Creoles of color
The Creoles of color are a historic ethnic group of Creole people in Louisiana and southern Mississippi and Alabama, especially in the city of New Orleans.
History
During Louisiana’s colonial period, Créole referred to people born in Louisiana who had ancestors from elsewhere; i.e., all natives other than Native Americans. First used by French colonists to distinguish themselves from foreign-born settlers, and later as distinct from Anglo-American settlers, colonial documents show the term "Créole" was used variously at different times to refer to white people, mixed-race people, and black people, including slaves.[1]
Mixed-race Creoles of color became identified as a distinct ethnic group, Gens de couleur libres (free persons of color), prior to the 19th century. These free persons of color and their descendants often enjoyed many of the privileges of whites, including property ownership and formal education. During the antebellum period, their society was structured along class lines. While it was not illegal, it was a social taboo for Creoles of color to marry slaves and was rarely done. Some of the most prosperous Creoles of color owned slaves themselves. Other Creoles of color such as Thomy Lafon used their position to support the abolitionist cause. Another Creole of color, Francis E. Dumas, emancipated all of his slaves and organized them into a company in the Second Regiment of the Louisiana Native Guards.[2]
Some historians suggest that New Orleans was the cradle of the civil rights movement in the United States, due to the earliest efforts of Creoles to integrate the military en masse.[3] W.C.C. Claiborne, appointed by Thomas Jefferson to be governor of the Territory of Orleans, formally accepted delivery of the French colony on December 20, 1803. Free men of color had been members of the militia for decades under both Spanish and French control of the colony of Louisiana. They volunteered their services and pledged their loyalty to Claiborne and to their newly adopted country.[4]
The militia of Creoles of color would, a decade later, again volunteer to defend their city and country at the Battle of New Orleans, when the British began landing troops on American soil outside the city in December, 1814.[5] But in early 1804, the new U.S. administration in New Orleans, under Governor Claiborne, was faced with a dilemma previously unknown in the United States, i.e., the integration of the military by incorporating entire units of previously established "colored" militia. [6] In a February 20, 1804 letter to Claiborne from Secretary of War Henry Dearborn wrote that "it would be prudent not to increase the Corps, but to diminish, if it could be done without giving offense." [7]
Beginning with the United States acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase and especially after the American Civil War, many Creoles of color lost their status under the binary system of the United States. Its southern society had classified people with any visible African ancestry as black and second class, because slavery had become a racial caste. Former free people of color were relegated to the ranks of the masses of emancipated slaves. With their advantage of having been better educated than the new freedmen, many Creoles of color were active in the struggle for civil rights.[8][9] But white Democrats regained political power across the former Confederate states by the late nineteenth century and began to re-impose white supremacy. To achieve this, they established legal racial segregation under a Jim Crow system and disfranchised most blacks through voter registration and electoral rules, often part of new state constitutions.
Creoles of color suffered a major reversal when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against them with Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, ruling that "separate but equal" accommodations were constitutional.
Today
Louisiana's Governor Bobby Jindal signed into law on June 14, 2013, Act 276, creating the "prestige" license plate, "I'm Creole," honoring Louisiana's Creole contributions and heritage.[10]
Contribution to the arts
Music
Some Creoles of color trained as classical musicians in nineteenth-century Louisiana. They would often study with players associated with the French Opera House, and some traveled to Paris to complete their studies. Creole composers of that time are discussed in Music and Some Highly Musical People, by James Monroe Trotter, and Nos Hommes et Notre Histoire, by Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes.
Notable classical Creole musicians
- Basile Barès
- Edmund Dédé
- Laurent Dubuclet
- Andrus Espree
- Lucien-Léon Guillaume Lambert
- Charles Lucien Lambert
- Sidney Lambert
- Victor-Eugene McCarty
- Samuel Snaër
Jazz musicians
New Orleans-area Creoles of Color were active in defining the earliest days of jazz.[11][12]
- George Baquet
- Sidney Bechet
- Barney Bigard
- Louis Nelson Delisle
- Freddie Keppard
- Jelly Roll Morton
- Manuel Perez
- Jimmy Palao
- Alphonse Picou
- Armand J. Piron
- Omer Simeon
- Lorenzo Tio
See also
- List of Louisiana Creoles
- Louisiana Creole people
- Louisiana French
- Louisiana Creole French
- Cane River Creole National Historical Park
- Melrose Plantation
- Faubourg Marigny
- Tremé
- Little New Orleans
- French Town
- Magnolia Springs, Alabama
- Gens de couleur
Footnotes
- ↑ Kein, Sybil. "Creole: the history and legacy of Louisiana's free people of color". Louisiana State University Press, 2009, p. 73.
- ↑ Shirley Elizabeth Thompson, Exiles at Home: The Struggle to Become American in Creole New Orleans, Harvard University Press, 2009, pg. 162
- ↑ Eaton, Fernin. "Louisiana's Free People of Color-Digitization Grant-letter in support". Retrieved June 7, 2013.
- ↑ Carter, Clarence (1940). The Territorial Papers of the United States, Vol. IX, The Territory of Orleans. p. 174.
- ↑ Eaton, Fernin. "1811 Slave Uprising-Governor on Trial: Claiborne in His Own Words". Salon Publique, Pitot House, November 7, 2011, p. 11-13. Retrieved June 7, 2013.
- ↑ Eaton, Fernin. "1811 Slave Uprising, etc". Salon Publique, Pitot House, November 7, 2011. Retrieved June 7, 2013.
- ↑ Rowland, Dunbar (1917). Official Letter Books of W.C.C. Claiborne, 1801-1816. Mississippi Dept. of Archives & History. pp. Vol II, p. 54–55.
- ↑ Kathe Managan, The Creole Community and the Struggle for Civil Rights, lameca.org, Accessed November 22, 2013.
- ↑ Adam Fairclough, Race & Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972, University of Georgia Press, 2008, pp. 1-21
- ↑ http://www.legis.la.gov/legis/BillInfo.aspx?s=13RS&b=HB147&sbi=y
- ↑ Charles B. Hersch, Subversive Sounds: Race and the Birth of Jazz in New Orleans, University of Chicago Press, 2007, pg. 98-109
- ↑ Scott DeVeaux, Gary Giddins, Jazz, wwnorton.com, Accessed November 22, 2013
Further reading
- Douglas, Nick (2013). Finding Octave: The Untold Story of Two Creole Families and Slavery in Louisiana. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
- Jacques Anderson, Beverly (2011). Cherished Memories: Snapshots of Life and Lessons from a 1950s New Orleans Creole Village. iUniverse.com.
- Malveaux, Vivian (2009). Living Creole and Speaking It Fluently. AuthorHouse.
- Kein, Sybil (2009). Creole: the history and legacy of Louisiana's free people of color. Louisiana State University Press.
- Jolivette, Andrew (2007). Louisiana Creoles: Cultural Recovery and Mixed-Race Native American Identity. Lexington Books.
- Thompson, Shirley Elizabeth (2009). Exiles at Home: The Struggle to Become American in Creole New Orleans. Harvard University Press.
- Martin, Munro, Britton, Celia (2012). American Creoles: The Francophone Caribbean and the American South. Liverpool University Press.
- Gehman, Mary (2009). The Free People of Color of New Orleans: An Introduction. Margaret Media, Inc.
- Clark, Emily (2013). The Strange History of the American Quadroon: Free Women of Color in the Revolutionary Atlantic World. The University of North Carolina Press.
- Dominguez, Virginia (1986). White by Definition: Social Classification in Creole Louisiana. Rutgers University Press.
- Cossé Bell, Caryn (2004). Revolution, Romanticism, and the Afro-Creole Protest Tradition in Louisiana 1718-1868. Louisiana State University Press.
- Anthony, Arthe A. (2012). Picturing Black New Orleans: A Creole Photographer's View of the Early Twentieth Century. University Press of Florida.
External links
- Too White To Be Black, Too Black To Be White: The New Orleans Creole
- Creole Poems
- Cane River Creole
- Zydeco: Creole Music and Culture in Rural Louisiana
- Zydeco Nation
- Test Suggests 'Black' Man Is Really Not
- Charlie LeDuff: My Detroit Story Part Three, Black Like Me
- Quadroons for Beginners: Discussing the Suppressed and Sexualized History of Free Women of Color with Author Emily Clark
- I Am What I Say I Am: Racial and Cultural Identity among Creoles of Color in New Orleans
- The creole people of New Orleans
- Gowing up Creole in Los Angeles, CA
- Michelle Covington: The Great Migration and Creole Cooking
- The Creole Connection
- After Katrina, transplanted Creoles vow to keep culture alive
- Bay Area Grammy Nominee Represents Local Creole Community
- Bayou Talk Newspaper
- Finding Agnes