A photograph that initially appeared to be a simple street scene from 1899 New Orleans has been revealed to document a covert network of Black women who spent years recording the murders that local authorities refused to investigate. The discovery began when Dr. Sarah Bennett, a historian researching African-American women’s networks in the post-Reconstruction South, was sorting through boxes of old photographs at an antique shop on Royal Street in August 2024. Near the bottom of one box, wrapped in yellow tissue paper, she found a large, remarkably well-preserved image dated October 14th, 1899.
It showed a bustling French Quarter street scene, but her attention was immediately drawn to three Black women in identical white dresses walking side by side down the middle of the street. On the back, in faded ink, were written the words: “Royal Street, October 14th, 1899. The three in white. Inspecting the photograph closely at home, Sarah noticed that the women’s hands were not positioned casually.
Their fingers were arranged in deliberate, distinct configurations. Believing these could be coded signals, she began searching historical records for context. Newspaper archives from that period led her to a brief article about Marie Lavo, a Black woman found dead in her home two days after the photo was taken. Authorities initially called the death suspicious, then quickly ruled it a suicide despite protests from family and neighbors.
Church records from St. Augustine Church revealed that three women in white dresses had served as honorary pallbearers at Lavo’s funeral, and at two other funerals of Black women in late 1899, each involving hints of suspicious circumstances. In the personal journals of Father Augustus Tebo, the church’s priest from 1895 to 1910, Sarah found a crucial entry dated October 15th, 1899, the day after the photograph was taken. “Met today with the three sisters,” he wrote.
“They came to report another death. They have witnessed 17 deaths nowunde 17 women whose lives ended violently and whose justice was denied. Father Tebo’s journals revealed the network’s full scopeover the following years. The three founders had begun their work in 1897 after a series of murders of Black women went uninvestigated.
They developed a system of hand signals that could be made naturally while adjusting a skirt or brushing back hair, allowing them to communicate in plain sight without drawing attention. The signals identified members of the network, indicated when a death had been witnessed, and marked locations where violence had occurred. By 1900, the network had expanded to include dozens of women across multiple neighborhoods, who documented deaths, maintained safe houses, established connections with Black-owned businesses, and helped women leave the city when necessary. A locked box in the archdiocesan archives contained Father Tebo’s coded notebook, which listed complete records of the deaths documented by the network, including victims’ initials, dates, locations, circumstances, and descriptions of perpetrators.
The notebook recorded 83 deaths of Black women between January 1897 and December 1904 that had been ignored, covered up, or deliberately misclassified by authorities. It also contained a key to over 30 hand signals, creating an entire language that allowed for complex communication. The names of the three founders, kept secret by the priest to protect them, were also recorded: Celeste Rouso, age 31, a laundress; Josephine Dea, age 28, a seamstress; and Marie Clair Dubois, age 33, a midwife. Advanced digital analysis of the photograph confirmed the signals were not limited to the three women.
Spectral imaging and reflection analysis revealed at least 12 other people in the street scene making recognizable hand signals, including figures in doorways, at corners, and in second-story windows. A notice visible in a storefront window announced a meeting at St. Augustine, dated October 12th, 1899. Blood stains on the hem of the middle woman’s dress, detected through spectral analysis, suggested she had recently come from a scene of violence, likely the death of Marie Lavo.
Sarah traced living descendants of all three founders through census, birth, and church records. The descendants, many of whom had heard vague family stories of “important, dangerous work,” gathered at St. Augustine Church to learn the full story of their ancestors’ courage. Several recognized hand gestures their grandmothers had used, never understanding their meaning.
The research was published in the Journal of African-American History, and an exhibition at the New Orleans African-American Museum made the photograph its centerpiece, displaying enhanced images revealing the network of signals and the 83 names of women whose deaths had been documented. The story drew national media attention, and the image was shared millions of times online. Descendants of documented victims came forward, many learning for the first time how their ancestors had truly died. A year after the exhibition opened, the city of New Orleans installed a memorial in Congo Square near St.
Augustine Church. Bronze statues of three women in white dresses stand together, their hands positioned in the witness signs. At the base are engraved the names of Celeste, Josephine, and Marie Clair, along with the 83 women they remembered.