“There is no State in the Union, hardly any spot of like size on the globe, where the man of color has lived so intensely, made so much progress, been of such historical importance and yet about whom so comparatively little is known”
-- Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson, 1916
Mary Gehman's seminal work The Free People of Color of New Orleans was the first book to explore and define this third stratum of antebellum Louisiana society between African slaves and whites of European descent.
Gehman's ground-breaking book, first published in 1994 and still in print, is an easy-read history of influential free people of color in New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana who were free long before the Civil War. Much scholarship and publishing have since been published by others on the topic. The book includes detailed end notes, bibliography, a list of surnames, and an index.
Freed from the 1730's on, these people emerging in French and Spanish colonial Louisiana, formed a large and powerful community. Some of them owned wealthy estates and others dominated trades such as leatherworking, cigar-making and carpentry. On the eve of the Civil War, these Creoles of Color numbered in the thousands, owned $15 million of property in New Orleans and were active in the slave trade; thus some of them fought with the Confederacy.
Gehman's book explains contributions of free people of color in education, politics, religion, journalism, art, etc.; the laws that tried to keep them in their place; and the major role of placage, liaisons between free women of color and white men. It discusses the ongoing effect of early free people of color on New Orleans today, as well as issues of race and the Creole controversy resulting in their unique history. The distinctive culture of New Orleans lies in its Creoles and their history, often ignored by both black and white.
Gehman's ground-breaking book, first published in 1994 and still in print, is an easy-read history of influential free people of color in New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana who were free long before the Civil War. Much scholarship and publishing have since been published by others on the topic. The book includes detailed end notes, bibliography, a list of surnames, and an index.
Freed from the 1730's on, these people emerging in French and Spanish colonial Louisiana, formed a large and powerful community. Some of them owned wealthy estates and others dominated trades such as leatherworking, cigar-making and carpentry. On the eve of the Civil War, these Creoles of Color numbered in the thousands, owned $15 million of property in New Orleans and were active in the slave trade; thus some of them fought with the Confederacy.
Gehman's book explains contributions of free people of color in education, politics, religion, journalism, art, etc.; the laws that tried to keep them in their place; and the major role of placage, liaisons between free women of color and white men. It discusses the ongoing effect of early free people of color on New Orleans today, as well as issues of race and the Creole controversy resulting in their unique history. The distinctive culture of New Orleans lies in its Creoles and their history, often ignored by both black and white.
"The first book (1994) to uncover this unique aspect of southern history."
-- Google Books
Gens de Couleur LibresBy the mid-1830s free blacks owned $2.5 million in property in New Orleans. They had their own schools, usually operated as small, private institutions in educators' homes. The earliest recorded school was in 1813 operated by G. Dorefeuille, a free man of color. Some of the young men and women were sent to France or schools in northern United States to be educated. At the French opera and theater they had their box seats in the second tier, on Sundays they attended mass at the St. Louis Cathedral, and throughout the week they kept a busy social schedule of balls, parties and meetings of benevolent groups. They acted in the first theater, founded in 1793 by Madame Derosier of St. Domingue, attended traveling circuses, and took an avid interest in the dramatic and musical arts of the city.
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Free People of ColorAntebellum New Orleans was home to thousands of urbane, educated and well-to-do free blacks.
The French called them les gens de colour libre, the free people of color. After the Civil War they were known as Creoles of color, shortened today to simply Creoles. Theirs was an ambitious status, sharing the French language, Catholic religion and European education with the elite whites, who were often blood relatives. |
People of ColorMany descendants of the free people of color today are unaware of their personal history and the events that formed it. Their parents and grandparents in some cases simply did not talk openly about their family background.
To assist researchers, this book contains a list of surnames of such families that appear in New Orleans records both before and after the Haitian Revolution 1810 which brought a large influx of free blacks to Louisiana. |