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.
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 Anand | Zoe Oboler |
| Claire Ramsay | Catherine Hu |
| Ifeoma Osakwe | Aaliyah Randall |
| Meghan Nagia | Danielle Walder |
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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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