Backstreet Cultural Museum

The Backstreet Cultural Museum is a showplace for artifacts of the city’s African-American parading traditions, and a base of activity in the cultural community. The Backstreet was established by Sylvester Francis, a longtime follower and documenter of second lines, jazz funerals, Black Masking Indians, Baby Dolls, and Skull and Bone gangs, whose collection of artifacts has been displayed here since 1999.

The museum displays several Mardi Gras Indian suits, offering visitors a chance to see their beadwork up close. There are a variety of other objects, too, like sashes from social aid and pleasure clubs and programs from jazz funerals. The collection also includes walls of photographs and an extensive video library of street processions. Francis drew from his collection to curate exhibitions at the Essence Festival and Jazz Fest every year.

Francis’ work was especially valuable considering that, for years, depictions of these parading and masking rituals were created and disseminated by people from outside the community of practitioners. Artists were not always compensated for their contributions, and could find their sacred practices misrepresented to the outside world. Francis, though, was known and respected by these tradition bearers, who donated artifacts to the museum and trusted him to present their rituals with care. Francis became a cultural ambassador, educating visitors about the social context of the spectacles that might otherwise go unexplained. Though he passed away in 2020, his daughter Dominique Dilling Francis keeps the tradition alive today.

The Backstreet is a popular destination on Mardi Gras Day, when crowds gather to witness visits from Mardi Gras Indians, Baby Dolls, and the North Side Skull and Bone Gang. As the Treme undergoes post-Katrina gentrification, the Backstreet remains an anchor for the city’s Black parading traditions in their historic cradle near Congo Square.

The original museum building, formerly the Blandin Funeral Home across the street from St. Augustine Church, sustained major damage in Hurricane Ida in 2021. It reopened the following year a few blocks away at 1531 St. Philip Street.

Its current home is a storied one: in the 1970s the building was the site of the Caldonia, which moved there after its original location was demolished as part of the City’s ill-fated attempt to build a “cultural center.” Later, it was a club owned by bandleader Kermit Ruffins. Today, it’s shouting distance from the lot that became Tuba Fats Square.

For more about the Treme neighborhood, click here.