The family trees of many people in Louisiana tend to have missing branches. There may be a baptism certificate for a great-great-uncle at the local Catholic church, perhaps a marriage certificate later and a deed to property and records of one or two children-but there the line ends. No one knows what happened to this distant relative and his heirs. An elderly relative might vaguely remember hearing that long ago many acquaintances migrated to Mexico while others shipped out for France or Haiti, if they had other family residing there.
Little if anything has ever been written on these elusive émigrés. They lost all contact with their families in Louisiana. Their descendants' names remain blank lines on genealogical charts, popular today with a new generation researching ancestral history. This is especially true for many Creoles who descended from free people of color - popularly called "les gens de couleur libre."
Mixed with French, Spanish, African, Indian or even German, Irish, or Italian bloodlines, the free people of color lived a tenuous existence in a caste-like system of antebellum Louisiana divided among three groups: whites in the upper caste, black slaves in the lower, and the free people of color in between. These Creoles were free to move about as they pleased, conduct commerce and trade, buy and sell property - including real estate and slaves - as well as serve in the militia and attend cathedral, opera, theater, and Free Masons meetings. Political office and the vote, however, were denied, and they could not intermarry with whites.
In the 1850s, as abolitionists infiltrated Louisiana's churches and social institutions with the message of serious conflict between North and South, free people of color became increasingly more of a liability to Louisiana's white population. Free people of color were generally well to do, well educated, and dominated trades such as leather working, iron making, and cigar rolling. They also had their own journalists, writers, educators and orators. They owned significant holdings in real estate, invested heavily in local banks, and lent money to many whites. But their financial and social clout was about to change.
In the 1850s, as abolitionists infiltrated Louisiana's churches and social institutions with the message of serious conflict between North and South, free people of color became increasingly more of a liability to Louisiana's white population. Free people of color were generally well to do, well educated, and dominated trades such as leather working, iron making, and cigar rolling. They also had their own journalists, writers, educators and orators. They owned significant holdings in real estate, invested heavily in local banks, and lent money to many whites. But their financial and social clout was about to change.
Fearing an alliance between free people of color and rebellious slaves, Louisiana's whites, who were then a minority, attempted to reassert their authority and limit freedoms once taken for granted among free blacks. New regulations required free people of color to register with local municipal officers so that their numbers, locations, and professions could be monitored. It became illegal for them to assemble in groups of more than a few people and they were not allowed to leave Louisiana without permission. A white sponsor was required whenever they conducted business and they were obligated to carry papers proving their free status at all times. As if these restrictions were not humiliating enough, free blacks now had to observe the 9 p.m. curfew imposed on slaves.
Understandably, leaders among the free people of color were outraged by these restrictions. In response, many began liquidating their real estate and business holdings and transferring the proceeds to foreign banks. Free blacks with young families and long futures ahead of them saw greater opportunity beyond the borders of Louisiana and prepared to leave.
Mexico: A Land of Opportunity
One of the few written accounts of this migration is mentioned by Rudoiphe Lucien Desdunes, a free man of color, in his book Nos Hommes et notre Histoire published in 1911: "[In 1855] Mr. [Lolo] Mansion generously donated a part of his fortune for the relief of our people, and a number of them profited by his generosity, escaping the hardships of prejudice. Mexico and Haiti opened their doors to them."
The New Orleans Daily Delta newspaper of January 15, 1860, ran an article on the "exodus of free persons for Mexico and Haiti." The 1994 book, Creoles of Color in the Bayou Country, by Carl A. Brasseaux and others, states that in 1870 "many... Opelousas and Attakapas expatriates chose to join the free black colony near Veracruz. Some became merchants, engaging in trade with New Orleans."
It is well established that many such people went to Mexico, but there is little if any information about what part of Mexico they settled in, what conditions were like for them in a foreign land, or whether or not they retained their Louisiana culture and French language. Could there really be a Louisiana Creole community in Mexico? A thorough search of a book on black history in Mexico, La Poblacion Negra de Mexico (The Black Population of Mexico) by Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran, along with his various other works on the subject, makes no reference to free blacks from Louisiana.
Answers must lie then in primary sources: civil and church records interviews with Mexicans who have Louisiana roots, and observations about their culture and cuisine. That is a project I have undertaken, making several trips to Mexico, collecting data from national and regional records, and meeting with Mexicans who are aware that their ancestors came from Louisiana but with no knowledge as to why. They have no connection to distant cousins still residing in the state.
The stories of these Mexican-Creole descendants are poignant, laced with myths and cobbled together from oral histories with a need to recreate a past not clearly conveyed by their great-grandparents. Their ancestors, émigrés from persecution, left a painful situation in the United States in hopes of giving their children a new life free from racial tension and inferiority. Some descendants believe their Louisiana ancestors fought in the French Army during the invasion of Mexico under the self-appointed emperor Maximilian (1862-1867), although no proof exists; others insist the lure of Mexico was strictly economic. They attribute the cutting of all ties with family in the United States to poor communication via letters or expensive travel of that era. Some assume the whole family moved, leaving behind no relatives. A few mention aunts or uncles who moved to California but rarely wrote or visited thereafter.
There are stories of Mexican land grants signed by President Benito Juarez, or permits to leave the United States signed by Abraham Lincoln, but these exist in memory, not fact. Louisiana's offspring in Mexico are today fully acculturated Mexicans, many having married local people of Spanish or Italian descent. Because Mexicans use the surnames of both their mother and father, in that order, one hears among them the combination of one French and one Spanish surname. Jose Olivier Garcia, for example, which indicates a mother from Louisiana and a father from Mexico. The families' facial features, hair, and skin tone reflect the same wide range of racial and ethnic mixes seen in Louisiana.
Fortunately, verified information about Louisiana émigrés to Mexico does exist in church and civil records. Vestiges of Louisiana Creole heritage remain, such as the cultivating of okra and use of it in gumbo, above-ground cemeteries, and family reunions that reinforce familial ties. Though the French language is no longer spoken, there is still pride in having come from French stock. Most are curious about their Louisiana history and would like to reestablish ties with family in the state. They are unaware of the role that race played in their ancestors' decision to leave their homeland. They are somewhat confused as to why race continues to separate people in Louisiana and why their American relatives, whose heritage is predominantly European, would be identified as African Americans.
Defining Creole
The term Creole is difficult for this community to associate with themselves since Creoles in Mexico no longer exist. Contrary to the Louisiana definition of Creole as anyone born in the colony, historically Mexican Creoles were children or grandchildren of the Spaniards sent by the king of Spain to rule Mexico during its nearly three centuries as a Spanish colony. These Creoles were a ruling and landowning class slightly below that of the Peninsulares, the king's appointees from Spain, and vastly superior to the more common mestizos, the combination of Spanish, black, Indian, or any other ethnicity In modern Mexico, the term Creole is relegated to historical documents. In that sense, even the title of this article would likely be misunderstood in Mexico today.
Records in Mexico and information imparted by the families reveal a history of migration back and forth from Louisiana by several different groups in direct response to politics of the time. The first wave left Louisiana in the late 1850s to settle along Mexico's Gulf coast between the port cities of Tampico and Veracruz. Some returned after the Civil War when Reconstruction eased the plight of free people of color. The second wave of migration to Mexico - often the children of the previous generation - occurred in the 1880s through the end of the 19th century as racial segregation became institutionalized in Louisiana.
Both waves of migration had two distinct components: urban and rural. In the cities of Tampico and Veracruz, Louisiana's Creoles who were already artisans and merchants, previously well established in New Orleans, set up bakeries, shoe factories, tailoring shops, and restaurants, or found employment as carpenters, construction workers, and iron workers. Others became professionals: teachers, musicians, engineers, and import-exporters.
A scholar researches descendants of Creole émigrés who fled racial prejudice
by Mary Gehman
Published in Louisiana Cultural Vistas,winter 2001-2002.
The family trees of many people in Louisiana tend to have missing branches. There may be a baptism certificate for a great-great-uncle at the local Catholic church, perhaps a marriage certificate later and a deed to property and records of one or two children-but there the line ends. No one knows what happened to this distant relative and his heirs. An elderly relative might vaguely remember hearing that long ago many acquaintances migrated to Mexico while others shipped out for France or Haiti, if they had other family residing there.
Little if anything has ever been written on these elusive émigrés. They lost all contact with their families in Louisiana. Their descendants' names remain blank lines on genealogical charts, popular today with a new generation researching ancestral history. This is especially true for many Creoles who descended from free people of color - popularly called "les gens de couleur libre."
Mixed with French, Spanish, African, Indian or even German, Irish, or Italian bloodlines, the free people of color lived a tenuous existence in a caste-like system of antebellum Louisiana divided among three groups: whites in the upper caste, black slaves in the lower, and the free people of color in between. These Creoles were free to move about as they pleased, conduct commerce and trade, buy and sell property - including real estate and slaves - as well as serve in the militia and attend cathedral, opera, theater, and Free Masons meetings. Political office and the vote, however, were denied, and they could not intermarry with whites.
In the 1850s, as abolitionists infiltrated Louisiana's churches and social institutions with the message of serious conflict between North and South, free people of color became increasingly more of a liability to Louisiana's white population. Free people of color were generally well to do, well educated, and dominated trades such as leather working, iron making, and cigar rolling. They also had their own journalists, writers, educators and orators. They owned significant holdings in real estate, invested heavily in local banks, and lent money to many whites. But their financial and social clout was about to change.
Fearing an alliance between free people of color and rebellious slaves, Louisiana's whites, who were then a minority, attempted to reassert their authority and limit freedoms once taken for granted among free blacks. New regulations required free people of color to register with local municipal officers so that their numbers, locations, and professions could be monitored. It became illegal for them to assemble in groups of more than a few people and they were not allowed to leave Louisiana without permission. A white sponsor was required whenever they conducted business and they were obligated to carry papers proving their free status at all times. As if these restrictions were not humiliating enough, free blacks now had to observe the 9 p.m. curfew imposed on slaves.
Understandably, leaders among the free people of color were outraged by these restrictions. In response, many began liquidating their real estate and business holdings and transferring the proceeds to foreign banks. Free blacks with young families and long futures ahead of them saw greater opportunity beyond the borders of Louisiana and prepared to leave.
Mexico: A Land of Opportunity
One of the few written accounts of this migration is mentioned by Rudoiphe Lucien Desdunes, a free man of color, in his book Nos Hommes et notre Histoire published in 1911: "[In 1855] Mr. [Lolo] Mansion generously donated a part of his fortune for the relief of our people, and a number of them profited by his generosity, escaping the hardships of prejudice. Mexico and Haiti opened their doors to them."
The New Orleans Daily Delta newspaper of January 15, 1860, ran an article on the "exodus of free persons for Mexico and Haiti." The 1994 book, Creoles of Color in the Bayou Country, by Carl A. Brasseaux and others, states that in 1870 "many... Opelousas and Attakapas expatriates chose to join the free black colony near Veracruz. Some became merchants, engaging in trade with New Orleans."
It is well established that many such people went to Mexico, but there is little if any information about what part of Mexico they settled in, what conditions were like for them in a foreign land, or whether or not they retained their Louisiana culture and French language. Could there really be a Louisiana Creole community in Mexico? A thorough search of a book on black history in Mexico, La Poblacion Negra de Mexico (The Black Population of Mexico) by Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran, along with his various other works on the subject, makes no reference to free blacks from Louisiana.
Answers must lie then in primary sources: civil and church records interviews with Mexicans who have Louisiana roots, and observations about their culture and cuisine. That is a project I have undertaken, making several trips to Mexico, collecting data from national and regional records, and meeting with Mexicans who are aware that their ancestors came from Louisiana but with no knowledge as to why. They have no connection to distant cousins still residing in the state.
The stories of these Mexican-Creole descendants are poignant, laced with myths and cobbled together from oral histories with a need to recreate a past not clearly conveyed by their great-grandparents. Their ancestors, émigrés from persecution, left a painful situation in the United States in hopes of giving their children a new life free from racial tension and inferiority. Some descendants believe their Louisiana ancestors fought in the French Army during the invasion of Mexico under the self-appointed emperor Maximilian (1862-1867), although no proof exists; others insist the lure of Mexico was strictly economic. They attribute the cutting of all ties with family in the United States to poor communication via letters or expensive travel of that era. Some assume the whole family moved, leaving behind no relatives. A few mention aunts or uncles who moved to California but rarely wrote or visited thereafter.
There are stories of Mexican land grants signed by President Benito Juarez, or permits to leave the United States signed by Abraham Lincoln, but these exist in memory, not fact. Louisiana's offspring in Mexico are today fully acculturated Mexicans, many having married local people of Spanish or Italian descent. Because Mexicans use the surnames of both their mother and father, in that order, one hears among them the combination of one French and one Spanish surname. Jose Olivier Garcia, for example, which indicates a mother from Louisiana and a father from Mexico. The families' facial features, hair, and skin tone reflect the same wide range of racial and ethnic mixes seen in Louisiana.
Fortunately, verified information about Louisiana émigrés to Mexico does exist in church and civil records. Vestiges of Louisiana Creole heritage remain, such as the cultivating of okra and use of it in gumbo, above-ground cemeteries, and family reunions that reinforce familial ties. Though the French language is no longer spoken, there is still pride in having come from French stock. Most are curious about their Louisiana history and would like to reestablish ties with family in the state. They are unaware of the role that race played in their ancestors' decision to leave their homeland. They are somewhat confused as to why race continues to separate people in Louisiana and why their American relatives, whose heritage is predominantly European, would be identified as African Americans.
Defining Creole
The term Creole is difficult for this community to associate with themselves since Creoles in Mexico no longer exist. Contrary to the Louisiana definition of Creole as anyone born in the colony, historically Mexican Creoles were children or grandchildren of the Spaniards sent by the king of Spain to rule Mexico during its nearly three centuries as a Spanish colony. These Creoles were a ruling and landowning class slightly below that of the Peninsulares, the king's appointees from Spain, and vastly superior to the more common mestizos, the combination of Spanish, black, Indian, or any other ethnicity In modern Mexico, the term Creole is relegated to historical documents. In that sense, even the title of this article would likely be misunderstood in Mexico today.
Records in Mexico and information imparted by the families reveal a history of migration back and forth from Louisiana by several different groups in direct response to politics of the time. The first wave left Louisiana in the late 1850s to settle along Mexico's Gulf coast between the port cities of Tampico and Veracruz. Some returned after the Civil War when Reconstruction eased the plight of free people of color. The second wave of migration to Mexico - often the children of the previous generation - occurred in the 1880s through the end of the 19th century as racial segregation became institutionalized in Louisiana.
Both waves of migration had two distinct components: urban and rural. In the cities of Tampico and Veracruz, Louisiana's Creoles who were already artisans and merchants, previously well established in New Orleans, set up bakeries, shoe factories, tailoring shops, and restaurants, or found employment as carpenters, construction workers, and iron workers. Others became professionals: teachers, musicians, engineers, and import-exporters.
In contrast, the rural component settled in the fertile coastal areas of the state of Veracruz, approximately 100 miles north of the city of Veracruz. There the descendants of cattlemen, ranchers, and farmers from the Louisiana parishes of St. Landry, St. Martin, and St. Mary now make their home. They continue to farm large haciendas on the original homesteads of San Antonio, Bella Vista, Coronado, Barrilles, and Santa Rosa while their homes are in the nearby villages of Papantla, Cabezas (now renamed Gutierrez Zamora), Tecolutla, and Tuxpan. Where once their forefathers cultivated sugar cane, tobacco, and cattle-as they had in Louisiana-the farms today are primarily planted in orange groves for the lucrative citrus concentrate market abroad.
Free from prejudice
Emigration to Mexico was a weighty but necessary decision. Few Louisiana expatriates left any written indication of their feelings regarding the move. But in a letter obtained from a family in New Orleans, Isidore Bordenave, from the city of Gutierrez Zamora, Mexico, wrote on Sept. 20, 1909, to his sister-in-law, Mrs. S. Bordenave, back home in Louisiana, what must have been the sentiments of many. Referring to his recent visit to the family in New Orleans, he wrote, "I still enjoy the company of you all. I am deprived of it, but at the same time it cannot be helped. New Orleans is a dead city for me. Here I enjoy life-in a desert, it's true, but life without any of the foolishness that makes the American Republic a dark ship... Those few days I have spent with you all have been very pleasant, but, at the same time, to see that I was unable, due to prejudice, to act as I would here, bled my heart and left a dark veil on the good time enjoyed." Bordenave died and was buried in Gutierrez Zamora in 1923.
Transportation to and within Mexico was by water. Passenger lists from ships of the time show dozens of young men, some married with one or two children, leaving together from New Orleans or the Port of St. Mary Parish. There was already a well established trade route between New Orleans, Tampico, Veracruz, and Havana with stops at smaller ports in between. Some of the newcomers had business ties with Mexico and Cuba which doubtlessly helped them settle into their new home country with ease. Others bought into settlement arrangements operated by men from Louisiana who brokered land deals. Many émigrés retained their U.S. citizenship and traveled back and forth in the early years between Mexico, Cuba, and Louisiana for business and personal reasons. Second and third generations, however, lost all contact with their Louisiana relatives.
The Eureka Colony is an example of a brokered land deal. In 1859, Louis Nelson Foucher, a well known free man of color from New Orleans who had distinguished himself in architecture and mathematics, contracted with a wealthy Mexican family to purchase a large area of fertile farmland with access to the Panuco River south of Tampico. There he settled, along with 100 families from New Orleans. The project was short lived since sketchy records indicate that Eureka Colony burned in 1861 and that the families who were to move there instead relocated to Tampico.
Of interest to musicologists is the family of Thomas Marcos Tio, a musician and teacher from New Orleans who was among the settlers ot Eureka Colony. His sons, Louis and Lorenzo Tio, were born and raised in Tampico. In 1877 Mrs. Tio and the children moved back to New Orleans where Louis and Lorenzo, dubbed by locals as "the Mexicans," were clarinetists. They worked as musical arrangers in marching bands and minstrel shows and eventually figured prominently in the development of jazz. Their father remained in Tampico until his death in 1881.
The migration of free people of color from Louisiana to Mexico in large numbers in the late 1850s was very possibly due in part to the influence of the wildly popular president of Mexico at the time, Benito Juarez (1806-1872). Although no direct link can be documented thus far, people in Mexico are well aware that Juarez spent 18 months in political exile in New Orleans from December 1853 to June 1855, rolling cigars in the French Quarter to make ends meet. He associated openly with free men of color. It is also known that he took room and board at the home of a free woman of color on Royal Street and was nursed - probably by her - through a bout of yellow fever in 1854.
A full-blooded Indian, Juarez suffered racial discrimination during his New Orleans stay. Certainly he was aware of the ever more precarious position of the free blacks in the city and very likely offered to send for them once he returned to Mexico. Along with other renegade Mexican politicos headquartered in New Orleans at the time - including Melchor Ocampo and Guillermo Prieto - Juarez risked returning to his homeland to shape a new constitution and lead the chaotic government in 1857. He saw the need for hardworking, stable families, like the ones he had met in New Orleans, to settle the country. Except for the interruption of the Juarez tenure by French military occupation between 1862 and 1867, Louisiana families of color were welcomed by Mexican leaders. There is no evidence that they participated in the military or government under Juarez but some descendants recall talk of land grants and business associations with the Juarez regime.
One significant result of research into Louisiana's exiles in Mexico has been the discovery of direct descendants of Henriette Delille, the free woman of color who founded an order of nuns of African descent, the Sisters of the Holy Family, in New Orleans in 1846. Delille is currently under consideration for canonization at the Vatican. Her great-nephew Bernard Vincent, and his wife Celeste Simms, left Opelousas, Louisiana, with their two young children in 1891 for Cabezas, Mexico, where they prospered and added another 11 children to their family. Two granddaughters of Bernard Vincent and one great-granddaughter - who bears a striking physical resemblance to Delille - visited the Sisters at their convent in New Orleans in 1999 to share their family's history, thus becoming the first Delille relatives to be discovered by the order.
These Mexican-Louisiana Creoles are among many who were delighted to make contact with their original heritage and to discover that there are still people with their names and faces here. They tell of grandparents and great-grandparents who struggled with the language, customs, and frontier conditions of Mexico in the early years. They survived, their children assimilated with the local population, and today they are thriving. In some communities they have retained their close family connections, serving as godparents to each other's newborns, visiting family tombs on All Saints Day, and gathering at a local restaurant run by Dona Julia Pinta, a Mexican equivalent of Leah Chase's "Dooky Chase" restaurant in New Orleans. They ask, would their Louisiana relatives welcome them? Would the two sides have anything in common after years of separation? To see their ready smiles and animated conversations, there is no doubt they would.
Mary Gehman is an assistant professor of English at Delgado Community College in New Orleans. Her scholarship and research has resulted in two books, Women and New Orleans and The Free People of Color of New Orleans. She continues her study of the Creole émigrés to Mexico.
Posted: Wed 10 Oct 2007 19:55 Post subject: So You Want to Cook Cajun & Creole..."
[quote="Powell"]Cajuns are thriving because they are not divided by race and caste, unlike the Creoles. However, I am sure the Cajuns are not nearly as "black blood free" as they like to pretend.
Recommended:
The Cajuns: From Acadia to Louisiana (Hardcover)
by William Faulkner Rushton
Rushton is one of the few authors to address the issue of Creole infiltration into the Cajun group.
Madame Elizabeth Kettenring Dutrey Begue with her husband, Hypolite Begue. Madame Begue was famous for her three-hour "second breakfasts." Courtesy of Louisiana State Museum
"So You Want to Cook Cajun and Creole..."
From The Evolution of Cajun & Creole Cuisine, 1989
Prior to beginning our adventure into the cuisines of South Louisiana, it is imperative that I begin by outlining the basic principles, procedures, and terminologies that are unique to Cajun and Creole cookery. In the following pages, I'll be explaining stocks, sauces, rouxs and various other essentials in order for you to better understand how the rich heritages of the Cajuns and Creoles were adapted and developed in the New World to create the most exciting cuisine in America today. Certain Louisiana food customs, such as the boucherie, the cochon de lait, and the crawfish boil, will be covered for a better understanding of just how unique our cuisine and culture really is. After you read about the fascinating development of pralines, Cajun coffee, beignets, and hushpuppies, I know you will want to dig deeper and tackle the sections on gumbo and wild game.
It is important to realize that cultures and cuisines must constantly evolve. This evolution process is brought about when new ingredients and ideas are introduced into a region. Here in South Louisiana, the evolution process may be witnessed at every turn. The Cajuns today have more access to the outside world because of increased mobility, as interstates begin to cross the bayous and cities arise from our swamplands.
An example of this process of change is the merging of cultures in New Orleans. Today it is difficult even for the locals to tell the Cajuns from the Creoles. However, we all agree that evolution is imperative, if our cultures and cuisines are to survive.
Though we will look into this evolution of Louisiana cuisines, I feel it is necessary to first understand from whence it came. Knowing the foundation of Cajun and Creole cooking will ensure a clear understanding of the direction we have chosen to take. As the young chefs of America travel into the bayous of South Louisiana and walk the French Market area of New Orleans, their creative juices cannot help but flow. The volumes of crawfish, crab, shrimp, oysters, wild game and other local ingredients lend themselves perfectly to the evolution process at the hands of these young masters. So for a moment, let's look into the past. This certainly will place a bright spotlight on the future of our magnificent cuisine, a cuisine constantly evolving for the better in South Louisiana.
The Cajun and Creole cultures are quite distinct and so are their cuisines. The Creoles were the European born aristocrats, wooed by the Spanish to establish New Orleans in the 1690's. Second born sons, who could not own land or titles in their native countries, were offered the opportunity to live and prosper in their family traditions here in the New World. They brought with them not only their wealth and education, but their chefs and cooks. With these chefs came the knowledge of the grand cuisines of Europe.
The influences of classical and regional French, Spanish, German and Italian cooking are readily apparent in Creole cuisine. The terminologies, precepts, sauces, and major dishes carried over, some with more evolution than others, and provided a solid base or foundation for Creole cooking.
Bouillabaisse is a soup that came from the Provence region of France in and around Marseilles. This dish is integral to the history of Creole food because of the part it played in the creation of gumbo.
The Spanish, who actually played host to this new adventure, gave Creole food its spice, many great cooks, and paella, which was the forefather of Louisiana's jambalaya. Paella is the internationally famous Spanish rice dish made with vegetables, meats and sausages. On the coastline, seafoods were often substituted for meats. Jambalaya has variations as well, according to the local ingredients available at different times of the year.
The Germans who arrived in Louisiana in 1725 were knowledgeable in all forms of charcuterie and helped establish the boucherie and fine sausage making in South Louisiana. They brought with them not only the pigs, but chicken and cattle as well. A good steady supply of milk and butter was seldom available in South Louisiana prior to the arrival of the Germans.
The Italians were also famous for their culinary talents. Since they were summoned to France by Catherine de Medicis, to teach their pastry and ice cream making skills to Europeans, many Creole dishes reflect the Italian influence and their love of good cooking.
From the West Indies and the smoke pots of Haiti came exotic vegetables and cooking methods. Braising, a slow cooking technique, contributed to the development of our gumbos. Mirlitons, sauce piquantes and the use of tomato rounded out the emerging Creole cuisine.
Native Indians, the Choctaws, Chetimaches and Houmas, befriended the new settlers and introduced them to local produce, wildlife and cooking methods. New ingredients, such as corn, ground sassafras leaves or file powder, and bay leaves from the laurel tree, all contributed to the culinary melting pot.
I would be remiss if I failed to mention the tremendous influence of "the black hand in the pot" in Creole cooking. The Africans brought with them the "kin gumbo" or okra plant from their native soil which not only gave name to our premier soup but introduced a new vegetable to South Louisiana. Even more importantly, they have maintained a significant role in development of Creole cuisine in the home as well as the professional kitchen.
Creole cuisine is indebted to many unique people and diverse cultures who were willing to contribute and share their cooking styles, ingredients and talent. Obviously then, Creole cuisine represents the history of sharing in South Louisiana. Early on in the history of New Orleans, the Creole wives became frustrated, not being able to duplicate their old world dishes with new world products. Governor Bienville helped to solve this problem by commissioning his housekeeper, Madame Langlois, to introduce them to local vegetables, meats and seafoods in what became the first cooking school in America. This school aided them in developing their cuisine in a new and strange land.
Creole cuisine, then, is that melange of artistry and talent, developed and made possible by the nations and cultures who settled in and around New Orleans. Those of us who know and love it, keep it alive by sharing it with the world.
The cuisine of the Cajuns is a mirror image of their unique history. It is a cooking style which reflects their ingenuity, creativity, adaptability and survival.
When the exiled French refugees began arriving in South Louisiana from Acadia in Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1755, they were already well versed in the art of survival. Their forefathers had made a home in the wilderness of southeast Canada in the land of "Acadie." Following their exile, these French Catholics found a new home compatible with their customs and religion in South Louisiana.
The story of "Le Grand Derangement" is memorialized in the epic poem EVANGELINE by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. This love story tells of Gabriel and Evangeline, tragically torn apart when ten thousand Acadians were gathered and driven from their homeland. It took six days to burn the village of Grand Pre, and families were divided and put aboard twenty-four British vessels anchored in the Bay of Fundy.
The Acadians were forcibly dispersed, nearly half of them dying before a year had passed. Survivors landed in Massachusetts, Maryland, the Carolinas, Georgia (where some were sold into slavery), the French West Indies, Santo Domingo, Uruguay, Nicaragua, Honduras and the Falkland Islands. The main tragedy lied in the fact that the men were exiled first, to destinations unknown, with the women and children following later. As time passed, the struggle to reunite these families, in most cases, proved futile.
A large contingency of Acadians returned to the coastal seaports of France, their initial homeland, and eventually came to South Louisiana. Some were sent to England while others made their way back to "Acadie" to Sainte-Marie and settled on the French shore. Word rang out across Europe, Canada and South America that reunion with their husbands and fathers could be possible in the bayous of South Louisiana.
As wave after wave of the bedraggled refugees found their way to yet another land, the Acadians were reborn. They were free to speak their language, believe as they pleased, and make a life for themselves in the swamps and bayous of the French Triangle of South Louisiana. They were among friends, friends who enjoyed the same "joie de vivre" or joy of living.
Just as they had become such close friends with the Micmac Indians when they were isolated in the woodlands of Canada, so they befriended the native Indians here in South Louisiana. Friends were quickly made with the Spanish and Germans as well.
The original Acadian immigrants had come to Nova Scotia from France beginning in 1620. They were primarily from Brittany, Normandy, Picardy and Poitou. These fishermen and farmers had learned how to adjust, survive and make a life for themselves in Acadie. Once again, they were faced with the task of survival. Rugged as they were, the Acadians learned to adapt to their new surroundings. Armed with their black iron pots, the Cajuns, as they had come to be known, utilized what was indigenous to the area. No attempt was made to recreate the classical cuisine of Europe. None of the exotic spices and ingredients available to the Creoles were to be found by the Cajuns in Bayou country. They were happy to live off the land, a land abundant with fish, shellfish and wild game.
The Cajuns cooked with joy and love as their most precious ingredients, a joy brought about by reunion, in spite of the tragedy that befell them. To cook Cajun is to discover the love and experience the joy of the most unique American cuisine ever developed.
Cajun cuisine is characterized by the use of wild game, seafoods, wild vegetation and herbs. From their association with the Indians, the Cajuns learned techniques to best utilize the local products from the swamps, bayous, lakes, rivers and woods. Truly remarkable are the variations that have resulted from similar ingredients carefully combined in the black iron pots of the Cajuns.
Jambalaya, grillades, stews, fricassees, soups, gumbos, sauce piquantes and a host of stuffed vegetable dishes are all characteristic of these new Cajun "one pot meals".
From the Germans, the Cajuns were reintroduced to charcuterie and today make andouille, smoked sausage, boudin, chaudin, tasso and chaurice, unparalleled in the world of sausage making.
Cajun cuisine is a "table in the wilderness", a creative adaptation of indigenous Louisiana foods. It is a cuisine forged out of a land that opened its arms to a weary traveler, the Acadian.
So as you can see, South Louisiana has two rich histories and two unique cuisines: the Creole cuisine with its rich array of courses indicating its close tie to European aristocracy, and Cajun cuisine with its one pot meals, pungent with the flavor of seafood and game.
No wonder you want to cook Cajun and Creole!
Chef John D. Folse CEC, AAC
"We may live without poetry, music and art;
We may live without conscience and live without heart;
We may live without friends, we may live without books;
But civilized man cannot live without cooks.
He may live without books, what is knowledge but grieving.'
He may live without hope, what is hope but deceiving?
He may live without love, what is passion but pining?
But where is that man who can live without dining?"
Posted: Mon 15 Oct 2007 13:00 Post subject: J.J. Reneaux
In the winter of 2000 the storytelling community lost one of its most original and daring artists to cancer. J.J. Reneaux was a storyteller, children's book author, singer and songwriter. J.J. grew up poor in the Delta bayous, and was rich in the lore of her Cajun people. She succeeded by virtue of a native talent fired by passion and uncompromising dedication to her heritage and storytelling.
Her unique voice, fierce and honest as it was beautiful, will long be remembered. As a young unknown, however, J.J. learned how difficult it is to launch a career in the world of professional storytelling.
Blend together smooth Southern storytelling with traditional and original Blues, Country, and Cajun music, add a dash of wry humor and you've got an unforgettable gumbo that is uniquely J.J. Reneaux.
Singer-songwriter, humorist and storytelling author J.J. Reneaux weaves together music, folklore, superstition, customs and true-life stories in performance. Cajun, Creole, Spanish, Irish, and Native American voices speak in her songs and stories, reflecting her own multicultural heritage and creating a colorful tapestry of life in the Deep South. Sassy and poignant, her performances are rooted in tradition yet surprisingly fresh.
A natural comedianne, Reneaux lampoons modern culture with music, wit and honest-to-God true stories in contemporary performances for adults. Reeneaux's lively school concerts and family shows delight audiences of all ages with her multicultural mix of Southern folktales and music, as well as her original stories and songs.
Known for her soulful singing and her gift for telling stories in original songs, Reneaux captures the rhythms and sounds of her native South. Her songwriting has reminded critics of artists like David Wilcox and Mary Chapin Carpenter, while her bluesy voice has inspired comparisons with Bonnie Raitt. Her first music CD, Cajun ,Country, and Blue has received critical acclaim in Europe and is gaining Reneaux increasing recognition at home. Whether performing solo, or with her band The Mojos, Reneaux performs blues, alternative country, folk and her native Cajun music with her own distinct songwriting and vocal style.
An author and recording artist as well, Reneaux's books include Cajun Folktales, recipient of the Anne Izard Storyteller's Choice Award, Haunted Bayou, winner of the Public Library Association Best New Book. Reneaux's illustrated book, Why Alligator Hates Dog, was awarded the Aesop Accolade. In 2000, Morrow Junior Books will publish How Animals Saved the People. Reneaux's five story recordings include; Cajun Folk and Fairytales, Cajun Ghost Stories, awarded the Parent's Gold Choice, and Wake Stake! Children's Stories and Songs of the South. Reneaux is currently at work on GRITS; Girls Raised in the South, and a story collection and a new music recording, If only in Dreams. A transplanted Cajun, Reneaux lives with her husband, two children and a menagerie of pets and wild animals near Athens, Georgia.
Never forgetting her own struggle, she dreamed of helping talented people succeed. When she saw the end of her life drawing near, she gave her family instructions to create a fund that would support exceptionally gifted tellers in the early stages of their careers. It is therefore with great pride that her family and her beloved colleagues of the National Storytelling Network have established the J.J. Reneaux Emerging Artists Fund. It is J.J.'s dream come to fruition.
Posted: Mon 15 Oct 2007 13:26 Post subject: Creole by Beyonce Knowles
Baby I see you
That look in your eyes
Hips that keep shakin'
Mysterious style
Exotically tempting
For me your to ?
That creole sexy
It's all over me
[Chrous:]
So all my red bones get on the floor
And all my yellow bones get on the floor
And all my brown bones get on the floor
Then you mix it up and call it
Creole.
Creole!
When I look real good
Creole!
Wheneva I talk real good
Creole!
Wheneva I bounce real good
Just in case you wanna know
Its ya secret
Creole!
When she look that good
Creole!
Wheneva she talk that good
Creole!
Wheneva she bounce that good
Ladies if you wanna know it's ya secret Creole!
Bad, bad, bad, bad yellow bone
Bab, bad, bad, bad red bone
Bad, bad, bad, bad brown bone
Bad, bad, bad to the bone!
[Verse 2:]
Where all of my brown bones
that make up the broth
And all of my red bones
that make up the sauce
The yellow bone flavor
Is for ???
Mix it all together!
Its a delicacy.
[Chrous]
So all my red bones get on the floor
And all my yellow bones get on the floor
And all my brown bones get on the floor
Then you mix it up and call it
Creole.
Creole!
When I look real good
Creole!
Wheneva I talk real good
Creole!
Wheneva I bounce real good
Just in case you wanna know
Its ya secret
Creole!
When she look that good
Creole!
Wheneva she talk that good
Creole!
Wheneva she bounce that good
Ladies if you wanna know it's ya secret Creole!
[x2:]
Bad, bad, bad, bad yellow bone
Bab, bad, bad, bad red bone
Bad, bad, bad, bad brown bone
Bad, bad, bad to the bone!
The one drop blood rule kills cultures, and people should be careful about letting their culture get labeled black in America because it can fall into the one drop blood rule, and become a sub sect of black america. I do think this is harder and more difficult to happen in today's time.
One of the most puzzling questions about cultural assimilation into the dichotomous U.S. world-view is why some groups succumb almost immediately upon arrival (BWI's), some survive as a distinct mutiracial community for generations before finally coming unglued and splitting into White and Black branches (Cape Verdeans, Ramapo Mountain people), and still other demand and receive consideration as a separate group, exempt from the ODR or even from the color line itself (Puerto Ricans, Melungeons) and show no sign of being torn apart. As a Puerto Rican, I suppose that this defiance is what so attracts me to the Melungeons as kindred folk under pressure to split. As a scholar, I would give much to learn what makes some groups cave in quickly, others slowly, and others not at all.
The Black Elite is POWER HUNGRY!: They didn't realize that 'post-civil rights victory';
they would assume a power which would disenfranchise other groups.
Black America is QUICKLY becoming the new WHITE America!
Hey, that's America!! But I doubt anytime soon they will replace them. Now, Back to some more Creole culture. Not racial politics.
Black America is QUICKLY becoming the new WHITE America!
Quote:
Hey, that's America!! But I doubt anytime soon they will replace them. Now, Back to some more Creole culture. Not racial politics.
Remember, The State of Louisiana still operates under FRENCH law!: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_law "Louisiana is the only U.S. state whose legal system is based in part on civil law, which is based on French and Spanish codes and ultimately Roman law, as opposed to English common law, which is based on precedent and custom. Louisiana thus follows the system of most non-Anglophone countries in the world. In Louisiana, private law is based on the Louisiana Civil Code.
It is incorrect to equate the Louisiana Civil Code with the Napoleonic Code. Although the Napoleonic Code strongly influenced Louisiana law, the Napoleonic Code was not enacted until 1804, one year after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. While the Louisiana Civil Code of 1808 has been continuously revised and updated since its enactment, it is still considered the controlling authority in the state."
ANOTHER distinguishing factor of Creole Identity is our Roman Catholicism [vs. The Protestantism of African-Americans].
The Protestantism[Baptist predominately] [Pentostal] [there are Catholic black congregations] [I don't know the connecton of the CME:Catholic Methodist Episcopalian church aka AME:African Methodist] of African-Americans. Most Southerners are Baptist if they are "christian" African-Americans are just like their Southern white-american counterparts in this respect.
Joined: 02 Oct 2007 {Posts: 226 } Location: Seattle
Posted: Sat 20 Oct 2007 17:38 Post subject: BASQUIAT
JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT
"I am not a black artist, I am an artist." -JMB
SAMO SAMO as a neo art form.
SAMO as an end to to mindwash religion, nowhere politics and bogus philosophy.
SAMO as an escape clause.
SAMO as an end to playing art.
SAMO as an end to bogus pseudo intellectual.
Posted: Mon 29 Oct 2007 15:50 Post subject: At the Octoroon Balls by Wynton Marsalis
01.Listen Come Long Fiddler
02.Listen Mating Calls and Delta Rhythms
03.Listen Creole Contradanzas
04.Listen Many Gone
05.Listen Hellbound Highball
06.Listen Blue Lights On The Bayou
07.Listen Rampart St. Row House Rag
08.Listen The Fiddler’s March
09.Listen A Fiddler’s Soul
10.Listen Pastorale
11.Listen Happy March
12.Listen Concert Piece
13.Listen Tango, Waltz, Ragtime
14.Listen The Devil’s Dance
15.Listen Big Choral
16.Listen The Blues On Top
DESCRIPTION
The first part of this CD features the Orion String Quartet’s performance of Wynton’s first string quartet, AT THE OCTOROON BALLS, which explores the American Creole contradictions and compromises - cultural, social, and political - exemplified by life in New Orleans. The piece’s seven movements evoke people, places, and events in the Crescent City: “Come Long Fiddler,” “Mating Calls and Delta Rhythms,” “Creole Contradanzas,” “Many Gone,” “Hellbound Highball,” “Blue Lights on the Bayou,” and “Rampart St. Row House Rag.” The CD concludes with a performance by Wynton and members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center of his composition A FIDDLER’S TALE, a response to Stravinsky’s famous A SOLDIER’S STORY from the perspective of later twentieth century music, including but not limited to jazz. AT THE OCTOROON BALLS was commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and premiered on May 7, 1995 at Alice Tully Hall by the Orion String Quartet; A FIDDLER’S TALE was commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center as a joint project of the Chamber Music Society and Jazz at Lincoln Center and premiered on April 23, 1998 at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
LINER NOTES
America is a hothouse of hybridity; and the very title of Wynton Marsalis’ strong work for string quartet suggests that its subject is hybridity. The balls that give their name to these stringent, voluptuous movements were institutions of old New Orleans, at which Creole men chose Octoroon women for their mistresses–vivacious rituals of mixture, in which the terribilities of race collided jubilantly with the terribilities of sex. It was a universe in which mixture was destiny; a universe in which misery and malaise were justified by a preposterous ideal of purity. And the apparent hybridity of At the Octoroon Balls is not only a historical matter. For this is the first “classical” composition for strings by a master of jazz: a mixture! The musical genres, too, seem to have exceeded their boundaries, and to have run into each other like sauces on a steaming plate. Is the piece “classical”? Is the piece jazz? No, it is another compound in a country of compounds; and blessed are the compounded in America.
Or so it would appear. In truth, however, there is nothing octoroonish about At the Octoroon Balls. Marsalis’ work is in no sense a hybrid. It is not a bit of this and a bit of that; not an arithmetical sum of ingredients and influences; not a crossover contraption of any sort. It is, un-anxiously and unapologetically, itself: a composition for four string instruments in seven movements based upon vernacular American materials. And there is a lesson for American culture in the absence of anxiety and apology from Marsalis’ work. The lesson is that the new American obsession with hybridity is just the obverse of the old American obsession with purity, and it is just as depleting of the spirit.
Like the ideal of purity the ideal of hybridity bows before the tyranny of origins, and prefers authenticity to art. But surely the question, “Where does it come from?” is not as primary as the question, “What is it?” The latter is certainly more difficult to answer than the former. It requires that one look with rigor, listen with rigor, and think with rigor; whereas establishing the provenance of an idea or an image or a theme–fixing the bloodlines of art–is much less strenuous. Art does not possess identity. Art possesses beauty and meaning. This is sometimes hard to grasp in an America addled by identity.
Like the ideal of purity, the ideal of hybridity represents a vexation about legitimacy. Americans are always wondering whether works of art are legitimate. (Is it jazz? Is it “classical”? Is it high? Is it low?) But if a work of art lives, I mean really lives, then, it is legitimate. And if it does not live, then all the legitimacy in the world will not give it life. Life settles the matter. So the task for the American artist is not purity and it is not hybridity. The task for the American artist is integrity.
Integrity is an attitude toward mixture–a morality of mixture. According to this morality, disparate elements must be combined into a unity in a manner that dose not subdue them but does not revere them, so that something new can be created that cannot be reduced to its sources. Such a combination is not merely additive, as in the grotesque racial biology of the recent dark ages. In an undated and unpublished essay on “The Americans,” Jean Toomer denounced the coercive classifications and the dogmatic divisions. “There is a new race here,” he observed about the United States. “For the present we may call it the American race…and though to some extent, to be sure, black and white and red and brown strains have entered into its formation, we should not view it as part black, part white, and so on…Water, though composed of two parts of hydrogen and one part of oxygen, is not hydrogen and oxygen; it is water, a new substance with a new form.”
Toomer’s scruple about the complexities of America holds also for the complexities of art. For all genuine art is of mixed stock. In art, impurity is a kind of felicity; but this felicity must not be described merely as hybridity, or the miracle will be missed. Out of old substances, a new substance. Out of old forms, a new form. Blend, blend. Transmute, transmute. The important thing is not to trap beauty in history.
Marsalis writes out of a profound conviction of the naturalness of American themes and American forms. This is a string quartet saturated in the blues. Its mysterious opening strains–like the first rays of light on an uncertain day–quickly issue in a piquant, fractured country dance that leaves one imagining Bartók in the Delta. The violin sounds like a fiddle, the fiddle sounds like a violin: Marsalis is uninhibited by the dichotomies. (So is the Orion Quartet, to judge by its achievement on this recording.) Its fifth movement is a furious scherzo, based on the diabolical propulsion of trains, the great symbol of American energy, and of the speed with which fortunes and directions are reversed in this exacting land of opportunity. Its final movement is a delightful rag, within which there takes place a friendly disputation between sophistication and well-being.
It was a rag that got Dvořák into trouble. “The influence of Dvořák’s American music has been terrible,” carped an influential critic in New York in 1893, in the wake of the New World Symphony. “Ragtime is the popular pablum now. I need hardly add that the Negro is not the original race in our country. And ragtime is only rhythmic motion, not music.” This was not only moral idiocy, it was also musical idiocy. What had provoked the critic was Dvořák’s championship of “what are called the Negro melodies.” Those melodies, the Bohemian composer had asserted to a newspaper, “are American. They are the songs of America and your composers must turn to them. All of the great musicians have borrowed from the songs of the common people. Beethoven’s most charming scherzo is based upon what might now be considered a skillfully handled Negro melody. I have myself gone to the simple, half-forgotten tunes of the Bohemian peasants for hints in my most serious work.”
Dvořák was hoping to talk his American hosts out of their insecurity about their own patrimony, to persuade them of the adequacy of their own riches. As it happened, European composers proved more hospital to the demotic sounds and colors of America than American composers; but the discussion that Dvořák started a hundred years ago still continues. In that discussion, certainly, At the Octoroon Balls is a significant expostulation. Marsalis’ composition for strings is admirable not least for its cool, easeful Americanism.
This Americanism is not a matter of patriotism. It is a matter of one’s presence to one’s own reality, to the plenitude in which one finds oneself. Reality is not elsewhere. The plenitude is everywhere. And the plenitude is always parochial, because it is always discovered in a single parish. Is a single parish too small? Not for a serious and toiling soul. The universal is the gift of the local. For a serious and toiling soul, the gaiety and the melancholy of a ball in New Orleans will suffice. He will coax art out of the confinement, out of the old dance of injustice and desire.
Leon Wieseltier
On January 23, 2005, Room To Move Dance joined the Lyra String Quartet in a beautifully choreographed performance that blended music and dance. The works performed in- cluded string quartets by Shostakovich, Dvorak and Wynton Marsalis� "From the Octoroon Balls".
Posted: Mon 29 Oct 2007 16:15 Post subject: Storyville
LSGH wrote:
St. Augustine Catholic Church was built in 1803 with funds provided by Cane River Creole patriarch, Nicolas Augustine Metoyer, and his brother, Louis. St. Augustine is believed to be the first Catholic church in the United States that was built and supported by Creoles of color. The church has been the hub of social and spiritual life for the Isle Brevelle community for two hundred years. It is here that the community holds annual homecomings and special events that draw family members back to Isle Brevelle from all across the country...
St. Louis Cathedral [New Orleans]
African-Americans Catholics CONVERTED;
REMEMBER:
Creoles, by birth descend, from LATIN/ROMAN CATHOLIC colonists [i.e., Portugese, Spanish & French]
whereas/versus
African-Americans, by birth, descend from GERMANIC PROTESTANT colonists [i.e., English, Scottish & Dutch]
So, technically, if an African-American converts to Catholicism,
s/he, by Roman-American Law [i.e. Creole-American Law],
becomes CREOLE (and vice-versa)!
Storyville
In the early part of the 20th century, many visitors came to New Orleans seeking the entertainments of "jolly good fellows." According to the euphemisms of the times, such "fellows" were prostitutes. And passengers arriving at the Basin Street train station couldn't help but fall into their arms.
Just south of the station, which is gone now, lay the French Quarter. And lining the tracks on the northern side were the saloons, bordellos and cribs of Storyville, the nation's first legally designated prostitution district. Over its twenty-year lifetime, the district grew more and more crowded with prostitutes, early jazz musicians and saloons. And it anchored the city's reputation as the Babylon of the South.
Ironically, Storyville was created in an attempt at social reform. But the outrageous district defied many of the sensibilities of its times. And that's probably why it thrived.
At the end of the Victorian era and in the middle of growing national progressive reform movements (like the temperance movement that resulted in Prohibition), Storyville was created by city ordinance in 1897. Social reformers in the city wanted to limit and regulate prostitution. So they turned a not so nice residential neighborhood into the only district where prostitutes could live and work. Supposedly this would keep brothels from trashing other neighborhoods in either their morals or their property values. More significantly, they created a nationally known center of vice. Councilman Sidney Story, who sponsored the reform, was rewarded by having the district unofficially named after him.
The bordellos of Storyville became great mansions of vice. Many madams became extraordinarily wealthy. As did saloon owners and politicians and policemen who took a large cut in graft. As the years passed, the neighborhood changed so that by the time it was closed down almost every available building was either a bar or a brothel. Much of the money made in Storyville came from the outrageous prices charged for liquor. And while many of the bordellos, like Lulu White's Mahogany Hall, were lavish and catered to customers who could meet her prices, there were also hundreds and hundreds of "crib" girls, who charged much lower rates and worked out of small one and two room cribs, furnished with only a bed and a chair. They might rent a crib for a night for as much as three dollars. Then they might charge men anywhere from ten to fifty cents. Competition tended to keep the prices brutally low in the cribs.
Some of the better sources of information on Storyville are the "Blue Books," which were directories of the more expensive prostitutes working in the district. Billy Struve, a former police reporter, published many of the books. At times he kept an office in Lulu White's saloon. And he was also known to work for Tom Anderson, the unofficial mayor of Storyville. Anderson owned the largest saloon and had a stake in many others.
The Blue Books advertised the beauty and quality of the bordellos and the women who worked there. Sex was never mentioned in the books and no mention was made of prostitution. But the message was clear. One of the early books carried the title "Blue Book" at the top and "Tenderloin 400" at the bottom. Tenderloin was one of the terms for districts known for prostitution. The 400 parodied a published list of important and influential Americans.
The books contain portraits and descriptions of some of the better known madams. Lulu White, Josie Arlington and Willie Piazza were among the most famous. Before Storyville, White had been arrested countless times on charges of prostitution and assorted civil disruptions, the result of which was that she eventually seemed to know all the right people. During the Storyville era she became very wealthy and was known for wearing diamonds on all her fingers and a wig of wild red hair. In Belle of the Nineties, Mae West's character was supposedly based on White's persona. White herself considered moving to Hollywood to break into movies but never did so.
Josie Arlington was another notorious prostitute who reigned in Storyville. Born into the demimonde of society, at seventeen years old she became involved with Philip Lobrano, who introduced her into the world of "sporting houses," or brothels. She worked as Josie Alton for a while, and as Josie Lobrano, and even Josie Lobrano d'Arlington. As her business acumen improved she opened the Chateau Lobrano d'Arlington. But her more simply titled Arlington was one of the biggest and bawdiest of the bordellos, allowing Josie to support Lobrano and many others who lived in her home. She went on to buy herself an expensive mansion on Esplanade Avenue, and later a lavish tomb in a historic cemetery.
The Blue Books also highlight one of the biggest draws to Storyville, says Katy Coyle, a historian researching the lives of women who resided in Storyville. Politics of the times enforced racial divides. Plessy vs. Fergusson had recently been handed down and segregation was legally instituted everywhere, she says. Segregation legislation was passed in New Orleans in 1894. But Storyville held out the allure of sex across color lines. The books listed prostitutes by race, noting whether they were white (W), Creole (C) or octoroon (Oct.). French women and Jewish women were also designated.
New Orleans had always had a reputation for interracial social mixing, especially because so many free people of color lived in the city before the Civil War. There was a special society niche of mixed race people. Quadroon and octoroon balls were held to match white men and women with one quarter or one eighth black lineage. It was understood that the couples would never marry, and the women were set up like mistresses in homes of their own. Against this backdrop, Storyville's social mixing was to be expected. And often preferred. White women were known to work in brothels which advertised themselves as Creole establishments, Coyle says.
Aside from the books, not much remains of Storyville. In 1917, the Department of the Navy closed it down saying it was a threat to national security. On the eve of World War One, a military base opened in New Orleans and it was illegal for prostitution to operate within five miles of a base. So the district was officially closed, but not before the mayor went to Washington D.C. to try to save it. He even let the local papers know that that was his mission. He lost the battle because Washington was dominated by social reformers. Prostitution certainly didn't stop, but it was no longer centralized in the district even though many madams continued to work there.
Eventually, the city razed most of the district to build the Iberville housing development. Most of Storyville's buildings were lost. Only three currently remain and none are likely to be land-marked or preserved, although two were famous addresses. On the corner of Basin and Bienville streets is part of the building that housed Lulu White's Saloon, which was adjacent to her famous Mahogany Hall. Only the first floor of the current building dates back to her ownership. Further in on Bienville Street, at the end of the block, is what remains of Frank Early's saloon. It's now a convenience store.
Much of what is known of Storyville is archived in the history of jazz. Many early jazz musicians, like Jelly Roll Morton, played in the parlors of Storyville. Though jazz started its development elsewhere in the city in the decades before Storyville, many believe that the music came of age there. As that view became more common, some musicians exaggerated their careers there. Photographs show Jelly Roll playing piano in Mahogany Hall and he later claimed that he played there for fifteen years, but that is unlikely.
Jelly Roll was a "professor," the term for piano players who worked in bordello parlors. They worked entirely for tips and were expected to know a great variety of music to entertain whomever dropped in. Jelly Roll was renowned for his scandalous versions of all sorts of popular songs. Other famous professors included Tony Jackson, author of Pretty Baby, and Frank "Dude" Amacker.
Many early jazz musicians played in Storyville orchestras and bands, including King Oliver, Buddy Bolden, Kid Ory, Bunk Johnson, Sidney Bechet and Louis "Big Eye" Nelson. The bands played in the saloons, though there were also establishments that considered the new music vulgar and unworthy of their clientele. Louis Armstrong got one if his first jobs in Storyville, carting coal to the cribs.
Looking back, it's probably the emergence of jazz that encourages such a romanticized image of the District. Its characters were certainly colorful. But what we know least about are the lives of the women who lived in Storyville. Historians like Coyle are trying to fill in those details. It's welcome scholarship. While the city never seriously tried to recreate the legal red light district, the curiosity remains.
Pictures and information regarding Storyville can be found at the Louisiana State Museum jazz exhibit at the Old U.S. Mint. (400 Esplanade Ave., 568-6968). Blue Books are archived at the Williams Research Center (410 Chartres St., 598-7171).
http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/41GTGY9W9AL._AA240_.jpg
From Publishers Weekly
Following up her debut, Domestic Work (2000), which included a number of historical monologues, Tretheway's short sophomore effort is a quiet collection of poems in the persona of a "very white-skinned black woman mulatto, quadroon, or octoroon," a prostitute in New Orleans just before WWI. The Bellocq of the title is E.J., the Toulouse-Lautrec-like photographer whose Storyville prostitute portraits, brought out from oblivion by Lee Friedlander, inspired Louis Malle's 1978 film Pretty Baby and now this sequence. A stanza that begins "There are indeed all sorts of men who visit here" predictably yet elegantly ends "And then there are those, of course, whose desires I cannot commit to paper." Yet this is not generally a sentimentalized account of a conventional subject. Much more like Bellocq's artless, sympathetic and gorgeous portraits are lines like these, describing the "girls": "They like best, as I do, the regular meals, warm from the cooks in our own kitchen, the clean indoor toilet and hot-water bath." While the trend of the first-person historical novel (think Wittgenstein's Nephew as much as Corelli's Mandolin) has passed, the best poems here fulfill the genre's mandate to spice up the period piece with intellectual frisson; Tretheway goes two-for-two by successfully taking on the poetically dubious task of working from art and making it signify anew. (Apr.)Forecast: Despite the book's brevity, expect review attention, as well as short items in glossies profiling Tretheway with the requisite provocative Bellocq reproductions. National Poetry Month reviewers wanting to take stock of recent poetry by African-American women might place this book alongside Harryette Mullen's Sleeping with the Dictionary (Forecasts, Dec. 17, 2001) and Elizabeth Alexander's Antebellum Dream Book (published last year).
Posted: Mon 29 Oct 2007 16:22 Post subject: Re: Creole by Beyonce Knowles
LSGH wrote:
Beyonce recently discovered that she wants to be identified as Creole
since she fell in love with France (and numerous French reporters informed her
that she was a Creole of French blood/heritage).
http://creoleneworleans.typepad.com/photos/famous_creoles_of_today/index.html
my dad is a louisiana creole and my mom is black american. She came from a black-anglo culture from Northern Louisiana. From reading a lot of the posts, it seems that some people still associate "creole" with being a race or having "light skin". There are a lot of misconceptions. the louisiana creoles are an ethnic group with a specific culture determined by its unique historical experience in America. Its also about ancestry and family ties like a few posters have said. My dads people have been in louisiana for over 250 years. So they have deep louisiana creole roots.
unfortunately, i dont speak the language or do anything that is culturally related to being creole. My dad speaks english with a french accent. He's forgotten how to speak a lot of creole he knew as a boy..but he can still understand it though. He still does creole things like cooking gumbo, or says creole phrases mixed with english. i can remember my grandmother speaking creole too her sister on the phone and telling me in english to do things. As a kid, i didnt think my dads family was different then the majority of families I knew until i got older and started discovering my history and culture. I identity as being black with creole roots because i dont function in a 100 percent creole world. My dads ancestors grew up in south louisiana creole communities like Plaisance, Belair Cove, Frilot Cove, Mallet, Opelousas, Lafayette, Grand Coteau. He also has ancestral ties in New Orleans and Carenton in Saint Marie Parish. So the creole roots are there. From what Ive found out. Creoles come in different groups.
the gens de coleur= this group were free before the Civil War and were generally were of mixed native american, europeon, and african heritage. They or their ancestors were slaves who were the mixed race children of slaveowning fathers. my grandmothers ancestors belong in this group
negre libres= this group was usually mostly of african descent whose ancestors were slaves freed before the Civil war from the French to the early American period. my grandfathers ancestors belong in this group.
creole slaves= mixed or mostly african descent whose ancestors came to louisiana before 1803 who remained in slavery until the emancipation proclamation.
but a lot of this overlaps because many people of louisiana creole descent have ancestors who were black anglo american slaves, white anglo americans, along with gens de coleur, ... so its pretty complex
you have people with anglo names like johnson, ellis, cook, collins who are creole-identitied along with some who have italian, german, spanish, and french surnames(some of my ancestors had italian surnames)
'
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