Southeast Louisiana

While America's egalitarian traditions are often attributed to the British colonies of the Atlantic Coast, it was ironically in a slaveholding colony at the mouth of the Mississippi, far to the west of any early English, democratic, or abolitionist settlement, that those traditions expanded beyond White men. Though Colonial Louisiana did not contribute to our traditions of elections or civil liberties, the influence of Catholicism in the French (and later Spanish) colony birthed early ideas of a society defined by relative interracial egalitarianism, with civil liberties granted to people of color to a degree nearly unprecedented until Reconstruction, and economic power to what has in many ways become a "forgotten" degree.

Both legal and extralegal realities contributed to this state of equality; the French were more concerned with class than race, and though the effects of both eventually combined to create a reality of persecution for Afro-Louisianans, such was not the case as addressed in the Code Noir. Though it only applied to Catholics, it granted residents of all races basic rights, and while interracial marriage and nonwhite participation in government were still forbidden, the code's assurances (as well as the custom of slaves purchasing their freedom) led many to join high society in an atmosphere of tolerance. Moreover, the occurrence of slave revolts, coupled with a lack of white women, forced some degree of integration, to the extent where by 1724, Black men could file suit against whites and by 1726, toll collector Jean Congo was of African descent, demonstrating that by then, some Afro-Louisianans had entered the professional world. (On a less pleasant note, the colony's first executioner, Louis Congo, was also Black, indicating that nonwhites were more or less free to hold any job they were able to.

Later Spanish governments of the region, established after France's defeat in the 1756-63 Seven Years War, continued this tradition of tolerance, accepting not only long-term mixed-race relationships, but also the practice of interracial marriage, aiding in the creation of a mixed-race Creole people. Under a system of plaçage, Creoles were able to inherit the wealth of such white parents, although in the case of Marie Thérèse Metoyer, it could often be the Black parent -- sometimes even the woman -- whose greater wealth gave them more to offer for their childrens' inheritances. While distinct racial groups were nonetheless rigorously distinguished by colonial authorities in an effort at discrimination, such prejudice did not stop one-fourth of New Orleans' houses from being owned by nonwhites, and some Blacks were even able to acquire the wealth necessary to own their own slaves, demonstrating a (temporarily) reduced racial aspect to the practice. All of this encouraged the growth of a prosperous multiracial society, where quite a few clergymen, artists, and businessmen were of African descent, and where voting rights eventually developed for men of all colors...

Conversely, in the British colonies, free men of color were never considered "true" members of society. Though their "black codes" were in name a mere translation of the Code Noir, such "codes" created an early apartheid state, one where "freedom papers" had to be carried wherever one went on pain of re-enslavement. African-descended inhabitants there lacked the legal and social whites those in Louisiana enjoyed, and though Quaker tolerance had enabled many to settle in Philadelphia, they remained a group discouraged from joining the American Army. Consequently, many free Blacks joined the British Army, and the free Black population fell immediately after independence, while many states enacted "Black Laws" that went so far as to restrict the very settlement of their land by African-Americans.

While whites frequently hired free African-Americans on both sides of the "Anglo-French' frontier, the newly independent United States more often employed them as farm managers or bookkeepers, while wealthy farmers and businessmen of African descent tended to be found in Louisiana. In the North, many could only secure "lodging in attics and cellars." In New Orleans, more free Blacks were employed in professional and commercial positions as opposed to manual labor relative to any other city, and many achieved fame; Victor Séjour as a playwright, and Eugène and Daniel Warburg as tomb-sculptors. ( https://lib.lsu.edu/sites/all/files/sc/fpoc/history.html) 

As American settlers flooded Louisiana after Thomas Jefferson's 1803 purchase, fears of a Haiti-style slave rebellion (whose refugees added to the white population) culminated in the passage of increasingly repressive legislation targeting not only the slaves, but also the free people of color. With the influence of the Catholic Church diminishing, Louisiana's aversion to discrimination, never entirely solid, gradually dimished under pressure from federal authorities. Even Jefferson, the longtime fighter for democracy and equality under the law, wished to diminish the participation of free Blacks -- who formed seven percent of the area's population -- in the militia. As early as 1806, a mere three years after the American purchase, territorial authorities had forbade any sign of "disrespect" towards whites.

Around 1830, the era of Creole carpenters and embalmers, nurses and masons gradually came to an end. One of the first signs that times had changed was the deportation of all free people of color not originally from Louisiana, an act which prevented many skilled African-Americans from entering the state and contributing to its nonwhite community's continued prosperity. Starting in 1852, emancipated slaves could no longer remain in Lousiana, and by that point dances and even funeral cars had been segregated for over a decade. By the Civil War, only one in 38 Louisianans was free and of color, bringing an end to the days of Black landowners plowed the fields alongside whites, an era of Afro-Louisianans involved in the church and theatre, a time when Bernard Soulié could net $100,000 in 1850s money from real estate and a Black broker, Thomy Lafon, became one of the states wealthiest men with a worth of $500,000. Gone was opportunity for men such as Soulié and Lafon; it was clear that their descendants would not have the rights they did.

Though the end of the Civil War is often seen as the beginning of an era of freedom for America's African-descended communities, what remained of Louisiana's once-prominent free Black population saw only greater marginalization. After the abolition of slavery during the Civil War, those Creole communities that had maintained their prosperity were largely cast into the same mold as that of freedmen, leaving them subject to the same horrific abuse, discrimination, and terror as their fellow African-Americans. Ironically, a war for freedom became the final death knell of one of early America's few havens of racial tolerance, as the newly "liberated" population attempted to either manage their own small plots or join the unequal contracts of sharecropping. Illiterate and forced to sell their product for low prices, many entered a lifetime of debt they could not escape. (https://daily.jstor.org/the-free-people-of-color-of-pre-civil-war-new-orleans/, https://aaregistry.org/story/new-orleans-founded-creole-people-affirmed/)

At the same time, despite Louisiana having briefly elected a Black governer after Reconstruction, local politicians intending to prevent his party's return to power schemed to further their own power through suppressing the African-American vote. Not only were African-Americans prevented from advocating for their communities through the political process, but there were attempts to shut them out of public life altogether. In the state of Plessy v. Ferguson, African-Americans were long banned from the using the same public transport, entering the same sections of stores, or even living alongside whites. Cemeteries and playgrounds were reserved for one group or the other, while even the Catholic Church was made to establish distinct congregations. Even in traditionally "liberal" Southern Lousiana, social interactions between different races nearly vanished, and by 1900, it had become the norm for some businesses to exclude African-Americans altogether.

Lynching became frequent too, with 549 identified attacks in the state, 4 of which occurred in Saint John, 4 in Saint Mary, and 1 in Plaquemines. Despite this, the actual tolls are far greater, with the true number of lynchings believed to be at least 25% higher than the figures so far uncovered. Even then, the economic and social marginalization faced by the African-American community almost certainly created excess deaths from sources such as malnutrition or neglect, leaving the true toll unimaginable. ( https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/explore/louisiana)(  https://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/news/local/2015/02/15/lynchings-bloody-terror-toll-studied/23458327/) 

As a consequence of such persecution, the proportion of once-majority African-Americans decreased in the decades following the Civil War in a de facto example of ethnic cleansing. In 1910, census records show a statewide population that was 56.8 percent white and 42.1 percent African-American, the sum of the inhabitants being 1,656,388 individuals. In 1890, another census taken during the post-Civil War nadir of Civil Rights, the population was nearly an even split with 1,000 more African-Americans than whites in an enumeration of 1,118,588. In twenty years, the era of the early Great Migration, the African-American population grew slowly from 559,000 to 714,000 -- a 28 percent increase. For whites, these same figures were respectively 558,000 and 941,000 -- a massive 69 percent increase, or a near doubling. Such drastic differences indicate the extreme degree of persecution, one where an entire fourth of the state's potential African-American population was forced to flee to another state.

These figures are partially attributed to the out-of-state born population being 126,000 among whites and only 70,000 among African-Americans, but even that number does not explain the white population growing by 383,000 and the African-American population growing by a mere 155,000. Even accounting for the out-of-staters, the figures of growth become 257,000 and 85,000 respectively, meaning that the white population increased thricefold relative to the African-American population. Clearly, in an environment of great population growth, the region of Louisiana Moreover, this new proportion of African-Americans left them in a position where, even in the event of a full recovery of rights, a now-separated white majority would hold all practical political power, making it difficult for their voices to be heard. Even worse, much of the Black professional class disappeared, with businessmen, and cultural figures searching for a new life elsewhere. Not only were relatively few Afro-Louisianans left, but those who stayed were disproportionately of a working class with no clear leaders. ( https://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/41033935v15-21ch3.pdf) 

Though formal segregation declined from the 1948 desegregation of the armed forces, Louisiana's transition to equality was gradual, and there is no definite day on which the state can said to have been "integrated," to the extent that the state ever truly left its racist legacy behind. When the Baton Rouge bus boycott occurred in 1953, the resolution was to maintain the first two rows as reserved for white passengers for some time, and in 1960 a massive crisis occurred in New Orleans regarding school segregation half a decade after Brown v Board. Nonetheless, New Orleans was ahead of its flock; even into the 1970s, 45 of 64 parishes were considered to lack a genuine integration plan. As late as 1998, Louisiana was regularly ordered to compensate its HCBUs due to past neglect, yet in a setback for economic opportunity, the decline of cotton destroyed an industry that had once provided a basic living for locals. With the state continuing to endure economic malaise, social tensions -- such as racism -- could still undo the progress made in prior decades. Meanwhile, the state remains grossly unequal, with U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy remarking that the now only one-third of Louisianans who are African-American are the source of its terrible maternal mortality rates. Indeed, four Black mothers die for every white mother, and two Black babies for every white baby -- a figure even starker than the national average, where three Black mothers die for every white mother. ( https://64parishes.org/entry/jim-crowsegregation)(  https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/cassidy-defends-statements-louisianas-black-maternal-health-statistics-rcna30166)