The New Orleans Maafa Commemoration is a community remembrance event, a moment to reckon with the horrors of the Transatlantic slave trade and to release ourselves from the chains of its legacy.

Join us as we gather in Congo Square and lead a procession to the Mississippi River to honor our ancestors who fought, resisted, perished, and persevered through enslavement. 

Through performance art, ritual, and prayer, we foster healing and hope for our collective future.⁠

The theme of this year’s Maafa is Interconnected. The deep, ancestral bonds of the African Diaspora are unbreakable. From New Orleans to Puerto Rico to Brazil, from bamboula to bomba, we retain the rhythm of the motherland. Across the span of centuries and oceans, conquest and colonialism could not dilute our roux or wash away our roots. We are the legacy of a cosmic and complex history of survival, resistance, and triumph.