Join us on Thursday, January 30, 2025, from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm for the opening of the latest New Orleans Jazz Museum exhibit, ECONOMY HALL. Free and open to the public.

THE CULTURAL FAMILY OF ECONOMY HALL

Economy Hall was the meeting place of the Société d’Economie et d’Assistance Mutuelle, a benevolent organization formed by men of African descent in New Orleans who were legally free. The society was uniquely defined by its international reach, antebellum wealth, cultural influence, and longevity.

Founded in 1836, the society’s 15 original members were French speakers with ancestral roots in Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and Central America. From the creation of the organization to its demise in the early 1950s, the men of the Economie were characterized locally as Creoles due to their language and cultural traditions—the hybrid of African, Indigenous, and European foodways and family practices—or ancestry dating from French and Spanish colonial Louisiana. The US census and newspapers designated them racially as coloreds, Negroes, and blacks.

Built in 1857, the hall became world-renowned for jazz music. Economy Hall was one of the central places where jazz was born as all the early players from Kid Ory to King Oliver to Buddy Bolden made music inside its wall.  In addition, over the building’s 108-year history, an important and largely undocumented social and racial commingling of citizens occurred.  From Black benevolent associations to German laborers to Cuban cigarmakers to Republican Radicals to musicians to undertakers and many others, their networking in the society’s restaurant, ballroom, theater, and meeting rooms of the hall created a strong cultural inheritance that is still being felt today.

The exhibit will feature rare photos and artifacts from Economy Hall as well as analysis from author of the book “Economy Hall: The Hidden History of A Free Black Brotherhood” Fatima Shaik and curator David Kunian.

Fatima Shaik