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a CREOLE article
Cultures
of Acadiana |
Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, May 25,1999
Free people of color stood between social classes
'There is no spot where the man of color has been of such importance'
by Jim Bradshaw
Many of the free people of color who came to Louisiana, particularly after the slave insurrections in Saint-Domingue, were fine craftsman and artisans who established reputations as being among the finest of the silversmiths, furniture makers, woodworkers, master tailors, and masters of other crafts of the genteel era. Others were poets, dramatists, and artists of the first order.
As the Jesuit priest Charles O'Neill points out in his introduction to a translation of "Our People and Our History," written in French in 1911 by Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes, "The pen of many a historian and novelist has sketched the portrait of the French-speaking Louisiana gentleman.... What is not so well known is that many a French-language writer of the 19th-century Louisiana was partly of African ancestry. They shared neither the degradation of the slave. They stood between - or rather apart - sharing the cultivated tastes of the upper caste and the painful humiliation attached to the race of the enslaved."
O'Neill says that free people of color were found in Louisiana as early as 1725, when Raphael, a free black man from Martinique, married Marie Gaspart from Bruges in Flanders. OnNov.27,1927, Jean Mingo, a free black man, married Therese, a slave belonging to a M. de Cantillon, with permission of the plantation manager.
"From then on church records and civil archives mention the presence of the free persons of color," O'Neill writes. "Some entered the colony as free people, some were freed in recognition of merit and loyalty. Some had been slaves, but had been given freedom by their white lover or parent; some had purchased their freedom by extra work during leisure hours.
"During the Spanish regime, easy emancipation prevailed and the free population of color continued to grow. The census of 1788 showed 1,701 free Negroes in a total population of 43,111 in Louisiana and West Florida."
Indeed, during the Spanish era, free men of color enjoyed what O'Neill calls "a lively social life in New Orleans." According to his research, the city's first theater had mulatto stars.
"The average white accepted this middle layer of society between himself and black slaves, and dealt with its members," the Jesuit continues. "Yet the white population had two complaints. They suspected that the free mulatto might promote slave discontent and revolt. They admired the beauty of the cafe-au-lait quadroons and octaroons, but felt that the liaisons constantly undermined the morals of young white males."
Throughout Louisiana history, free black men were used in the military. On several occasions, the French gave freedom to slave volunteers in exchange for military service against the Indians. The Spanish government of Louisiana organized a militia company composed entirely of pardos y morenos, free men of color. They participated in the capture of Baton Rouge and Pensacola during the campaign led by Gov. Bernardo de Galvez against the British during the American War for Independence. During the War of 1812, Louisiana's Battalion of Free Men of Color was unique in the United States as what O'Neill describes as "the only Negro volunteer militia with its own line officers." Andrew Jackson welcomed black troops during the Battle of New Orleans.
But, O'Neill says, "Valor and prowess in the field did not win expected American rights in the constitution and legislature of the new state. Only 21-year-old white males could vote and be elected representatives."
Nonetheless, "several persons of color amassed outstanding fortunes, particularly in real estate," O'Neill reports, and "without ever according political equality (to them) the Louisiana Supreme Court steadily protected the middle position of the free persons of color against the more militant whites."
The abolitionist movement did as much to undermine the status of gens de couleur libres as any other social movement. "The fear of slave rebellion was ever present," O'Neill writes and the free Negro was in the mid of (whites) the most likely leader of any such uprising. Thus between 1830 and 1860 social pressure and legislative action increased against emancipations, against immigration of free Negroes, and in favor of colonizing (free black people who were already here) outside of the state.
"In the Reconstruction era, education and savoir-faire led the free persons of color into leadership posts ahead of the newly freed slaves. Active in politics and the press, these leaders surpassed their counterparts in other states," according to O'Neill. But the campaign for disenfranchisement and for segregation that came after Reconstruction brought what the Jesuit calls "a tidal wave of emotion and laws" that undid the position of gens de couleur libres along with thhoise of men who had been slaves.
About Louisiana, O'Neill writes, "Two decades after the wave had struck, black historian Dunbar-Nelson wrote: '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.