The Faubourg Treme – Untold Story of Black New Orleans documentary was very interesting and insightful. In our initial discussion about why we chose to attend the film session, many of us explained that we did not know much about the history of New Orleans, especially the segregation aspect and the diverse cultural environment presenting in this area of Louisiana. Looking back into the historic lens of New Orleans there is a lot of truth and history that we do not generally learn in school. Looking at Treme for instance, there is a direct link to how community infrastructure is directly affected by the government and devastating natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina. The end of reconstruction in Treme highlighted the inequality that black communities faced and are still facing due to systemic racism. Despite the injustice we see the resilience the people of Treme had through expressing their pain through jazz and the arts. This was very special to me because it portrayed how people can take their situations and create something beautiful regardless of what is thrown at them.

The documentary in Tremé was eye-opening to the injustice faced by the black community for so many years. I actually learned that New Orleans was one of the only states to allow slaves to buy freedom, own land, and eventually allowed black citizens to vote and hold office. When the Reconstruction movement was shut down by the Supreme Court, Tremé saw all the historical progress they had made in their neighborhood get taken away from them because of the white supremacy that continues to plague this country. One thing that caught my eye was how jazz became an outlet for black people to keep their culture alive, express their pain, and have artistic freedom. As a former member of jazz band, I can attest to how difficult it is to play jazz music and improvise. The people of Tremé were endless in their musical talent and it shows just how perseverant the these people were even when everything was taken from them.

Watching the film was a full-circle experience for me. In eight-grade my school took us to New Orleans and was able to experience first-hand the rich culture of New Orleans, that the film mentions. I was able to volunteer in a variety of ways while also hearing about how Hurricane Katrina affected residents of New Orleans, from a first account experience. I think school curriculums should do a better job at teaching the positive parts of American history. It is very ironic that Faubourg Treme is a historic black neighborhood that plays a large part in the economic, cultural, political, and social development of black America, yet very few Americans know its significance.

NoLA is always something that I’ve been excited to learn more about and visit because of all of the excited things that I have heard from friends and family that have had the opportunity to visit the region. It always seemed like a fun place to visit through all of the snaps and instagram posts that I have seen in my lifetime. However, after watching the film, there are realities that are hidden by the general media. Things that the eyes do not see at the surface level. The film revealed the cultural challenges that black families experienced as a result of racism and slavery. Despite NoLa being known for being the birthplace of Jazz, many white authoritative figures in the past have made it challenging for black people to express their culture freely. There continue to be large instances of gentrification where families, usually of African-American descent, are pushed out of their homes in order to “make space” for higher-income businesses and neighborhoods.Because of this, many may say that NoLA is losing its culture. This movie has only made me want to visit NoLA even more so I can visit the neighborhoods that aren’t pictured on social media and see how life is in all of NoLA.

I have visited New Orleans in the past, so I knew that there was a rich history in the area with a lot of different people and cultural influences, but still, I did not know the history that was taught in this film. When we are taught about history through textbooks or guided tours, we often get a very polished, simplistic telling of the history of a place. Things are segmented, simplified, and told usually from one perspective. We don’t learn about the dynamic, and ever evolving nature of a neighborhood like Faubourg Treme. In most history books, black history is brushed over and seen as a side story to European history, like the French settlers of New Orleans. I was glad to watch this film and learn more deeply about the local history of New Orleans and how a black neighborhood has developed into such a unique community and culture with a history that is dynamic and ongoing even today.

I am not the biggest fan of documentaries but I decided to attend this Rose Scholars event because the description in the newsletter had caught my attention, a reason that many of my peers seemed to share during our initial discussion. It was very interesting to learn about the rich cultural and sociopolitical history of New Orleans. It was fascinating to see how New Orleans had the oldest black neighborhood in the United States that led a civil rights movement that changed the course of American history. In terms of sensory communication, the background music used throughout the film was phenomenal, which truly encapsulated the town’s deeply rooted connection with jazz. Despite its immensely rich history, this city has also faced heart-wrenching struggles throughout the years, including natural disasters like hurricane Katrina, in which they did not receive any support from the government (spoiler alert: this was not the first time). The images from the hurricane’s consequences were very impactful and captured the dreams of the population being lost. The portrayal of architecture and urban planning (as an arrangement of clips and more recent interviews) played a major role in this documentary given that it showed us the evolution of this city, sometimes blurring the lines between the past and present.

Last week’s Friday Film was another eye-opening learning experience about our country’s history. I especially was surprised about the culture of New Orleans and the very early ideas of civil rights pushed by black writers at the time. It’s a shame that the American history most of us are familiar with excludes so many impactful moments and figures that represented the African American experience. Unfortunately, the documentary reminded me of the Friday Film session about the decline of roller-skating and the roots of the activity in black culture. Much like what is happening with rinks around the country, the culture and history of Treme and Black New Orleans are being forgotten. However, this time it’s through disruptive construction for infrastructure and due to the detrimental effects of Hurricane Katrina. While the documentary ended on a more somber note, I still hope there can be a revival of the city’s rich culture in the future. 

After watching this film, I realized that history is more complex that it was taught in the textbook. I have always thought that textbook is a good sources of evidence from history, as it has peer-reviewed as such. However, after watching this movie, it seems that history are much more dynamic and complex. This reminds me of the need of transparency when communicating history through the media.

The film Faubourg Treme: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans presented the history of the Faubourg Treme neighborhood in New Orleans in a really interesting way. The interviews with historians and videos of the community were very impactful and helped me to have a better picture of the unique community and history of the neighborhood. It was also interesting to learn about some of the neighborhood’s broader impacts on American history in general as well; for example, the landmark court case Plessy v. Ferguson involved someone from Treme. I hadn’t known much specifically about the Faubourg Treme neighborhood before, so the film was a good introduction to an overview of its fascinating and rich history.

This was one of the most interesting documentaries I have ever seen. To start, the film is about the culture of Treme, which is a city in Louisiana. The documentary starts off with the historic troubles of the city: from the end of the reconstruction era to the modern civil rights movement, the town has gone through a lot of hardship for the African-American community. However, through this hardship, jazz was born. It is so fascinating to see how centuries of pain and hardship was transformed into a method of expression and sanity-keeping. Though the bonds of community are strong, they are still tested. With Hurricane Katrina (and the new pandemic), Treme faces a new obstacle of keeping its roots intact.

This documentary was quite like I expected in terms of it being full of the background about New Orleans and the history of the area. It provided such vivid descriptions of this neighborhood in the South that was alive with the music and the collaborations possible. Seeing as this would be the neighborhood that is the birthplace of jazz, we can see how the music style came about- with its nods to the history about the divided north and south, free people and slaves, and the struggle for freedom and justice and equality. It was interesting following the story of how music was made and the influences that the Treme neighborhood had, and the hope and joy it gave everyone. I really enjoyed the documentary and I found it inspiring.

The documentary The Untold Story of Black New Orleans was very informative, as well as sad and hopeful. Throughout the film, it was clear that black culture in New Orleans has developed uniquely and fervently over time, and that the distinguished eras of “slavery, freedom, civil rights” are a myth. I found it fascinating how the area stood out from its surroundings at any given time; while slavery was tightly regulated in Virginia, black people freely walked the streets of New Orleans; while other states would force segregated seating, black people of New Orleans would push the driver out and take control of the carriage if they were refused. It was also incredibly touching how the culture has carried on to this day even if it isn’t formally recognized; children can be seen doing dances in the street that are traditionally African. I also think that as much as the documentary illuminated the culture of the area, it simultaneously highlighted the tragedy of inevitably losing some of that history. In all, I think this was an interesting film that taught me a lot about a history-rich area that I didn’t know much about.

The documentary, The Untold Story of Black New Orleans was very intriguing and informative. The rich, black history of America is often sidelined or unlearned by academia. It was very interesting to learn about New Orleans’ black history from the perspective of people who lived and grew up there. The usage of recordings and interviews was really cool and I loved hearing people recount memories and experiences. There were also clips of events, children playing, and aspects of culture in the neighborhoods of New Orleans. It was very beautiful to see. At the same time, it was very sad and disheartening to hear about the struggles of black Americans and the comparisons of how people were ignored by the government pre-Civil Rights Era and even in contemporary times with Hurricane Katrina. Nonetheless, the history and culture of the people of New Orleans persevered. I learned many new things from this documentary and recommend it to anyone wanting to learn more about black history!

After watching Faubourg Treme – The Untold Story of New Orleans, I was sadden by how many people seemed frustrated at how one-sided their history was being portrayed in textbooks, especially on the overlook of the people of Faubourg’s contributions to civil rights in American culture. This made me reflect on how many historical events that are taught in classroom settings are frequently one-sided. More specifically, historical events often portrayed in a different perspective, depending on where you live and who has the most power in having their voices and stories heard. For example, when Christopher Columbus had sailed the ocean blue, many had viewed him as this hero. Only recently, America’s image of Christopher Columbus has changed significantly and now recognizes him as a controversial figure for murdering indigenous people (especially Native Americans). Therefore, it is important for people to listen and consider narratives (especially those that do not align with history’s textbooks) of historical events so that these voices are not lost within history. Although the story of Faubourg Treme may not be commonly heard of, making this documentary is a good stepping stone in the right direction.

I signed up for this week’s Friday Film because the documentary was on something I wasn’t too familiar with and I thought it’d be interesting to see what it was about. I really liked the way it switched between old recordings/videotapes, interviews, and historical background because it felt much more personal and engaging. One of the important points I took away from the documentary is to keep in mind that history is a continuous thing rather than something to be categorized and shelved away. The interactions with people in the community that still clearly remembered historical events and parts of culture such as dance that are still present today even though their origins may have been largely forgotten show how much of an influence the past has on the present that we don’t usually pay attention to.

I’m glad that I got to watch Fauborg Treme- The Untold Story of Black New Orleans tonight. The film was shocking and surprising because it revealed that not everything is recorded in history textbooks and so many point of views are forgotten. This is significant because we rely on textbooks so much; from elementary school, our main source of historical information is textbooks from school and if these very books have biases or only one side of the story, it’s important to consider that we may never know the whole story or the whole truth. One historian in the movie noted that history textbooks often oversimplify events and this is detrimental because oversimplifying things can cause us to forget the root causes of several historical conflicts. Moreover, textbooks have a tendency to present information in a cause and effect manner, but it’s important to note that there isn’t just one cause to an effect or that one cause doesn’t just have one effect. Although it is structured like this for organizational purposes, time and history aren’t organized; they’re chaotic and the chaos should be studied carefully instead of being oversimplified.

After watching Faubourg Treme – The Untold Story of New Orleans, I was struck by how important people and places are often left out of conventional historical narratives. The people of Faubourg Treme and their many contributions to American culture and history, especially civil rights, seem to be too important to leave out of historical accounts, yet many of their contributions have been forgotten by most. The movie seems to reflect the way in which many people interpret history as linear and one-dimensional;  the history that we are taught only reflects the experiences of a small amount of people living in any given time period, but often we interpret it as if those were the only experiences anyone had during that time. This approach to history causes us to ignore the diversity that exists in historical experiences, and why narratives that do not fit the standard interpretation of history, such as the story of Faubourg Treme, are often forgotten (at least by the general public).

In the film Faubourg Treme, one historian discussed how textbooks tend to portray African American history in a simplistic and segmented way, while in reality the history is more dynamic and complex. This made me think about how the way history is written has a huge impact on future generations. If something is omitted from history textbooks, future generations won’t have any way to know about it, unless they research themselves. History is always warped a little through the lens of the historian, and only the people who actually lived through the moment know the unfiltered truth. I think it is important to teach students that textbooks aren’t always an unbiased source of fact.