sagascend
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 Posted: Mon 10 Jul 2006 16:27 Post subject: The Colored Creole Community in New Orleans - 1800-1860 |
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| Quote: | The Politics of Identity and Race in the Colored Creole Community: The Gens De Couleur Libre in Creole New Orleans, 1800-1860
Tamara McNeill
Faculty Mentor: Professor Lawrence Levine
The history of the United States is complex, as it involves the interaction of peoples from different races, ethnicities, and religions. Constantly evolving perceptions and interpretations of appearance, language, and skin color give evidence to this complexity. Socially constructed ideologies and characterizations of blackness, particularly as seen in 19th century New Orleans, demonstrate this idea very well. This paper analyzes 19th century New Orleans and the colored Creole community as a means of increasing our understanding of the role identity plays in American society.
Before the Civil War, three Creole communities existed in New Orleans: the white and ethnic Creoles (French, Spanish, or Anglo-Americans of mixed socio-economic classes), the free Creoles of color (mulattos, quadroons, and octoroons[1] who were generally upper-middle class), and black Creoles (slaves and free people who were generally lower class). New Orleans Creoles occupied distinct social and economic classes.[2] Blacks and slaves were generally members of lower and working classes. White and colored Creoles were professionals and wealthy members of the upper and middle classes. These three distinct groups were interdependent, all identifying themselves as Creole. The "Creole" in the United States, therefore, differed by region, race, gender, and ethnicity. However, within the city of New Orleans, white and colored Creoles used certain social and physical traits to define "Creole." These traits included race and ethnicity as well as social customs. These socially-constructed physical and social elements of Louisiana life formed the basis of a three-tiered caste system from 1800 to 1860.[3] The relationship between the white, colored, and black communities in post-colonial New Orleans is the focus of this multi-layered study.
Each Creole community may have defined itself as "Creole" and may or may not have defined the other two groups as "Creole." It is a certainty that all three groups maintained ideological attitudes about themselves and others. Indeed, early nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors made vehement distinctions between whites, coloreds, and blacks or Negroes.[4] Most made it quite clear that blacks were never considered Creole. Thus, the notion of "Creole" was socially constructed by whites and coloreds, such that the definition of Creole varied depending on the racial background of the definer.
The colored Creoles, or gens de couleur libre, were a separate group of Creoles who occupied a particular racial position in New Orleans Creole society and are a perfect example of a marginalized group that faced strict external definitions from Anglo Americans after the Civil War.[5] However, no group is completely the product of external definitions, and Creoles, both white and colored, have been at least in part the product of self-definition. The colored Creoles of nineteenth-century New Orleans in particular were plagued by the contradiction of an internal, self-imposed identity and a socially constructed, white-formed, external definition.
New Orleans was originally founded by the French, occupied later by the Spanish, purchased by the Americans, fought for by the British, and occupied by the North during the Civil War.[6] Historically, many Europeans in New Orleans turned to African slaves and Indian women as sexual mates. The resultant mixed race population drew the attention of the white settlers because blacks were thought to be different from Europeans and thus had to be governed differently.[7] King Louis XV of France responded to territorial complaints in 1724 with the passage of the Code Noir, or Black Code, which survived both the French and Spanish regimes. The purpose of the Code was "to control the increasing number of slaves in the colony . . . prevent insurrections," the torture of slaves, and the separation of children from their mothers.[8] Marriage between whites and blacks as well as concubinage was also forbidden by the Code.[9] Furthermore, during the Spanish reign in New Orleans, miscegenation was frequently condemned.[10] Yet, it was inevitable that European men would take their slave women as mistresses in a frontier society where white women were sparse.[11] European women, on the other hand, expressed their intense distaste for the concubine system and the proliferation of mixed race children.[12] Complaints from European women and the Catholic church compelled Governor Miro to pass the tignon law in 1786 which prohibited Creole women of color from displaying "excessive attention to dress" in the streets of New Orleans.[13] Despite these extreme provisions of the law, "Spanish military officers and a good many of the inhabitants live[d] almost publicly with colored concubines."[14]
When Louisiana was transferred to the United States in 1803, the existing laws in the Black Code regarding free people of color continued to be enforced (except those that were inconsistent with the laws of the United States).[15] In New Orleans during 1804, the population consisted of approximately ten thousand people. Six thousand were Negroes, twenty-five hundred were non-slave (both white and black), and the remainder were slaves.[16] Between 1800 and 1860, Louisiana was a unique Southern state. Race relations in New Orleans were different from those in any other city due to a three-tiered racial hierarchy. No other southern state allowed a free mulatto community to live as non-slaves. White and colored Creoles held certain notions about self-identity and about the social status of the other. After whites characterized colored Creoles as "black," the gens de couleur libre created their own society, defining themselves as a colored Creole community.
Between 1800 and 1860, the gens de couleur libre were a socially- and self-defined French ethnic group. They prided themselves on being descendants of a free, well-cultured people.[17] This pride was manifested in their insistence on speaking only French.[18] Historian Annie Lee West Stahl, in 1942, defined the "Creole" as
a person of European parentage born in a French or Spanish colony. Erroneously referred to as one of colored blood. In New Orleans the word designates those of French or Spanish descent or of mixed descent. One reason for the term Creole being misunderstood is due to the fact [sic] that the slaves spoke a Creole dialect bearing about the same relation to pure French as the Southern negro [sic] talk bears to English purely spoken.[19]
This simple explanation is contradictory and ahistorical. If colored people spoke a French Creole dialect, and believed themselves to be Creole, then they were Creole. Stahl assumed that Creole identity was external and not internal. Stahl completely missed the importance of the process of self-identity and ignored the exchange of languages. Slaves and other blacks who spoke French or English had to learn it somewhere, and their proximity to those persons who spoke either French or English must imply some form of contact between the two groups. That same contact transmitted a language and also informed a cultural identity. More than likely, frequent contact between slaves, blacks and French people produced a mixed race generation raised in the French culture. The national and ethnic identity of colored Creoles can be further explained in terms of how they racially and physically viewed themselves in relation to others.
The gens de couleur libre occupied a relatively unstable position in New Orleans between 1800 and 1860. Their community was both dependent on and independent of the white and black communities. Free people of color used many gradations of color as the standard of respectability, but the white community was used as the standard of beauty.[20] Some colored planters owned slaves, whose labor naturally contributed to the wealth and prestige of the planter within the gens de couleur libre community. They also used blacks to contrast themselves, as they were a constant reminder of their slave origins. In this manner, colored Creoles used blacks to gauge how far they had progressed from slavery. This ideology was further manifested in an emphasis on facial features and skin color and tone. Although the gens de couleur libre did not desire to be white, they participated in the gradual lightening of their skin.[21] Their community operated within a caste system based on terminology, "each meaning one more generation's elevation toward perfection in white blood."[22] Thus, colored Creoles imposed a value hierarchy on physical appearance: the whiter a person was, the better his/her status.[23] This apparent confusion is better known as the colored Creole contradiction.
Creoles of color chose to marginalize blacks and each other in order to create, invigorate, and validate their own identities.[24] This identity also came with a price: other Creoles of color were oppressed or shunned because they did not look "white" enough. Again, the emphasis on light skin in the gens de couleur libre community did not translate into a desire to actually be white. Perfect whiteness of the skin was an external display of the community's desired status, that is, the status of whites. Whites enjoyed full social equality and freedom under Louisiana law, and the gens de couleur libre wished to partake of those same freedoms and equalities but were excluded full participation because of their varying degrees of black blood. Nevertheless, the racial caste system favored by the colored Creoles put them in a superior position over blacks.[25]
The gens de couleur libre consistently rejected the labels "black" and "Negro," preferring to call themselves "colored Creoles."[26] "To be colored is to have some color, to carry some amount of Negro blood in their bodies; to be black or Negro is to have only Negro blood."[27] The state of Louisiana seconded this opinion by specifying the distinction "between a negro and a person of color, the former being presumed to be a slave, the latter to be free."[28] Colored Creoles disliked being defined as mulatto because of its origins, from the Spanish word for mule, which they perceived as an offense.[29] Mulatto was also a socially-constructed term that was generally applied to all mixed blacks in the United States, especially to the gens de couleur libre, without their consent. Colored Creoles believed that they were neither black nor white. Thus, they occupied an uncertain region somewhere in between.[30] The fact that the lives of people of color were informed by the same policy that governed the lives of slaves is significant.
The 1724 Black Code was originally created to protect and control slave behavior. So, no matter how colored Creoles defined themselves, they were defined by law to be Negroes "...whatever their genetic mixture or prior social and educational status."[31] In reality, the colored Creole's descendants were a mixture of French, Spanish, English, American Indian, and black.[32] Therefore the Creole communities in New Orleans defined themselves and affirmed their American identity through avenues that were familiar and comfortable to them. One way they maintained a firm grip on their unstable environment was with a series of prescribed cultural traits and habits.
Colored Creoles were a highly developed group of people. Their customs were patterned after the French highbrow and included fashion, cuisine, music, opera, art, and other artistic activities. French was the official language in the colored community,[33] and no one spoke English because it was considered barbaric and guttural. Creole families frequently owned houses both in New Orleans and on plantations in rural areas. Some colored Creoles intermarried with each other, but never with blacks who were thought to be "wholly or partly Negro."[34] Nevertheless, colored families who intermarried with each other were considered the moral backbone of the entire community.[35] By adopting a set of social and cultural values specific to their community, they achieved high economic standing.[36] As a network, they formed "small tightly knit communities," lived in the same neighborhoods, socialized with one another, attended church together, educated each other's children, and "arranged for the marriage of their children with children of free blacks of the same relative economic standing."[37]
Despite the relative wealth and prestige garnered by colored Creoles inside their community and among some white Creoles, there still remained hostility towards them. Surprisingly, free people of color never attempted to demand full equality with whites.[38] In order to coexist peacefully with whites, they adopted a "deferential, but not cringing posture toward the white majority."[39] Colored men were in constant danger of being stripped of their unique position between having partial rights (similar to white men) and having no rights (similar to blacks). This aspect of Creole Louisiana life dictated that a man of color could not assume he had basic human rights, as did white Creole men. Similarly, the familial rights that should have existed between men and their daughters and nieces did not exist. Ironically, the same provisions of the Code Noir that forbade quadroon women from marrying white men also gave Creole women "no protection against becoming victims of seduction and prostitution."[40] Colored men could not duel or otherwise fight a white man, because any type of physical engagement was considered attempted murder on the part of the colored Creole. Thus, colored men were hampered because they could not defend the honor of a daughter or niece or wife who was verbally or physically assaulted by a white man.[41] Colored men shared the same rights and privileges of white man regarding owning property and the right to sue, yet they were hampered by another statute. It was illegal for a free person of color to insult or strike whites, or to presume themselves equal to whites.[42] People of color had to submit to whites on every occasion and speak and answer to whites with utmost respect, or suffer imprisonment.[43] Hence, their natural human rights were abridged to make whites feel comfortable about themselves. Charles E. O'Neill remarked that "the social pressure of custom maintained the superior position of the white over the person of color however free and 'equal.'"[44]
White attitudes towards the gens de couleur libre can be best understood in further historical analysis of their treatment in the American period of Louisiana. The American period is more demonstrative of the general beliefs held about free people of color than the French and Spanish eras. During the American period, a few years before the Civil War, the gens de couleur libre became the victims of social discrimination in every part of their lives due to white fear of racial equality.[45] Segregation made whites feel superior and comfortable. The Mayor of New Orleans in 1820 prevented free colored Creoles from occupying theater box seats reserved for whites.[46] Railroad cars were also segregated. When a man of color insisted on riding in a car reserved for whites, the colored passengers' rail car was unfastened from the rest of the train.[47] A particularly rabid Louisiana Senator, H. M. St. Paul, made his feelings known in the state Senate session. He declared that he would never shake hands with a person of mixed blood "because there was social contagion in the touch."[48] He further ranted that he would do all he could to discourage the "blending of the races," and asked his fellow senators: "Does it therefore follow that we are to recognize their social equality, invite them into our homes, and give our children to them in marriage? Never! Never!"[49] Colored Creoles were regarded as dangerous by whites because of their ideas of freedom, education, and "constant influence over slaves."[50]
For a brief period, white policy makers considered colonization as the best way to get rid of colored Creoles.[51] Most efforts to remove free peoples of color had failed in the 1850s because of lack of support from white citizens.[52] However, some white communities initiated a "reign of terror" that resembled the Ku Klux Klan.[53] The hostility towards free immigrants of color was eventually transformed into an anti-free person of color movement. The last two years of the ante-bellum period saw intense hatred toward free colored Creoles. Concern for colored Creoles was manifested in a newspaper article that wished them "Godspeed with the hope they better themselves and relieve us from the painful task of maintaining the proper equilibrium between them and whites, their superiors, on one side, and the slaves, their inferiors, on the other."[54] Other writers and doctors used biology to prove the supposed racial inferiority of the gens de couleur libre.[55] Purporting to speak for the entire state of Louisiana, the Monroe Register foresaw that if the colored Creoles were not removed, they would "pollute the name of our fair State with their worthless carcasses and pave the way to indolence, dissipation and vice"[56] among the rest of the Louisiana population. Writings such as these illustrate the growing hatred fueled by white fear of losing their own social status as the Civil War neared.
Thus, it is clear that white American attitudes evolved over a period of time. White Americans did not have a monolithic response to free people of color; however, they did have constrictive ideas about the status of the gens de couleur libre in New Orleans. These perceptions and attitudes were sometimes expressed in the press, or more likely manifested through violence. The outcome of years of social interaction between free people of color and whites was a new set of beliefs about race and race relations. These beliefs eventually did not favor free people of color. The quasi-equality enjoyed by the gens de couleur libre was replaced by physical and legal restrictions. White racism and prejudice was detrimental to the colored Creole community and the effects of these various attitudes on Creoles of color was manifested by an increasing emphasis on race rather than socio-economic class.
This examination of the gens de couleur libre focused on colored Creole identity as it was manifested by race relations and the politics of difference. Their unique "position" between blacks and whites lasted for only fifty years. What does their situation reveal about self-perceived, and externally applied identity? For nineteenth century Creoles of color, their identities were informed by whites and in part by blacks. External influences mattered very little before the Civil War, because they created their own institutions and environments that defined for themselves who they were. These institutions reinforced self-perceptions about skin color and socially prescribed colored Creole culture. But, the world of the gens de couleur libre was insulated for only a short time because the Civil War spelled their eradication as a racially separate group of people.
This discussion about the politics of race and identity ultimately provides a unique perspective on identity, race, and race relations in New Orleans between 1800 and 1860. To romanticize the lives of the gens de couleur libre ultimately does their memory a great disservice. The history of race, race relations and the formation of identity as examined through the lives of the gens de couleur libre continue to inform our understanding and teaching of American history. |
Link to paper and sources: http://www-mcnair.berkeley.edu/94BerkeleyMcNairJournal/02_McNeill.html |
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