BACKGROUND

Freddi Williams Evans, author, independent scholar, and arts educator, is internationally recognized for her scholarship on New Orleans’ Congo Square. Her book Congo Square: African Roots in New Orleans, the first comprehensive study of the location, received the 2012 Louisiana Humanities Book of the Year Award and is published in French. Her research and advocacy for the historic landmark influenced the New Orleans City Council Ordinance that changed the official name of the location from Beauregard Square, named after Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard in 1893, to the long-time popular name, Congo Square, in 2011. Along with numerous published essays and articles on the subject, she authored Come Sunday, A Young Reader’s History of Congo Square, which received the Independent Publisher Book Awards’ Bronze Medal in 2018 and was a finalist for the 2018 Next Generation Indie Book Award.

Working in the community, Evans co-chaired the New Orleans Committee to Erect Historic Markers on the Slave Trade to Louisiana, helped to erect the UNESCO Site of Memory Middle Passage Marker on the Westbank of New Orleans, and served on the New Orleans Legacy Project Committee.

She holds degrees in music and psychology from Tougaloo College, Tougaloo MS and a graduate degree in creative arts therapy (music) from Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital (now Drexel University) in Philadelphia, PA.   

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Freddi Williams Evans, Project Founder. Photo by Peter Nakid

Website Developers

Newcomb Institute, Digital Research Internship Program

Lab Director

Jacquelyne Thoni Howard, Ph.D., Administrative Assistant Professor of Technology and Women’s History, Tulane University

Lab Manager

Rachel Tabor

Product Developers

Lucien Mensah, Marisa Long & Wendy Yang

Interns

Ananya AnandZoe Oboler
Claire RamsayCatherine Hu
Ifeoma OsakweAaliyah Randall
Meghan NagiaDanielle Walder
Evan HendricksonWinna Xia
Helena WangIsabella Blair
Chloe UhlsKristen Osborne
Hannah BartelsIsabelle Haines
Tess KleanthousSam DeMarinis

Project Manager

Kelly Harris DeBerry, M.F.A, KHD Communications

Website and Graphic Designer

Justin Batiste

Advisors

Laura Rosanne Adderley, Ph.D., Associate Professor of History, Tulane University

Jacquelyne Thoni Howard, Ph.D., Administrative Assistant Professor of Technology and Women’s History, Tulane University

Joyce Jackson, Ph.D., Chair, Professor, Department of Geography & Anthropology, Louisiana State University

Zada Johnson, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Inner-City Studies Academic Program Facilitator, Northeastern Illinois University

Kara T. Olidge, Ph.D., Former Executive Director, Amistad Research Center

Clyde Robertson, Ph.D., Director, Center for African and African American Studies, Southern University at New Orleans

Matt Sakakeeny, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Music, Ethnomusicology, Tulane University 

Kalamu ya Salaam, Poet, Author, Filmmaker, and Educator

Bryan Wagner, Ph.D, Professor, English Department, University of California, Berkeley

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