Hidden in Plain Sight: The Ghosts of Segregation - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/30/travel/ghosts-of-segregation.html?smid=tw-share
At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, with travel restrictions in place worldwide, we launched a series — The World Through a Lens — in which photojournalists help transport you, virtually, to compelling new places. This week, Richard Frishman shares a collection of powerful images taken throughout the United States.
The six faded letters are all that remain, and few people notice them. I would never have seen them if a friend hadn’t pointed them out to me while we walked through New Orleans’s French Quarter. I certainly wouldn’t have realized their significance.
On Chartres Street, above a beautifully arched doorway, is a curious and enigmatic inscription: “CHANGE.” Now part of the facade of the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel, the letters mark the onetime site of the St. Louis Hotel & Exchange, where, under the building’s famed rotunda, enslaved people were once sold.