In New Orleans, Essence Fest Is a Celebration — but Not Always for Black Locals

This is the second story in our series chronicling the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

On the first night of Essence Fest, Paper Machine, an artist space in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, came alive with creativity and community. Inside a sunlit room, Lauryn Hinton gathered neighbors around long tables scattered with scissors, glossy magazines, and piles of vibrant, textured paper. 

Hinton, a 24-year-old Baton Rouge, Louisiana, native who has lived in New Orleans since 2018, organized the space for Black art making to educate residents about the ways collaging has been used in the community dating back to slavery. Laughter and conversation filled the room, as participants — ranging from their early 20s to their 70s — flipped through magazines, searching for images and words that spoke to them.

Art and Black culture, Hinton said, should be about more than commercialization and profits, but rather about reclaiming agency for Black people and building genuine community. 

“A lot of resources in New Orleans are siphoned to white transplants or to tourists in general,” she said. But her vision is rooted in empowering local residents to shape their own narratives and utilize the resources available within their own neighborhoods.

While Essence is marketed as a celebration of Black culture, she said it often fails to truly serve the local community.

New Orleans is uniquely a city where Black culture is not just celebrated but forms the very backbone of its global identity, and as such, Black tourism, embodied by events like Essence Fest, undeniably brings visibility, pride, and a much-needed economic jolt to the region. It creates jobs, fills hotels, and spotlights Black culture on a global stage. But in a city where the economic structure is built on the labor and creativity of Black residents, the benefits of Black tourism are often captured by large corporations, out-of-town investors, and city coffers — but not by the communities whose culture is being sold. 

This year, Essence Fest, which typically draws almost half a million visitors — nearly double the city’s population — and generates $300 million in economic activity, made headlines for a relatively low turnout, which made the trickle-down effect even less strong. Online, some Black people said they were boycotting Essence Fest this year because Target, which has come under fire for ending its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, was one of the festival’s main sponsors.

Capital B reached out to Essence Fest organizers for comment about the criticism before this story was published.

The connections between Hurricane Katrina, Essence Fest, and Black workers

On the first day of the festival, Bayou Road, a restaurant and shopping district with the city’s highest concentration of Black businesses, sat empty.

Darryl Hayward, 43, and his friends sat across the street from some of the area’s mainstays playing dominoes and talking about why that was.

For Hayward, Essence Fest “is a good thing for the city if it makes money and if the jobs are filled by people from New Orleans,” but “if” is the keyword, he said. 

The festival’s promise of empowerment, residents told Capital B, is made even more difficult by another reality: The average Black household in New Orleans makes 40% less than the average Black American household. With Essence typically attracting middle class and college-educated people, a cultural and economic divide between tourists and residents is palpable. 

According to Essence Fest, the average attendee spends $3,000 during the festival, which is roughly two months of income for a Black New Orleanian. The festival said about 80% of attendees are out-of-towners. It is free to enter Essence Fest, but the cost of many popular events such as the concert can cost several hundreds of dollars.  

Last year, Essence said the festival supported 1,800 temporary jobs. The vast majority of these jobs weren’t Essence Fest employees, but work supported at restaurants, bars, and hotels, according to organizers. And this year, the festival partnered with 30 local Black businesses. Still, one of the most prominent businesses, Vyoone’s Restaurant, said the partnership doesn’t work in locals’ favor. Last year, the restaurant saw a $25,000 loss during the festival because the festival would not allow the restaurant to sell food in both the festival and outside events at the same time.   

“We are already disenfranchised,” Vyoone Lewis, the restaurant owner, told Verite News, a local Black newsroom. “We don’t need this extra pressure during this time of the year when we should be able to take advantage of some of what’s coming in.”

Alfred Coleman, a 27-year-old restaurant worker, also questioned the festival’s disconnect with the local community.

“I feel like we don’t really benefit from it because I feel like it’s a corporate sort of thing where the city might get some money, but for us, for our businesses, we don’t see it,” he said. “It feels like a business making money off our name and the city we’ve built, not a partnership in maintaining this place.” 

Capital B caught up with Coleman at Baldwin & Co, a Black-owned coffee shop and bookstore about 2 miles from Essence Fest. In 2023, Essence Fest issued a cease-and-desist to the coffee shop over an alleged violation of the festival’s “clean zone.” Clean Zones are city-designated areas usually implemented during major events where commercial activity is restricted. Lawyers for Essence said the bookstore had promoted an event during the festival without brand approval, but ultimately dropped the suit following public pushback.

Coleman said growing up, his family never went to Essence Fest, and he didn’t first start thinking about its impact until he became a service worker. Despite the promise of prosperity, some local businesses — especially restaurants and bars — choose to actually close their doors during the festival, Coleman said. Owners cite a mix of reasons: Some say the crowds don’t translate into higher sales, while others point to the costs and logistical challenges of staying open during such a massive event. “Or maybe it is just because it is a Black event,” Coleman said, but regardless, he sees less work during the festival.

While Black art and culture are exported and commodified for tourists and brands, the majority-Black communities that shape the city’s identity often remain on the economic margins, facing rising costs of living, gentrification, and exploitation.

The roots of this economic fragility run deep for Black residents. When Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, it devastated New Orleans’ economic base. The city lost tens of thousands of jobs almost overnight, with the labor force shrinking by as much as 95,000 in the first 10 months after the storm. Manufacturing, shipping, and other industries that once anchored the local economy and the Black middle class were crippled, and many never returned.

In the years since, New Orleans has rebuilt itself around tourism and the service sector. Today, hospitality and tourism employ roughly 40% of residents — making it the city’s largest employer and the second-largest industry in Louisiana. The city welcomes over 10 million visitors annually, and tourism generates billions in revenue. But for many low-income residents, this new economic reality is a double-edged sword. Service jobs are often low-wage, seasonal, and lack stability, leaving workers vulnerable to the city’s economic ups and downs. Data also shows that the metro area’s Black-owned businesses do not generate as much revenue as white businesses.

For Black New Orleanians, who make up a significant share of the city’s service workforce, the dependence on tourism is especially fraught. About half of the city’s Black population under 54 years old either has a very low ($7,000 or less) or negative net worth. 

“People here are still looking for outlets to have fun and see themselves appreciated, but if we take it a step further and dissect the intentions of those corporations, like Essence: Are they trying to give us a good experience or are they trying to feed us consumerism?” Hinton said. “If it is consumerism, we just literally can’t afford it.”

Target, Essence Fest, and the complexity of Black tourism

For Black people across the country who aren’t living in places where Black culture is as prominent or celebrated, the draw of Essence Fest makes sense, Hinton and Coleman said. 

In fact, Capital B spoke with half a dozen festival attendees who made that same point. Denise Haynes, who is in her 40s and has attended Essence Fest many times, said she was visiting this year to reunite with friends across the country whom she hadn’t seen in years. “It is honestly one of the few spaces where we can make this happen,” she said, but she didn’t plan on venturing out into the city beyond the festival grounds. 

“I’ve been to New Orleans three times prior to this time, so I’ve done all the touristy things,” the Georgia resident said.

This year, organizers said ticket sales were down, and some vendors opted out of events. Despite the rocky relationship, residents told Capital B that they understand that a poor turnout for Essence is a bad sign for New Orleans. The event has long been the main cornerstone of New Orleans’ summer economy, which drastically dips as sweltering heat slows tourism down.  (Essence Fest has taken place in New Orleans since 1995, besides the 2006 festival taking place in Houston due to Hurricane Katrina damage.) 

In a written statement, addressing one reason why some people failed to show up, festival organizers explained that rejecting Target’s support could bring legal consequences and financial losses because of contract obligations.

“[Essence Fest organizers] messed up this year and that is bad for us,” said Joshua Johnson, an Uber driver. “More than likely, it is going to hurt a lot of people from the local economy.”

Still, Essence Fest is often held up as a model of Black tourism’s potential. 

The festival’s audience is overwhelmingly Black, with Black women making up the vast majority of attendees, and their spending is significant.

The festival has also evolved its approach to community engagement. In 2024, Essence Fest announced $45,000 in grants to local schools. “We are committed to investing in the future of New Orleans and uplifting our young people,” the festival organizers stated at the time.

Following the Baldwin & Co. controversy, festival organizers have adapted their clean zone policies. The clean zone is now significantly reduced from previous years, with the City Council, not festival organizers, maintaining ultimate authority over permits. Importantly, local minority and women-owned businesses can now activate within the clean zone without disruption and free of charge as festival-sanctioned events.

These initiatives suggest an ongoing effort to bridge the gap between commercial success and community benefit, though the fundamental tension between cultural commodification and authentic local empowerment remains unresolved, residents said. 

For Black tourism to truly “make it better,” Hinton said, the city and festival organizers would need to ensure that Black-owned businesses and workers are not just showcased, but meaningfully included in the economic windfall. Until then, in a Black city dependent on tourism, even Black tourism can reinforce the same inequities it promises to address.