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Jun 28, 2024 · On January 1, 1913, Louis Armstrong attended a New Year’s Eve parade and shot six blanks from his stepfather’s .38 revolver. A policeman arrested him on the spot. Later that day, Judge Andrew Wilson sentenced the young boy to the Colored Waif’s Home, a reform school on the outskirts of New Orleans.
Louis Armstrong received his first formal music training at the Colored Waifs Home for boys, a regrettably named juvenile detention facility where a court sent him after he fired a pistol in the air on New Year’s Eve of 1912.
At the age of six, Armstrong started attending the Fisk School for Boys, a school that accepted black children in the racially segregated school system of New Orleans. Armstrong lived with his mother and sister during this time and worked for the Karnoffskys.
Louis Armstrong, in the middle of the back row, with the band at the Colored Waifs Home not long after he left the Fisk School. Courtesy of the University of New Orleans. Left to right: a young Louis Armstrong, his mother Mary (called Mayann), and his sister Beatrice.
Mar 19, 2006 · Before Milne was built in the 1930's, part of it was called the Colored Waif's Home for Boys, the institution where Armstrong was incarcerated at age 11 after firing a pistol to celebrate New...
On New Year’s Eve 1912, he was arrested and sent to the Colored Waif’s Home for Boys. There, under the tutelage of Peter Davis, he learned how to properly play the cornet, eventually becoming the leader of the Waif’s Home Brass Band. Released from the Waif’s Home in 1914, Armstrong set his sights on becoming a professional musician.
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In honor of Louis Armstrong's birthday, we bring you the story of his stint in the Colored Waif's Home for Boys and his first Cornet.
