Saint Augustine Catholic Church features a distinctive, bright yellow facade and a tall, slender steeple that rises above the surrounding neighborhood of Treme. Founded in eighteen forty-two by free people of color, the church remains one of the oldest African American Catholic parishes in the country. During the antebellum era, Black congregants purchased entire rows of pews to ensure that enslaved people had a place to sit during services, defying the segregation laws of the time.
Saint Augustine Catholic Church
religious