Full & Free in New Orleans: Cierra Chenier's Historic Black Resistance
Cierra Chenier
“The threat of losing our culture and neighborhoods while close friends were losing their lives felt so vile in a city that has already lost so much.”
This week, Ms. Cierra Chenier entered the Taller. Black woman originator of the digital platform NOIR ‘N NOLA, Chenier did not mince words when she described what her mission is in the face of over three hundred years of history that have tried to erase her and her city from the map: “I “steal” by seizing time and space, by having my feet on the ground of the land that we occupy. And I won’t be budging.” You want to know about Black New Orleans? Pull up a chair and listen in on her interview with Kin Curator Jessica Marie Johnson…
EM: Tell us about yourself and NOIR ‘N NOLA. Who are you and what do you do? What is NOIR N' NOLA and what does it do? What made you meet/create it and how has it evolved over time?
CC: My name is Cierra Chenier and I’m a Black woman from New Orleans working to preserve Black New Orleans’ history, culture, and soul through my digital platform, NOIR ‘N NOLA. As a writer, historian, and creator, I elevate the stories of our past to form the connections relative to today and tomorrow. Creating NOIR ‘N NOLA felt like a reflex–it was my response to the rapid gentrification I was seeing alongside the deeply-rooted issues that still linger from this once, major slave port.
The threat of losing our culture and neighborhoods while close friends were losing their lives felt so vile in a city that has already lost so much. What began as articles and social media posts have also evolved into narrations and creative/visual projects. This is my way of reclaiming what was lost and protecting what’s still left.
New Orleans Is A Black Woman installation (2019) Credit: Cierra Chenier
EM: Tell us about your journey into being a historian. Why is history the genre you've chosen to fight for your city? Why is doing Black history of New Orleans so important to you? What does Black history mean to New Orleans, especially Black New Orleans?
CC: I’m starting to realize how experiencing Hurricane Katrina made me into a historian. I became unintentionally fixated on the past because of how quickly aspects of my childhood, of my New Orleans, became history. The more I began to peel back these layers, I recognized how often our stories have been buried and the global impact of New Orleans has been minimized.
I feel honored to be called to interpreting and sharing the history of my home because I couldn’t separate myself from these stories if I wanted to. There’s a shared experience, recollection, cultural memory, and bloodline there. This enables me to be all the more intentional in the information I share and how. History is my tool in reminding Black New Orleanians exactly who we are, what we come from, and our right to live full, free lives in the city we’re from and make up the majority of.
15 Years Since (2020), Credit: Cierra Chenier, Byron Goins
EM: Your work is deeply rooted in New Orleans and New Orleans history, and you've been vocal about being from New Orleans East! What is it about New Orleans that fuels your work? What does your New Orleans look, sound, and feel like? Are there historical moments, sources, images, artifacts that you've found in your work or shared through NOIR N' NOLA that have particular meaning to you, to this history and/or your city?
CC: What fuels me is the spirit and authenticity of New Orleans, knowing that you can’t get this anywhere else. It’s something that’s in the air and built into the people. My New Orleans looks like older Black women sitting on their porches, Black men holding court outside the corner store, and Black children, musicians I should say, that drum on buckets in the French Quarter. It sounds like brass bands, drumming circles in Congo Square, and the Triggerman beat. It feels fulfilling.
The maroon colonies of New Orleans and its surrounding areas have impacted me significantly. Maroons are defined as those who escaped enslavement and formed communities outside of the institution of slavery, like leader Jean Saint Malo. Their sacrifices force us to reevaluate the ability of reform within systems and institutions, and encourage us to reimagine what’s possible outside of them. In this case, there was no “reforming” the conditions of slavery, only abolishing it in its entirety, which did not come until centuries later. It presents the question of, should we build or destroy? When talking systemic racism in all of its forms, it has to be both. Maroons like St. Malo, and a saint he was, proved our ability to create an entirely different way of living that was on our own terms. For them it was a means of survival. My hopes for Black people, and Black New Orleanians specifically, are new ways of living and thinking that are rooted in our freedom.
Pour toujours Saint Malo (2021)
Credit: Cierra Chenier
“My New Orleans looks like older Black women sitting on their porches, Black men holding court outside the corner store, and Black children, musicians I should say, that drum on buckets in the French Quarter. It sounds like brass bands, drumming circles in Congo Square, and the Triggerman beat. It feels fulfilling.”
Image: The Tignon Laws of 1786, Credit: Cierra Chenier
EM: You are something of an innovator of what Dr. Johnson has described as black digital practice. Could you talk a little bit about how and why you chose to use digital and social media to share information about Black New Orleans? We love following you on Instagram especially, but you're also on Twitter and you have a website. Do you have any favorite tools that you use to create that you could share?
The message, histories, grievances, and love that I had for Black New Orleans built up to the point where I couldn’t even contain it any longer. I felt that what I had to say needed to be said right away, so sharing my work digitally and through social media were the instant mediums I had at my disposal to reach those that the message was intended for. Social media platforms have changed so much in the past few years, and I enjoy the challenge of consolidating information, making it visually appealing, and presenting it in a way that informs, but also resonates with people.
One of my favorite tools is Evernote, which allows you to scan documents and annotate them. It’s also great for notetaking. As someone who writes and highlights all over books, this platform comes in clutch while utilizing texts that I don’t own, like library books.
NOIR ‘N NOLA (https://www.noirnnola.com/)
EM: What does your community of Black historians, interpreters, and genealogists look like? Is there anyone you're excited to work alongside or collaborate with? Future projects you're looking forward to?
CC: I believe in Black New Orleanians being the experts to our own narratives, so I see us all as historians and preservationists in our own, nonconventional ways. Like an elder that’s lived in the Tremé neighborhood her whole life is an expert and historian as it relates to her individual (and communal) experience. We are preservationists by the mere fact that we’re still here. I gain so much information just by listening to people in the city speak. It’s information that you can’t always find in a database or book, but stories we just know to be true because we’ve lived it and descend from it.
New Orleans has a strong creative community of artists, designers, musicians, writers, filmmakers, etc. that I’m honored to be a part of and inspired by. I feel like we never have to outsource for anything, all of the talent is right here. We’ve seen how often people take from New Orleans and run with it, so most of us create from a place of reclamation and commanding that the city receives its credit where it’s long overdue. I’m excited to work alongside this community and continue to collaborate in ways that cultivate a presence that can’t be ignored.
EM: Last but not least, before you go, Taller Electric Marronage is guided by four rules (How do you escape? How do you steal? What does it feel like? And *whatever) of marronage. If you had to choose one rule to follow, which would it be and what do you do?
CC: I choose to steal by taking up space; by staying where I’m rooted. What comes to mind is Malcolm X’s Message to the Grass Roots speech where he stated, “Land is the basis for all independence.” Similarly in Pan-Africanism by Kwame Ture (née Stokley Carmichael), he said, “Revolution must be about land.” Although they were speaking in reference to the Black diaspora as a whole, I think the same can be said in reference to New Orleans.
The city’s foundation was reliant on Black people forcibly working and being sold on this land. The local economy is reliant on the traditions and culture we’ve created and maintained in surviving this land. We’re now seeing attempts of this same land being taken from under us. I “steal” by seizing time and space, by having my feet on the ground of the land that we occupy. And I won’t be budging. *~*