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, Mardi Gras Indians, Baby Dolls, and Skull and Bone gangs, whose collection of artifacts has been displayed here since 1999, in what used to be the Blandin Funeral Home.

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.

Sadly, the museum building sustained major damage in Hurricane Ida in 2021 and is closed while it looks for a new facility.

For more about the Treme neighborhood, click here.