Petition contests converting Municipal Auditorium into New Orleans’ City Hall

6th April 2021   ·   0 Comments

By Geraldine Wyckoff
Contributing Writer

“Respect for the spirit of space is a hallmark of civilization,” says internationally-renowned trumpeter Wynton Marsalis when asked his thoughts on Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s proposal to convert the New Orleans Municipal Auditorium into City Hall.

In 2006, Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra premiered its outstanding album “Congo Square” in the historic locale which sits adjacent to the auditorium in Louis Armstrong Park.

The New Orleans Culture Preservation Committee, which was organized specifically to address the City Hall issue, has recently launched a petition against the mayor’s proposition that has already gained over 4,800 signatures.

“We are opposed to City Hall moving to the Municipal Auditorium because we believe it will encroach on Congo Square, which already has been identified as a national historic landmark and is a sacred space and a gathering space for many people in New Orleans,” says committee member Ausettua Amor Amenkum. “The mayor believes she will put measures in place that will protect Congo Square. What she doesn’t realize is that the auditorium is already on Congo Square. When they built the auditorium in 1930, they had already encroached on Congo Square.”a href=”http://www.louisianaweekly.com/?attachment_id=47787″ rel=”attachment wp-att-47787″>

The goal of the petition is to demand a public hearing before there is any further action on the mayor’s proposal and to “stop the desecration of this historically significant and sacred ground.”

“We want to have a community engagement process,” declares percussionist Luther Gray, the founder of the Congo Square Preservation Society that was vital in having the Square put on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993.

Congo Square’s importance can not be underestimated as it was the rare place in the United States where on Sundays enslaved people were allowed to play their drums, dance and sell their goods. Their rhythms remain in New Orleans’ unique beats that have spread around the world in jazz, rhythm and blues, Black Indian drumming, brass bands and more. “The rhythm section and the drum set owe their origins to Congo Square,” Marsalis adamantly states.

“Congo Square is the epicenter of modern jazz,” Gray agreed. “The whole problem with the City is that they only want to do a community engagement process after they have a contract to make Municipal Auditorium as the City Hall. I think a community process should happen before so we can put all of our ideas on the table. I look at this as an opportunity for us to create a cultural industry in New Orleans. We do a lot of things and we make money but we don’t really have a space to put it. Armstrong Park and the Municipal Auditorium represent that space. We’re already doing it outside but we’re not able to go inside,” he adds, mentioning Mardi Gras Indian and second line regalia exhibits, theater, art, music, dance and cooking demonstrations.

“This gives us the opportunity to work cooperatively inside of the root culture of New Orleans,” Gray, the leader of the Bamboula 2000 ensemble, continues. “Not only the African-American root culture but indigenous root culture as well – the Houma Indians and all the first nation people. It gives us a chance to come together. The Houma Indians used that area for their annual harvest rituals before the arrival of the French and the Spanish.”

Many who oppose moving City Hall into the Municipal Auditorium view the City’s motive as purely monetary with little consideration for its effects on the culture and the Treme community. There is $40 million available through FEMA for restoring the auditorium from damage caused by Hurricane Katrina. Research, however, is being done by the Preservation Committee to determine whether the money can be used to change it into an office building.

The move would also allow the present, rather ramshackle City Hall, to be torn down and the prime piece of property to be sold. Also, the Municipal Auditorium’s square footage isn’t adequate to house all of the present offices.

“It’s not large enough and it’s just wrong,” says Amenkum, a founder of the Kumbuka African Drum and Dance Collective who also reigned as the Big Queen of the Washitaw Nation Black Indian tribe. “The main thing is that it is going to significantly impact that community that’s already been devastated. When they built Armstrong Park over 500 families were displaced.”

“Inside of places are our fundamental intentions and it is always important for us to return to our fundamental intentions because they allow us to understand the meaning of our symbols and our mythology. If we don’t, we don’t know who we are,” says Marsalis who experienced his first ever concert when, in 1967, he saw James Brown at the auditorium.

Amenkum reflects on other devastating blows to the culture such as the building of the I-10 overpass on North Claiborne Avenue, a once prosperous thoroughfare, that cut through the heart of the Treme neighborhood.

“It’s like the last stronghold of Black culture in New Orleans,” she proclaims of Congo Square and the adjacent Municipal Auditorium. Why would you want to desecrate it?”

This article originally published in the April 5, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.