Canal Street

Canal Street was a main thoroughfare for sit-ins and boycotts during the Civil Rights Movement. New Orleans’ first sit-in took place at F.W. Woolworth’s Department Store on the corner of Canal and North Rampart streets. A week later at a sit-in at McCrory’s at 1005 Canal Street, a group of students – “the CORE Four” – were arrested and convicted of criminal mischief. On a national level, the McCrory’s sit-in is more widely known because the convictions were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in Lombard v. Louisiana. For the next two years, 75 stores on Canal Street were picketed as activists demanded the desegregation of dining and restroom facilities, and for merchants to hire 90 Black employees in 75 days. It took 735 days, but the boycott ultimately succeeded.