From then on church records and
civil archives mention the presence of the free persons of
color. Some entered the
colony as free people, some were freed in recognition of merit
and loyalty. Some had been slaves, but had been given freedom
by their white lover or parent; some had purchased their freedom
by extra work during leisure hours.
According to the Code Noir, the
free person of color had the rights of any citizen of French Louisiana, except
for marriage with and legacies from whites. In a society where a black slave could
sue a white the position of the free person of color was more solid indeed. Yet
the social pressure of custom maintained the superior position of the white over
the person of color however free and "equal."
During the Spanish
regime, easy emancipation prevailed and the free population
of color continued to grow.
In the Spanish era
(1766-1803) the free Negro enjoyed a lively social in New Orleans. The city's
first theater had mulatto stars. The average white accepted this middle layer
of society between himself and the black slaves, and dealt easily with its members.
Yet white population had two complaints. They suspected the the free mulatto might
promote slave discontent and revolt. They admired the beauty of the café-au-lait
quadroons and octaroons, but felt that the liaisons constantly undermined the
morals of young white males.
Saint-Domingue sent refugees fleeing to Louisiana, white and
black and mixed, slave and free, young and old.
Cuba also sent emigrants to New Orleans in the first decade
of the nineteenth century.
In 1812 Louisiana's
Battalion of Free Men of Color was unique in the United States,
the "only Negro volunteer militia with its own line officers."
Andrew Jackson welcomed the free Negro troops who fought heroically
at the Battle of New Orleans (1815). The state legislature
gratefully praised their patriotism and bravery.
did not block financial power. Several persons of color amassed outstanding fortunes,
particularly in real estate. However, the vast majority of this ethnic and social
middle group lived by arduous toil in trades. Most typical were the occupations
of tailor, barber, carpenter, mason, cigar maker, shoemaker, and hack driver.
according political equality the Louisiana Supreme Court steadily
protected the middle position of the free persons of color
against the more militant whites. In the antebellum era, a recent study concludes, "free
Negroes [in Louisiana] can be considered as possessing the
status of quasicitezinship and as such enjoyed a better position
than any of their counterparts in other states of the South."
Yet the free man of color continued to be "denied legal
suffrage, the right to run for public office, and made the
subject of discriminatory legislation because of his color."
As the abolitionist
movement intensified, feeling against the free persons of
color increased. The fear
of slave rebellion was ever present, and the free Negro was,
in the mind of the dominant but slightly outnumbered reace,
the most likely leader of any such uprising.
1830 and 1860 social pressure and legislative action increased
against emancipations, against immigration of free Negroes,
and in favor of colonizing resident free Negroes out of the
state. Finally in 1857 legislation was passed putting an end
completely to manumissions in Louisiana.
the Civil War three regiments of "men of color in New Orleans were the only
organized [Negro] soldiery on the confederate side." With that freedom and
under what pressure they enlisted is not clear. Overconfident Louisiana leaders
dismissed these militiamen as not needed.
After the Federals took New Orleans
in 1862, the city's ment of color, jointly with newly freed slaves, composed the
first colored regiment of the Federal army. Louisiana "furnished more colored
troops for the war than any other State," but the majority of them were freedmen,
who in the general population far outnumbered the "f.p.c."
Dunbar-Nelson wrote: "There is no state in the Union
like Louisiana, hardly any spot of like size on the globe,
where the man of color has lived so intensely, made so much
progress, been of such historical importance and yet about
whom so comparatively little is known. His history is like the Mardi Gras of the city of New Orleans,
beautiful and mysterious and wonderful, but with a serious
thought underlying it all. May it be better known to the world
Hommes et Notre Histoire, published in 1911. Black pride and French pride flow
in his recounting of these biographies. Gifted, but deprived of higher education,
Rodolphe Desdunes not only provides data unobtainable elsewhere but also serves
as a symbol of the people whom he memorialized.
Desdunes was born in New Orleans November 15, 1849. Jeremiah Desdunes, his father, had been forced to leave Haiti
in a political struggle. Jeremiah's wife Henrietta was a Cuban.
The couple had two other sons, Pierre-Arstide (a poet by profession,
a cigar-maker by trade) and Daniel.
Mathilde Chaval, and of their union were born Wendell, Daniel
(who taught music at Boys Town in Nebraska), Coritza, Agnes,
Lucille, and Jeanne. The
family lived at 928 Marias Street in downtown New Orleans.
family formerly had a cigar factory, with tobacco coming from their own plantation.
However, jovial raconteur Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes was not a businessman; he wanted
to write. In 1879 he obtained a job with the United States Customs Service as
a messenger, with a salary of six hundred dollars a year. He was dropped from
the rolls in August, 1885, an event perhaps related to the Republicans' loss of
the presidency to Democrat Grover Cleveland. Yet Desdunes returned to the service
as clerk, to serve from 1891 to 1894.
It was during
this period that Desdunes, with a few friends, organized the
Comite des Citoyens, Citizen's Committee, which launched the
Plessy vs. Fergusen case.
The 1890's were a discouraging decade, for not only did the
United States Supreme Court uphold racial segregation in 1896,
but also the state of Louisiana revised its constitution in
1898 so as to disfranchise the Negro. The personal memoirs
given by Desdunes in Nos Hommes et Notre Histoire reach only
one day in 1911 (?), Desdunes and four other officers went to supervise weighing
for customs aboard the ship unloading granite. In a tragic accident dust blew
from the stone into his eyes. Despite efforts made in federal hospitals to save
the sexagenarian's eyesight, Desdunes was to spend the remaining seventeen years
of his life in degrees of blindness. He had to retire from the Customs Service
in September, 1912.
his son Daniel in Omaha, Nebraska, Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes
died on August 14, 1928, of cancer of the larynx.
It was occasionally said that he died in California; this
misconception may have arisen from the fact that it was Mrs.
Coritza Mora of Stockton, California, who made the arrangement
for sending the remains to New Orleans. He was interred in
the family tomb in St. Louis Cemetary No. 2, Square 3.
Desdunes' literary career included
contributions to The Crusader (1889-98), a journal published by Dr. L. Martinet.
From Desdunes' pen came also some pamphlets-for example, Hommage rendu a la memoire
d'Alexandre Aristide Mary decede a la Nouvell-Orleans, le 15 mai, 1893, a l'age
de 70 ans.
The eighteen-page pamphlet was "not for sale," but was distributed
among friends. Mary's generosity as quiet contributor to may causes was praised.
Desdunes told of how Mary had opposed P.B.S. Pinchback regarding the establishment
of a separate state university for blacks, which would be called "Southern
A visit by Desdunes had led Mary to lend his support to the
fund that would carry Homere Plessy's case through the courts.
In strong terms
Desdunes condemned white oppression. However, he felt the
day would come when just whites would oppose unjust whites
as in the days of abolition. "By striving for justice, justice we may obtain, by reaching
out for justice and domination, we are in danger of losing
excoriated all flight from Negro racial identity. He felt that the present and
future need of Negro was a high moral integrity and a confident self-identity.
This foundation he considered basic to political peace and happiness.
the conclusion of the pamphlet, Desdunes posed a fundamental challenge to Du Bois'
generalizations, for he distinguished the hopeful, philosophical Latin-culture
Negro from the doubtful, practical Anglo-Saxon-culture Negro. Whatever may be
thought of Desdunes' ideology, he shows himself in this pamphlet to be a reflective
thinker and a well-read, scintillating discussant.
work, Nos Hommes et Notre Histoire, had fortunately been completed
before his sad loss of sight.
The latest date given in the book is 1908. In 1911, L. Martin
of Montreal urged the author to publish his manuscript and
made arrangements for its printing and publication in the
largest French-speaking city in America.
book was his avocation-a labor of love for his people. The data he was able to
obtain are often anecdotal and uneven, and unevenly distributed, but his work
is a unique source of information and insight regarding these men and women who
suffered for race and for language.
The French original
of Nos Hommes et Notre Histoire is a collector's item nowadays.
The translation of Desdunes
into English by Sister Dorothea McCants makes available a
valuable source book. Black and white, Creole and Americain,
northerner and southerner, have much to ponder here of race
and hope, of effort and disillusionment, of love of letters
and-most of all-neighbor.