Founded in 1841, St. Augustine Church is recognized as the oldest African American Catholic church in the United States, a building that embodies the complex and proudly distinct identity of New Orleans Creole Catholic culture. The congregation was established by free people of color who purchased pews specifically to seat enslaved Black parishioners beside them — a radical act of solidarity that reflected the particular moral vision of the Tremé community. In a city where racial hierarchy was enforced by law and custom, free people of color in this church deliberately integrated the pew system, interweaving free and enslaved worshippers in a visible challenge to the social order.
The church has been a site of resistance and cultural preservation ever since. It was the center of the Tremé's musical and spiritual life through the nineteenth century and became the home of the jazz funeral tradition — the slow, mournful brass-band procession to the cemetery followed by the joyful, dancing return home that celebrates the deceased's passage to freedom. The Tomb of the Unknown Slave, consecrated on the church grounds in 2004, honors the enslaved people whose burial sites in the Tremé were built over without acknowledgment.
The iron chains and shackles mounted on the tomb marker are among the most powerful memorials in the South.