Henriette Díaz Delille, a free woman of color before the Civil War in New Orleans, became a religious sister who founded Sisters of the Holy Family. They brought care and dignity to poor African and American-born slaves, orphans, elderly, and disabled. Their work continues today.
Just north of New Orleans’ French Quarter — on soil once worked by slaves — stands a Catholic church believed to be the oldest black parish in the U.S. St. Augustine Church, established in 1841, has been a sanctuary in the turbulence of emancipation, Jim Crow laws, the civil rights movement, and Hurricane Katrina.
