|
a CREOLE article
Cultures
of Acadiana |
Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, May 25, 1999
Code Noir opened opportunities found only in Louisiana
by Jim Bradshaw
By 1724, there were enough slaves, free men of color, and people of mixed blood in the Louisiana colony that Gov. Jean Baptiste Bienville found it necessary to enact special legislation for them. The regulations were called the Code Noir, and they generally followed the slave code then in effect in Saint-Domingue.
The code dealt mainly with the slaves, but it also restricted the activities of free Negroes, ordered all Jews out of the colony, and forbade "the exercise of any other religion, other than Catholic." It required that all slaves be baptized in the Roman Catholic faith and that slave marriages be performed according top the sacraments pf the Church. In all other matters, slaves were without rights. Their property belonged to their masters and they could not be witnesses or otherwise participate in legal trials, except in cases where they had violated the slave code or Louisiana law. The code also limited the rights of masters to free slaves. Freedom could be granted only with the approval of the Superior Council.
Many of the articles of the code protected slaves, providing that they must be fed and clothed, cared for in sickness and old age, and that they could not be shackled or tortured in any ways. It also forbade slaves owned by many different masters to assemble, forbade them to carry weapons or marry whites, and required that they have permission from their masters to sell anything.
But the final article of the Louisiana code set it apart from others. it read in part, "We grant to manumitted slaves the same rights, privileges, and immunities which are enjoyed by freeborn persons. It is our pleasure that their merit in having acquired freedom shall produce in their favor, not only in regard to their persons, but also to their property, the same effect which our subjects derive from the happy circumstances of their having been born here."
Louisiana's black code reinforce a three-tiered social system in Louisiana, with a white upper class, a black servant and labored class, and a class of free blacks in the middle who enjoyed most of the legal rights and privileges of the white class, but few of its social advantages.
As Claude Oubre and Roscoe Leonard point out in their essay, "Free and Proud: St. Landry's Gens de Couleur" in the book "Louisiana Tapestry," another consequence of the Code Noir section dealing with free black people was that "...only in Louisiana could a slave hope that freedom bring full citizenship rights. Therefore, although there were free blacks in all southern states, those in Louisiana enjoyed a status not accorded to free blacks in other states."
One of those advantages was the ownership of property, and free black people took advantage of that whenever they could. Many of them came to Acadiana in the 1770's after the Spanish government offered free land in the Attakapas, Opelousas, and Natchitoches areas.
According to Oubre and Leonard, "In order to encourage settlement of the newly acquired colony, Spanish governor Don Alejandro O'Reilly issued a land ordinance...(under which) settlers could acquire liberal grants of land.... (An applicant could obtain a grant of land 42 arpents long by 42 arpents deep if he could show that he owned 100 head of tame cattle, some horses and sheep, and two slaves to look after them. If they owned more livestock and slaves (they) could claim a larger grant, not to exceed one square league."
Land claimants included whites , free black people, and free people of color, all of whom had to meet the requirements for both stock ownership and for slave ownership.
But, Oubre and Leonard point out, "Since the land claimant was not required to establish residence on the prairie, many settlers from the river parishes sent their older sons along with the slaves and animals prescribed by the article to establish for their claims. It appears that some fathers sent their unemancipated mulatto sons to the Opelousas district with the promise of manumission and stock (once the claim was established).
Because of the slave requirement, "the possibility of slaves being owned by members of their own race or by persons of mixed racial background increased. Although slave ownership by Negroes or free persons of color existed in a limited degree in other states, the practice was far more prevalent on the Louisiana frontier."