Oscar James Dunn

Dunn was born into slavery around 1822, trained as a plasterer and painter, and taught violin. He ran with Henry Clay Warmoth in 1868, and the ticket won 64,941 votes to 38,046. As acting governor for 39 days in 1871 he was locked out of the governor's office by Warmoth's secretary after the two men fell out. He died on November 22, 1871, after a sudden illness. Four of seven examining doctors suspected murder, but his family refused an autopsy, so poisoning was never confirmed. As many as 50,000 people reportedly lined Canal Street for the funeral.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 — 0.3 mi
  New Orleans' oldest surviving city of the dead, opened in 1789 after the fire of 1788 and the burial place of Homer Plessy, reachable only on a guided tour since March 2015.
• Congo Square — 0.5 mi
  The 2.35-acre corner of Louis Armstrong Park where, from 1817, New Orleans confined Sunday dancing by enslaved people to one place, and where crowds of hundreds gathered to drum, dance and trade.
• The Historic New Orleans Collection — 0.7 mi
  A French Quarter museum and research center founded in 1966, whose 2015 Purchased Lives exhibition took on New Orleans' place as the largest slave market in antebellum America.
• The Cabildo — 0.8 mi
  The Spanish town hall on Jackson Square, finished in 1799, where Louisiana changed flags in 1803 and where the state Supreme Court sat in the same room until 1910, Plessy v. Ferguson among its cases.

More markers nearby

• Bernard de Marigny — 0.3 mi
• Homer Adolph Plessy — 0.3 mi
• Déterrer Storyville — 0.3 mi
• Marie Laveau — 0.3 mi