LAPLACE, La. (AP) — Traffic through LaPlace down La. 628 passes an unassuming two-story white house with a tin roof and green-accented shutters. Surrounded by trees, and with an inviting front stairway and a porch big enough for an extended family to sip sweet tea and people-watch, the house is charming — but it probably wouldn’t be cause to pump the brakes.
However, this is exactly what John McCusker, founder and managing director of the 1811 Kid Ory Historic House, hopes passersby will do, with the goal of educating themselves about two significant events in Black American history that occurred on the premises: the 1811 German Coast slave uprising, and the birth of jazz trombonist Edward “Kid” Ory.
“I want young people, and old, in this parish to be able to come here and see the courage, creativity, the improvisation, the innovation that their ancestors brought to this place,” said McCusker, who has written a biography of the musician. “St. John (Parish) is 2-to-1 Black majority for most of its history. There are a lot of stories there that haven’t been told.”
Over 200 years ago, the 1811 House was “the big house” of Andry Plantation, where the largest revolt of enslaved people in American history originated. Visitors to the museum have the chance to stand in the dimly lit room complete with a mosquito netting bed and era-appropriate furniture where blood was first shed on Jan. 8, 1811.
The Andry room challenges museumgoers to place themselves in that pivotal moment in American history when the enslaved man Charles Deslondes and his freedom fighters attacked and wounded Manuel Andry, owner of the plantation.
Deslondes and his followers pushed on, gathering supporters from other plantations until their numbers reached the hundreds. But without guns, the insurgents were halted and captured in present-day Kenner when they encountered the U.S. military. The militia tortured and killed Deslondes. Other rebels were executed after a tribunal at the Andry Plantation.
Fast forward seven decades, and Kid Ory was born on Christmas Day 1886 in the same slave quarters, by then the homes of tenant farmers, where the 1811 freedom fighters chose liberty or death.
Ory grew up working on what was then known as the Woodland Plantation, driving a mule and buggy to bring food and water to planters working the fields. (The mule has its own exhibit at the 1811 House for its role in shaping rural Louisiana.)
Ory got serious about music as a teenager, and during his first trip to New Orleans in 1905, he bought a trombone with his money from that year’s plantation harvest. While testing his new instrument, Ory was discovered by Buddy Bolden, one of the pioneers of jazz.
By 1910, Ory lived in New Orleans full time and became one of the most in-demand jazz musicians of the 1910s, playing with the likes of Joseph “King” Oliver and Louis Armstrong.
The Historic House’s Ory room includes makeshift banjos made from cigar boxes, Ory’s first instrument as a child in rural Louisiana. There are vintage Ory records that can be played on McCusker’s personal collection of phonographs.
The centerpiece of the exhibit, however, is Ory’s valve trombone. Encased in glass and lit from beneath to give it a divine, glowing look, the trombone is a work of superb craftsmanship and a fitting instrument for a master of the art.
For more than 100 years, the historic home belonged to descendants of John L. Ory, a distant cousin of Kid Ory. But it fell into disrepair around the time Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. In March 2017, Timothy Sheehan purchased the property and began fixing it up with his father.
“I left the real estate closing office — closed with eight Ory family members — in the city at 2 p.m. and went straight to LaPlace with a carload of tools and a sleeping bag. Me and my dad camped out for the long weekend” as they started working on the building, said Sheehan.
Eventually, Sheehan enlisted the help of architects and carpenters who were experts in restoring old houses, one of whom also knew McCusker and was familiar with his 2012 biography of Kid Ory, “Creole Trombone: Kid Ory and the Early Years of Jazz.” This mutual friend put the two men in touch, and they eventually agreed to a business deal that would see Sheehan retain ownership of the property but allow McCusker to curate a museum inside.
Since then, McCusker and Charlotte Jones, the operations and programming manager at the Historic House, have turned a place that was once a site of agony and unimaginable horrors for Black people into a space that uplifts and shares their legacy. The house that was built with slave labor is now home to their stories.
“There’s a morality involved in this for me because I know my entitlement. I know the advantages that I’ve had being the son of a white Southern family that’s been in Louisiana for 250 years,” said McCusker. “Maybe that’s starry-eyed, but I did (create the museum), and I hope to share it with anyone that wants to come here.”
Though America still lives in the long shadow of slavery and racial oppression, McCusker does not believe that the ghosts of the past should scare us. Instead, they should inspire us to be better.
In March, just a month after the 1811 House opened in February, students from Emily C. Watkins Elementary School came to visit.
As a tour guide for 25 years, “I enjoy telling stories for people and having a conversation,” McCusker said. “But to see 70 kids from Emily Watkins coming down the river road, escorted by the police to come learn about their ancestors’ history, when they’re walking on the very ground that Charles Deslondes walked on, what a responsibility,” said McCusker. “But how rewarding it was to see all these faces in this house. ... To be able to tell them every step they take at their school, they’re in the footsteps of the first person in this parish to fight for their humanity. You can’t put a price on that.”