange, blacks in Central
City still suffered greatly from racism and discrimination. Neighborhood
conditions deteriorated with the racialization of urban space and the
demarcation of the inner city, further segregating poor blacks and limit-
ing their access to essential services. Some of the nation’s first low-
income housing complexes were built in this neighborhood in the
early 1940s, including the B.W. Cooper Apartments (Calliope Projects)
and the C. J. Peete Homes (Magnolia Projects). Rental units predomi-
nated, as zoning laws, redlining, and discriminatory lending practices
kept investors out of the area and made it virtually impossible for blacks
to buy or maintain property (Devalcourt 2011:18).
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An overall disinvestment in the black community was fueled in the

1950s by the flight of white and other wealthy families who left Central
City for residential areas further uptown and in neighboring parishes.
Along Dryades Street businesses began to close as proprietors relocated
and as patrons began to frequent newly integrated shopping venues in
other districts. Conditions of poverty and joblessness worsened, illegal
activities and crime rose dramatically, and the overall quality of life
(including economic stability, access to education and healthcare, and
public safety) steadily declined (Campanella 2006:277–279).
In response to these conditions, and inspired by the national civil
rights movement, black activists and religious leaders began to organize.
In 1957, Reverend A.L. Davis of the New Zion Baptist Church in
Central City hosted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other Southern civil
rights leaders at a meeting that led to the formation of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) (Devalcourt 2011:26).
Shortly after this gathering, in 1959, Central City community leaders
formed the Consumers’ League of Greater New Orleans. Members
organized for worker rights, boycotted against employment discrimina-
tion, supported black businesses, registered citizens to vote, protested
discriminatory zoning practices, and worked to repair neighborhood
infrastructure (Fairclough 1995:272; Rogers 1995:68). The Consumers’
League lobbied local and federal agencies for funds to support these
activities and the Central City Economic Opportunity Corporation
(CCEOC) was founded in 1965 to channel this money to local
organizations.
Two important and related projects emerged from this work: the
renaming of a portion of Melpomene Street to Martin Luther King Jr.
Boulevard and the creation and dedication of two memorials in honor
of Dr. King and the civil rights movement. In 1973 members of the
CCEOC allocated funds for improvements along Melpomene, including
money for the creation of a civil rights memorial on a two-block stretch
of the Melpomene Street neutral ground. The memorial was to feature a
commemorative statue along a “Freedom Walk,” a landscaped walkway
with historic markers and benches. As part of this project the CCEOC
proposed that a portion of the street itself be renamed in honor of Dr.
King (Devalcourt 2011:34).
While this proposal was widely supported within Central City, it was
met with a fair amount of opposition from those outside of the commu-
nity. After neighborhood impact studies and extensive lobbying, in 1976
the City Council passed a resolution to rename the street. The name
change was approved, however, for only the portion of the street that ran
through the predominantly black part of Central City (from Baronne
Street to the lake side of South Claiborne) (Devalcourt 2011:36). While
Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard was eventually extended from Baronne
Street to Saint Charles Avenue, the street remained Melpomene from
Saint Charles to the wharf along the river. St. Charles Avenue thus
remains to this day a mostly impenetrable boundary of race, class, and
privilege.
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 Valued Lives in
Violent Places
With the historic boulevard established, Frank Hayden, a well-
respected black artist based in Baton Rouge, was commissioned to create
a sculpture in honor of Dr. King that would be installed along the
Freedom Walk at the intersection of Dryades Street. When the sculpture
was unveiled in August 1976, however, it was not well received. Hayden
had designed a ten-feet tall abstract figure in bronze. Two thin legs
support a spherical form from which several hands extend, wrapping
around and reaching together to symbolize unity. Some residents had
expected an exact likeness of Dr. King and were offended by Hayden’s
symbolic representation (Massa 1977; Devalcourt 2011:38). Public dis-
satisfaction was so great that the CCEOC appointed a task force to
address the concerns.
The Hayden sculpture was not removed, but the task force secured
funds for a second sculpture, which was installed in 1981 on the neutral
ground of South Claiborne near the intersection of Martin Luther King
Jr. Boulevard. The project was spearheaded by a group of ministers and
community leaders and supported by financial contributions from
Central City residents (Faciane 1981). This thirteen-foot sculpture fea-
tures a life-sized bronze bust of Dr. King atop a granite pedestal. The base
is inscribed with the dates of King’s birth and death and the quote “I
Have a Dream.” The memorial also honors “others who gave their lives
for freedom and equality,” including Medgar Evers and Malcolm X. It
recognizes Dr. King’s ties to New Orleans, particularly the 1957 SCLC
organizational meeting that took place in Central City.

At “this place”: Violence, vigil, and social value

W
hen Pastor Raphael and the members of New Hope Baptist
Church held their vigil at the memorial in late 2008, they
were already on familiar ground. Clergy and parishioners had
inhabited the site on numerous occasions before for processions, protests,
and other events. This particular vigil built on that familiarity, but it
carried an additional sense of urgency and purpose given the time of year
and the particular circumstances facing the black community.
It was New Year’s Eve and the city was already buzzing with excite-
ment as people anticipated the holiday and rallied around the promise
and change it might inspire. Local television stations were alive with
details about the celebrations planned for the evening. There were fire-
works in the French Quarter, a bonfire in Mid-City, and numerous other
events in bars, restaurants, and other establishments.
On one television channel, however, the mood was more serious.
The local news featured a live interview with Pastor Raphael, the char-
ismatic and well-known spiritual leader of New Hope Baptist Church.
The topic—the problem of urban violence in New Orleans—had par-
ticular relevance on New Year’s Eve, given the crowds, the revelry, and
the sporadic though still customary practice of shooting guns off into the
air at midnight. There were two faces to this night and any night in New
Orleans—one filled with the joy and passion for life for which this city is
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Figure 4. Pastor John C. Raphael Jr. and parishioners from New Hope Baptist Church, at the
memorial to Martin Luther King Jr., New Orleans, New Year’s Day, 2009. Photo by author.

famously known, the other revealing the vulnerability and violence that
also characterizes local life, particularly within communities at the social
and economic margins of society.
For Pastor Raphael it was the perfect opportunity to preach. He
announced a religious vigil against urban violence that would begin that
same evening, outside on the neutral ground of South Claiborne at the
memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. Visibly stationed in the heart of
Central City along one of the city’s busiest corridors, the pastor would
spend three days and three nights in prayer and fasting—rain or shine.
I drove by the next day to see where Pastor Raphael had established
himself. Near the intersection of South Claiborne and Felicity I could see
a small group of about ten people standing together at the base of the
King monument. A small canopy of trees gave some additional shelter,
while also protecting the group from the drizzling rain. Off to the side
were some lawn chairs with blankets and sleeping bags, and someone had
carried in a small metal fire pit, which sat idle with smoldering coals. It
was a cold and damp New Year’s Day but those who were gathered had
created a sanctuary of sorts, huddled together with three lanes of traffic
rushing by on either side.
Pastor Raphael was easy to spot. While I immediately recognized him
from the television interview, he further stood out in his black t-shirt and
matching cap with the word “Enough” printed across the front in big bold
letters (see Figure 4). Momentarily leaving aside his religious study and
other duties, he took some time to provide me with details about the vigil
and its purpose. “Let me tell you,” he began, pointing around to the other
church members on the neutral ground,
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 Valued Lives in
Violent Places
None of these people have to be here. I mean, I made it easy for them
not to be here . . . and I’ll tell you why. It was because I felt the need to
come here and I was trying to strike a balance between getting the
exposure, challenging the public about what we need to do, but at the
same time being able to truly give time to prayer and fasting at this
place. So I said that to my congregation [asked them not to come] but
some of them came anyway and they even spent the night out here with
me. And I’m glad that they did.

The rain was falling more steadily and a blustery wind had picked up.
“How was it out here last night?” I asked. “Was it very cold?” Smiling
broadly, Pastor Raphael shook his head, “I felt guilty . . . they actually
brought a cot out here for me and set it up and the fire was going. I had
two blankets, and I felt guilty.” “You actually slept?” I asked.

Oh I slept. I slept. I wanted to sleep because I wanted my mind to be

fresh this morning so I could study, but I’ve gotten very little studying
done. Well. I’ll just stay with it because this is a precursor to I believe
something very huge in this city—something that has to happen. If we
are going to survive as a people it has to happen. It’s just a matter of
getting people who are not directly affected by violence or even eco-
nomically to be concerned about people who are.

I was struck by Pastor Raphael’s emphasis on the social and spiritual

action that was required at “this place.” He felt called to the memorial
and, as I would see over the course of the vigil, he used the space
strategically. He first aligned the church and its ministry with the legacy
of civil rights and social justice work, to anchor and validate the vigil’s
meaning and potential impact. He further positioned the vigil as a
response to the persistent problem of urban violence in the black com-
munity, and he used the physical space of the memorial to create distinct
zones for action and interaction around this issue. This included, most
importantly, the affirmation and assertion of ideologies of black social
and spiritual value. Thus Pastor Raphael, along with the other partici-
pants in the vigil, created a significant place and space for the
reconfiguration of boundaries and the shifting of relatedness, contribut-
ing to a post-Katrina black geography that identifies and claims a rightful
place for blacks in the city. The impact thus extended beyond this
particular site and event and Pastor Raphael situated the vigil as a
precursor—for “something very huge” that was to happen in New
Orleans, something that had to happen to ensure black survival.
New Orleans’ per capita murder rate has been seven to eight times
the national average for the last three decades, a rate that translates to an
average of 241 murders per year (Landrieu 2012). The violence dispro-
portionately impacts black residents, especially young black men, who
already suffer most directly from multiple forms of social, economic, and
environmental vulnerability.4 The majority of homicides are linked to
drug trafficking, an illicit economy fueled by underlying conditions of
joblessness and underemployment, a failing system of public education,
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 City & Society

substandard housing, and uneven access to health care and other essen-
tial services.
The social and spiritual salvation of this community has long been a
priority for the clergy and parishioners at New Hope Baptist Church.
Founded in Central City in 1926 as the Original Solid Rock Baptist
Church of New Orleans, the name was changed to New Hope Baptist
Church in 1930. Reverend John C. Raphael Jr. became pastor in 1988,
grew the congregation to some 1500 members, and remained its spiritual
leader until his death in the summer of 2013. Church ministries continue
to cultivate the security, wellbeing, and social-spiritual growth of parish-
ioners and their communities. Given neighborhood conditions, much of
this work necessarily focuses on the long-standing problem of urban
violence in Central City and across the city. As Pastor Raphael explained
in another conversation I had with him about the mission of the church,
the “Lord’s work” is solidly community-based, with clergy and parishio-
ners venturing frequently outside, “to reach individuals out on the
street.”
The memorial has long been an important site for this work. In 1994,
for example, during an extreme upsurge in the number of homicides
across the city, Pastor Raphael rented a large billboard at the intersection
of Claiborne and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and put up a sign that
read simply, “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” When I asked him about how this
outreach developed he explained, “My goal was reaching people. So I
came up with an idea . . . that would allow everybody to realize that what
is going on as far as the violence in this city is wrong. And I wanted to
make a statement that first of all it is God who says it is wrong.” Clergy
and parishioners also placed themselves at the memorial to hand out
bibles—“literally millions of tracts,” according to Pastor Raphael. As
he recalled, “We’ve had times when we’ve just flooded this area [with
With the majority bibles] at every intersection. All the way down Martin Luther King and
Claiborne. It’s always been impactful when we’ve sustained it.”
of the population While the problem of urban violence has long been a critical
concern in New Orleans, it acquired new significance and urgency in the
displaced in the post-Katrina period. With the majority of the population displaced in the
first years after the storm, public officials, major land owners, and others
first years after the
saw New Orleans as a “blank slate,” ripe for redevelopment. For some this
storm, public was an opportunity to also “cleanse” the city, in part by strategically
shifting local demographics—welcoming home certain groups while
officials, major denying access to others.5 Many black residents became deeply con-
cerned about the future of their communities, citing their own experi-
land owners, and
ences of displacement and the impact of specific practices of exclusion
others saw New and criminalization. These processes were particularly evident in relief
and recovery programs directed by the state, such as the City of New
Orleans as a Orleans’ federally mandated post-storm demolition and uneven rebuild-
ing of thousands of low-income housing units (Arena 2012).
“blank slate,” ripe Meanwhile, the homicide rate in the post-Katrina period remained
for redevelopment high, and local concerns intermingled with, and were exacerbated by,
extraordinarily high levels of post-disaster trauma and stress. A 2007
252
 Valued Lives in
Violent Places
survey on crime and safety in Central City, for example, conducted by
the Metropolitan Crime Commission, revealed that 79 percent of
Central City residents are afraid of the crime in their own neighborhood
(Metropolitan Crime Commission 2007). Black residents had to
contend, therefore, with the ongoing impact of structural and interper-
sonal violence, while they simultaneously worked in the context of
post-disaster opportunism to secure their place in the city.

Working the boundaries

T
he 2008 New Year’s Eve vigil was an urgent response to these
circumstances and the memorial itself was identified as an important
site for black recovery and social survival. Pastor Raphael made this
clear when I asked him about the purpose of the vigil and why it was
being performed at this particular place. He stated,

Well first of all because it’s familiar. . . . but also because the monument
reminds me of what we as a people are able to do. It also reminds me of
a tremendous debt I feel we owe. Not too long ago I preached a sermon
about our obligation to others. And I was dealing with a biblical passage
in the book of Hebrews where the Lord talks about the triumphs of
faith, that this one by faith, and that one by faith, Abraham and Isaac
and all the way down to Noah, and at the end of that passage it says
“and others of whom this world was not worthy” and describes all of the
things they went through. And I thought about it and even there it says
others who gave their lives . . . I mean there are so many others, people
who really died believing in their hearts that we would have better
opportunities, and here we are destroying ourselves without taking
advantage of the opportunities that they died for! And so I’m thinking
how can we just sit by idly when this kind of battle is going on in our
community?”

Although Pastor Raphael intended for it to be a solitary vigil, several

parishioners joined him on the neutral ground. For the most part these
were the elder men of the church, though several younger men were also
present. They made camp on lawn chairs around a small fire pit, creating
a sheltered enclave off to the side of the monument and under the trees.
Other parishioners and community members, including a few women,
joined the group during the daytime hours, and chairs were moved
around the site as needed in order to facilitate interaction and fellowship.
Over the course of the three-day vigil the group made use of the
entire site. The space directly beneath the monument, for example,
became a center for prayer and worship. Shortly after I arrived, Pastor
Raphael called everyone together in this area and participants arranged
themselves in a circle holding hands. Looking around at each person, he
began,

We came out here . . . to seek God’s face in relation to what needs to

be done, but also to intercede for those who are suffering and grieving
253
 City & Society

for losing their loved ones . . . I don’t believe that our being here has
been in vain, and I believe that the Lord is gonna use this time to do
even greater things in this community and I believe in this country. So
let’s pray. We pray Father that you would touch the hearts of our young
men, our young ladies, that they would realize the value of first of all
their own lives, then the value of others lives. We pray that you would
help us as a community to come together with a sense of compassion
and concern for one another. Lord, lift up our city leaders. That there
might not be a spirit of competition, that they might complement one
another working in a way that would make this the best city that it can
possibly be. Now Lord we thank you for sustaining us through these
days. I thank you for each and every one of your children who gave of
themselves during this time. We bless you, in Jesus Christ’s name we
pray, Amen.

The focus on valuing one’s own life and the lives of others, on
unity through shared compassion and concern, and on the potential for
transforming the community and city was emphasized in prayer and
fellowship throughout the day. Having a sheltered space for this beneath
the monument was important and participants lingered there to share
stories and give “testimony” on their experiences and hopes for the
future. It was here that I spoke with one parishioner about his brother
who was murdered in 1997. He said:

My reason for being out here, is not just a reason, it’s a purpose. OK?
Not only for my family, but for somebody else’s family so they don’t
have to go through what my family went through and is still going
through each and every day. I think about my brother every day of my
life. Every day.

An assistant pastor came over to give his support and to share his
own experience growing up in the area. He recalled how he was reluc-
tantly drawn into violence as a teenager; for him and for many others
it was a means of self-defense and survival. While these testimonies
revealed strong feelings of anger and loss, participants were quick to
communicate a sense of hope, inspired by the vigil and the healing it
promoted.
Along the edges of the neutral ground, participants interacted with
the public. Pastor Raphael walked around the perimeter waving at sup-
porters passing by and conversing with those who stopped. Others posi-
tioned themselves at the intersection, facing traffic with hand-lettered
signs to assert their resolutions of non-violence and social value. “I am
a mother hurting because of violence,” one woman’s sign declared, and
“I WILL NOT TAKE A LIFE!” a man and fellow church member
resolved (see Figure 5).
This interaction was a crucial part of the vigil. By making these decla-
rations in direct and close relationship with members of the broader urban
public, participants worked to shift the configurations of social relatedness
that perpetuated segregation through negative characterization. In this
254
 Valued Lives in
Violent Places

Figure 5. Members of New Hope Baptist Church at the memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. New
Orleans, New Year’s Day, 2009. Photo by author.

place, the mother hurting because of violence became visible, demanding

attention and validation. The man who declared he would not take a life
made a public commitment to value the lives of others. His act challenged
onlookers to do the same, while working also to shift public perceptions of
black complacency and inaction.
The memorial also provided space for prolonged exchange and a
deeper sense of relatedness between vigil participants, community
members, and others. “Different individuals will come” one church
member explained. “They’ll pray by themselves, they’ll walk around and
pray with others . . . they come just to be among us, just to be with us, you
know?” Indeed, during the time I was there a woman pulled over with an
unmistakable sense of urgency to talk to Pastor Raphael about her situ-
ation of domestic violence. She had seen him on television and came in
person to share her concerns and to receive spiritual counseling. Many
others dropped by: a man with some ideas for stopping the violence in
his neighborhood; a former public school teacher who wanted to pray
for her students; day laborers from the parking lot across the street who
came for prayer; an unknown supporter who pulled up in his car along-
side the neutral ground and handed Pastor Raphael a check for $1000;
and the then mayor of New Orleans, C. Ray Nagin, who dropped by
unannounced—directing his official car onto the neutral ground
itself—to give his support. “By the end of the day,” another church
member commented, “you find a sort of peacefulness with yourself in the
cool of the evening and you can reflect upon who you talked with, who
you met, the things that people said, and what they have shared with
your family.”
Through these actions and interactions, participants worked the
physical boundaries of the memorial to create the place and space for
255
 City & Society

black recovery and social change. They worked also to reconfigure the
social and symbolic boundaries that have historically devalued, margin-
alized, and excluded black people and communities. It is important to
note, however, that this boundary work was not uniformly recognized
or deemed effective by the broader public. Many people still rushed by
the site, showing little interest in what was happening there. When
the traffic light at the intersection turned red, vigil participants and
passers-by were held together in close and tense proximity. While some
people rolled down the car window to shake hands and offer support,
many others averted their eyes and avoided contact. In what was often an
uncomfortable and forced relation, the sense of relief when the light
turned green was palpable. In public discourse some residents continued
to downplay the significance of the site, questioning the effectiveness of
the vigils, protests, and other mobilizations occurring there. They
doubted in particular the social change that might result from these
activities, and they cited the high rates of continuing homicide as proof.
Questions remain, therefore, about the reach and impact of boundary
work as a dimension of black urban placemaking. To what extent are
participants able to reach across established boundaries to raise awareness
and reconfigure relatedness, or is boundary work here limited to the
expression of a desired shift along a resistant edge? As existing studies have
shown, as one boundary is reworked others persist or emerge, and differ-
ence is reproduced in a number of ways (Lamont and Molnár 2002:184).

Black geographies of social change

T
he urban landscape, however, might be better understood as a con-
tinually evolving space, where relatedness must be constantly
formed and reformed—within but also across the shifting boundaries
of spatial and social structure. This framing is well suited to the context
of disaster and everyday violence in New Orleans, where these structures
are frequently and radically changed and the future of already vulnerable
populations and communities remains uncertain. Places like the memo-
rial on the neutral ground, and mobilizations like the vigil, then become
dynamic zones and encounters for discerning and testing the limits, as
participants develop alternative and more flexible frameworks of identity,
value, social being, and belonging.
To explore this broad sense of black urban placemaking, I return to
relevant theory on the transformative capacities of black geographies
(McKittrick and Woods 2007:5). The histories and experiences of blacks
in Central City reveal clearly the racialized production of urban space as
well as the exclusion and invisibility that frequently results from this
process. However, as McKittrick and Woods argue, the actions and
interactions of the “invisible/forgotten” are generative and productive
(2007:4). As the case study of the vigil affirms, the “places, experiences,
histories, and people that “no one knows” do exist, within our present
geographic order” (2007:4, emphasis in original). Black human geogra-
phies, therefore, allow us “to consider alternative ways of imagining the
256
 Valued Lives in
Violent Places
world” (2007:5). As such they operate as “emancipatory strategies” that
free us up from traditional ways of understanding how people exist
within, and help to shape, urban place and space (2007:5).
This view of a post-disaster black geography in New Orleans also
takes us beyond the memorial to other places and mobilizations.
One such place is Congo Square, a centuries old site in the Tremé
neighborhood, where the histories, experiences, and cultural expressions
of African slaves in the 18th century colonial period still resonate and
influence contemporary black urban life. The annual Martin Luther King
Jr. Day March traditionally begins here, and participants travel a route
that links Congo Square to the memorial on South Claiborne where the
procession traditionally ends.
Another place that might be identified and included in this geogra-
phy is Plessy Park, a small green space located at the former site of the
Press Street Depot. At this site in 1892, the Citizens’ Committee of New
Orleans and Homer Plessy, a free man of color, carried out the now
famous act of civil disobedience to challenge Louisiana’s Separate Car
Law, which segregated railroad passengers by race. While the physical
routes that might connect Plessy Park, Congo Square, and the memorial
to Martin Luther King Jr., have not been explicitly traced, these sites are
nonetheless part of the same history and spatial imaginary of black social
change. Making these spatial and symbolic links visible is part of the way
in which black geographies transform. As Catherine Michna, who has
studied the evolution of Plessy Park asserts, “creating public city spaces
for the remembering and celebration of grassroots resistance movements
and local counterhistories of place can transform democratic practices in
cities because doing so intervenes in lived, spatial practices in a way that
encourages city residents of all class, gender, race, and ethnic back-
grounds to come together and think critically about the historical struc-
tures underlying present-day inequalities” (Michna 2009:530).

Conclusion

I
left the neutral ground in the early evening on New Year’s Day, leaving
behind a small group of clergy and parishioners who would spend
another night in prayer and fasting at the base of the monument. In the
months that followed, I continued my research with New Hope Baptist
Church as well as with several other religious groups around the city. I
explored the reach and impact of their anti-violence ministries, consid-
ering in particular the ways in which vigils and other practices generate
and support the determined, albeit slow, pace of recovery in black com-
munities across the city.
Despite the continuation of violence, with much of the impact still
concentrated in neighborhoods like Central City, social and spiritual
action has made a difference. Participants raise awareness about the
problem of violence, drawing attention to its underlying causes and
working to reduce its occurrence and impact. They work also to counter
social exclusion, rejecting the negative characterizations associated with
257
 City & Society

their communities, and asserting the social and spiritual value and relat-
edness of “all God’s children.” Thus they envision, claim, and increas-
ingly inhabit an inclusive urban place and space, as they work for social
recovery, survival, and sustainability in New Orleans.
The transformative work that black geographies might do, however,
depends on a simultaneous shift that re-centers recovery and social
transformation as fundamentally humanistic endeavors. As George
Lipsitz points out, Martin Luther King Jr. had this idea in mind in the
midst of the civil rights movement, when in 1968 he encouraged fellow
activists to “be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved nation
to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble
The true impact of expression of humaneness” (Lipsitz 2011:17). The true impact of the vigil
on the neutral ground, therefore, is in the capacity it inspires and engen-
the vigil is in the ders to create new forms of human relatedness—in the face of oppression,
violence, and injustice and in the place and space of urban possibility and
capacity it inspires
change.
to create new
forms of human
Notes
Acknowledgements. This research was supported by the Social Science
relatedness—in
Research Council, the American Council of Learned Societies New
the face of Faculty Fellowship Program, the Department of Anthropology at the
University of Michigan, and the Department of Anthropology and the
oppression, Urban Studies Program at Brown University. I am grateful for the helpful
comments I received from the editors and anonymous reviewers at City
violence, and & Society. I am also deeply indebted to the clergy and parishioners from
injustice, and in New Hope Baptist Church in New Orleans, who truly made this research
possible with their involvement, receptivity, and remarkable candor.
the place of urban I acknowledge in particular Pastor John C. Raphael Jr. (1953–2013),
whose leadership and legacy remains a source of inspiration. As author, I
possibility and accept full responsibility for any omissions or errors.
1
change This research was part of a larger anthropological study I conducted
in New Orleans from 2007–2009, which focused on post-Katrina com-
munity reformation and resilience building, particularly within religious
communities.
2
This literature includes a valuable focus on racial identity and
racialization in specific cities; for example Thomas Sugrue’s study of race
and inequality in Detroit (2005) and Loïc Wacquant’s (2008) compara-
tive study of urban marginality in Chicago and Paris.
3
The process of criminalization also has distinct spatial dimensions,
linked to a wide variety of sites and institutions from the housing
project, to the school, to the newsroom, the court, and the prison (Rios
2006:40).
4
Over 95 percent of the victims and the perpetrators of homicide are
African American men, and over half are under the age of 27 (Wellford
et al. 2011).
5
The Wall Street Journal, for example, reported that Republican
House of Representatives member Richard H. Baker was overhead telling
258
 Valued Lives in
Violent Places
lobbyists, “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We
couldn’t do it, but God did” (Babington 2005).

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