Reckoning & Remembrance: the Louisiana Native Guards History Mural

The History

The Civil War at Beanlandia’s Site

Our building at 3300 Royal Street was once the Touro Almshouse — the first headquarters of the Louisiana Native Guards, the first Black Union soldiers officially mustered into the United States Army.

In September 1862, Union commander General Benjamin Butler called for free men of color to join the Army. The response was immediate and overwhelming. Those men — later the Corps d’Afrique — went on to fight at the Battle of Port Hudson in May 1863, the first major assault led by Black soldiers in American history.

Much of this history has been buried or rewritten. The mural is our way of putting it back in plain sight, on the wall where it started.

Some of the men who were at Beanlandia

• •Cpt. André Cailloux — a free man of color and celebrated officer of the Native Guards, killed heroically at Port Hudson. His funeral galvanized Black New Orleans. He called himself “the Blackest man in New Orleans.”
• •Gen. Benjamin Butler — the Union commander who authorized the recruitment of free Black men into the U.S. Army, a radical act that helped change the course of the Civil War.
• •P.B.S. Pinchback — Native Guards officer, a leading recruiter of Black soldiers in New Orleans, and later the first Black governor of Louisiana.
• •Charles Sauvinet — New Orleans’ first Black civil sheriff, a Native Guards officer, and a civil rights pioneer who successfully challenged segregation in Louisiana courts.
• •The soldiers — the hundreds of free men of color and formerly enslaved men who answered the call, including two men from the Congo. Their names and faces deserve to be seen.

Painted by New Orleans artists Annie Moran and Tenielle Prosper. Led by the Krewe of Red Beans and the André Cailloux Center for Performing Arts and Cultural Justice, in partnership with Arts New Orleans. You can read the full artist call (PDF).

Be Part of It

Give $100 or more, and your name goes up beside the mural

This mural will stand on Royal Street for decades. Donors who give $100 or more will have their name listed on the donor sign installed next to it — a permanent record of the people who helped bring this history back into the light.

The Krewe of Red Beans is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit — your gift is tax-deductible. See exactly where the money goes on our transparency page.

Come see the wall

The mural site is our own building at 3300 Royal Street — home of the Bean Museum. Stop by Monday through Friday, 10am–5pm, and see where the Native Guards began.