Legacies: Louisiana's "Creoles of Color" after the Civil War

Although most African-American planters, like their white counterparts, were ruined by the Civil War, other free people of color prospered in the war's wake. In politics, especially, they emerged as the leaders for Louisiana's black population. During Reconstruction, many were elected to the state legislature, and for a short time, P.B.S. Pinchback, the son of a white Georgian planter and his slave, served as Louisiana's governor; he was later elected to Congress. Despite their common political situation, though, English-speaking blacks such as Pinchback were not readily accepted as leaders by a Creole elite who had their own aspirations to leadership. These two camps crystalized around two newspapers, one started by Pinchback and one by the prominent physician Charles Roudanez. The latter's La Tribune de la Nouvelle Orleans / The New Orleans Tribune was a French-English newspaper published from 1864-1870. The first black daily newspaper in the United States, it came to serve as the voice of the Creoles of Color (a term adopted after the Civil War and still used today to designate people descended from free people of color). Pinchback's Louisianan, in its various forms, enjoyed a longer run from 1870 to 1882 and was identified with English-speaking blacks.

Such ethnicity-based distinctions lessened somewhat in the face of Jim Crow laws of the late nineteenth century. As a result of these discriminatory regulations, black political influence waned, but even then the descendants of free people of color, who could still remember the so-called "golden age" of the early nineteenth century, continued to challenge racial prejudices and segregation laws. The most famous case was that of Homer Plessy, who attempted to ride a New Orleans streetcar for whites only. The Comité des Citoyens, which was made up primarily of French speaking-free people of color, organized a legal suit over the incident that came to be known as the landmark case Plessy v. Ferguson. The efforts ultimately backfired, however, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the "separate but equal" doctrine, a view it would adhere to until 1954. Creoles of Color continued to cooperate with other African Americans to fight injustice and also persuade progressive whites to support black institutions, such as Xavier and Dillard Universities and the Flint-Goodrich Hospital and Nursing School. In the twentieth century, attorney A. P. Tureaud filed the suit that led to the end of school segregation in New Orleans. His son, A. P. Tureaud, Jr., became the first black student to enroll at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Another descendant of free people of color, Ernest N. "Dutch" Morial, became New Orleans's first black mayor in 1977.

We can also trace the legacy of Louisiana's free people of color in what may be the state's greatest contribution to the world—jazz. Combining European and African musical traditions, men such as Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (better known as Jelly Roll Morton), Alphonse Picou, Jimmy Palao, Manuel Perez, Freddie Keppard, and later Sidney Bechet created a distinctive sound that became synonymous with Louisiana and influenced countless musicians of all races. This quintessentially American art form, which for more than a century has embraced not only diverse peoples but also diverse ideas, is a fitting monument to free people of color. In jazz, as the late Dave Brubeck put it, "Kinship doesn't come from skin color. It's in your soul and your mind."

Michael Taylor, Curator of Books, LSU Libraries