"[6] Established to help people with the transition from enslavement to freedom, the bureau's various branch offices attempted to provide educational, housing and medical assistance to their clients, but faced many obstacles due to a "lack of funding, coupled with the politics of race and Reconstruction.

"[7] Chalmette National Cemetery, which had been established roughly a year earlier by the U.S. government to bury Union sailors and soldiers who had died from disease or battle wounds while stationed in Louisiana,[8] was created from land that had initially been used during the war as "a refugee camp for freed slaves and later a burial ground for former slaves, black hospital patients, and both Union and Confederate troops," according to historians at the National Park Service.

Over the years, the river nearby flooded and frequently spilled over the knee-high levee, gradually depositing more and more dirt on top of the existing soil of the cemetery grounds, further obscuring evidence of the burials that had been made there.

[21] There have been ground penetrating radar studies done to try to find evidence of individual graves, but the results were deemed inconclusive due to the burial depths of the bodies.

[23] Additionally, Freedmen's Cemetery interments were reported in death notices and other news coverage of New Orleans area newspapers, including that of Eliza Blondeau.