Mixed Race Studies

“[She] Passed Down Orleans Street, a Polished Dandy”: The Queer Race Romance of Ludwig von Reizenstein’s The Mysteries of New Orleans

Studies in American Fiction
Volume 43, Issue 1, Spring 2016
pages 27-50
DOI: 10.1353/saf.2016.0005

Lauren Heintz
Department of English
California State University, Los Angeles

Ludwig von Reizenstein’s sensational, serialized novel, The Mysteries of New Orleans (1854–1855), opens with the lament that in New Orleans, “the chains of a maligned race rattle day and night” because “no angels have yet appeared to our Negritians to announce the birth of a Toussaint L’Ouverture!” Foreshadowing what is to come at the end of Reizenstein’s five-volume text, the prologue provides the first and only glimpse of the prophetic child, the “sun-god” Toussaint. The reincarnated revolutionary leader will deliver the entire U.S. South from the “evils” of slavery, instigating a bloody race war at the future date of 1871. Shortly after this auguration, we meet the couple that is to give birth to the new Toussaint. Much of the novel hinges on the fact that Toussaint L’Ouverture is to be born of a light-skinned mulatto woman (Lucy) and an effeminate, white German aristocrat (Emil), both of whom are introduced as an eroticized, cross-dressing couple. Curiously, it is when they are masquerading in each other’s clothes that the text’s revolutionary design is announced: an anachronistic and anatopistic re-imagination of the Haitian revolution led by the now interracial Toussaint.

Reizenstein is somewhat of a self-professed rogue novelist. In a spat between the newspaper that Reizentein’s text was published in, Louisiana Staats Zeitung, and its rival newspaper, the Deutsche Zeitung, the editors of the latter denounce the “wanton wiles” of Reizenstein’s text as “betraying a lack of propriety that borders on moral decadence,” a decadence that “should not be brought into the family for a few cents” (Mysteries xxi). Reizenstein returns the stab to mock the kind of domestic, sentimental piety in fiction that “will only be read by shy, superannuated virgins” (Mysteries xx). Rejecting the genre of sentimentality, Reizenstein takes his rebuttal one step further as he, too, separates himself from the “disreputable novelist Ned Buntline,” who Reizenstein claims “launched the literature of mysteries on American soil and thereby utterly killed all their enchantment” (Mysteries 1). Whether or not Reizenstein was attempting to revamp the sensational “mysteries” genre or distance himself from it, and despite Reizenstein’s all out refusal of sentimentality, he still predominantly employs the trope of the “race romance” that remains typical to both sensational “mysteries of the city” novels as well as sentimental domestic fiction. Yet in Mysteries, the cross-dressing, extramarital race romance between Lucy and Emil is certainly bawdy enough for an illicit readership searching for something beyond the sentimental romance.

While the race romance in Mysteries between Lucy and Emil is caught up in gender-play, adultery, licentiousness, and scandal, the race romance as a predominant trope in nineteenth-century sensational and sentimental fiction most commonly dramatizes the scenario of a white man falling in love with a woman of color, who is often described as being tragically light skinned. The race romance seeks to advance the promise of incorporating the person of color into the imagined white republic of the United States. But also, the race romance most often hinges on the quintessential sensationalist promise of the mixed-raced child, one who is born of an interracial union that ushers in a type of racialized utopianism. The intent of the race romance is to instigate the dissolution of the races through the appropriation and incorporation of the interracial child into whiteness. Yet, while the above is the idealized scenario of the race romance introduced in nineteenth-century fiction, more often than not the race romance unravels as an all out doomed enterprise by the end of the novel. In Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon (1859), for example, in the U.S. version of the play, the story ends with the tragic death of the octoroon heroine Zoe in the arms of her white lover George; in Lydia Maria Child’s Hobomok (1824), the “noble savage” Hobomok leaves his white lover, Mary, and their son, Hobomok, for the sake of white domesticity as Mary nurtures her…

The Mysteries of New Orleans

Johns Hopkins University Press
June 2002
600 pages
3 halftones
Paperback ISBN: 9780801868825

Baron Ludwig von Reizenstein (1826-1885)

translated and edited by:

Steven Rowan, Professor of History
University of Missouri, St. Louis

“Reizenstein’s peculiar vision of New Orleans is worth resurrecting precisely because it crossed the boundaries of acceptable taste in nineteenth-century German America and squatted firmly on the other side… This work makes us realize how limited our notions were of what could be conceived by a fertile American imagination in the middle of the nineteenth century.”—from the Introduction by Steven Rowan

A lost classic of America’s neglected German-language literary tradition, The Mysteries of New Orleans by Baron Ludwig von Reizenstein first appeared as a serial in the Louisiana Staats-Zeitung, a New Orleans German-language newspaper, between 1854 and 1855. Inspired by the gothic “urban mysteries” serialized in France and Germany during this period, Reizenstein crafted a daring occult novel that stages a frontal assault on the ethos of the antebellum South. His plot imagines the coming of a bloody, retributive justice at the hands of Hiram the Freemason—a nightmarish, 200-year-old, proto-Nietzschean superman—for the sin of slavery. Heralded by the birth of a black messiah, the son of a mulatto prostitute and a decadent German aristocrat, this coming revolution is depicted in frankly apocalyptic terms.

Yet, Reizenstein was equally concerned with setting and characters, from the mundane to the fantastic. The book is saturated with the atmosphere of nineteenth-century New Orleans, the amorous exploits of its main characters uncannily resembling those of New Orleans’ leading citizens. Also of note is the author’s progressively matter-of-fact portrait of the lesbian romance between his novel’s only sympathetic characters, Claudine and Orleana. This edition marks the first time that The Mysteries of New Orleans has been translated into English and proves that 150 years later, this vast, strange, and important novel remains as compelling as ever.

Baron Ludwig von Reizenstein (1826-1885) was born in Bavaria and emigrated to America in 1848. By 1851 he had established himself as a civil engineer, architect, journalist, amateur naturalist, and publisher in New Orleans, where he lived until his death.

On Becoming Black, Becoming White and Being Human: Rachel Dolezal and the Fluidity of Race

Truthdig
2015-06-18

Channing G. Joseph

Library of Congress

For decades, no one knew my cousin Ernest Torregano was black. At least, no one who mattered in his new life.

Not the clients or associates of the prominent bankruptcy law firm with which he had built his reputation and his fortune. Not the other members of the San Francisco Planning Commission, of which he had been president. And certainly not the mayor, Elmer Robinson, with whom Ernest had been close since their days as fresh new lawyers in the city. It is quite likely, I think, that Ernest never admitted, even to Pearl, his second wife of 30 years, that she had married an African-American man.

Few understood the true extent of my cousin’s labyrinth of secrets until he was already dead and buried. By then, he had successfully “passed for white” for more than 40 years.

When his only child, Gladys Stevens, learned that her father had not died in 1915 but had been alive until 1954, she filed suit to claim her share of his estate—worth about $300,000 then, or about $2.6 million today. After a protracted legal battle to prove she really was Ernest’s daughter, she won. Meanwhile, her story—and Ernest’s—made national headlines for nearly seven years. One Oklahoma newspaper announced: “Widow Claims Rich Lawyer Was Really Her Negro Father.” A Connecticut paper proclaimed: “Daughter’s Suit Reveals Double Life of Man Who Passed Over Color Line.” But Newsweek magazine’s headline captured the essence of the story in just three words: “The Second Man.”

Born into a mixed-race family in New Orleans in 1882, the First Man was the fair-skinned son of a white father and a mixed-race mother. And because he so loved to sing and to laugh and to travel, he joined a touring minstrel troupe, performing in blackface makeup for cheering crowds across the South. In that show, he met Viola, who played the guitar, and they married. After their daughter, Gladys, was born, the First Man took a job as a Pullman porter on the Southern Pacific Railroad line from New Orleans to San Francisco—to make a better living for his new family. But at some point along the way—perhaps as he gazed through a train car window at the countryside rolling by or as he wandered along Market Street among white people who did not sneer at him or call him “boy”—he decided he would never return home. (According to one account, his mother, who supported the idea of his passing, convinced him that Viola and Gladys had been killed and that he should forget them forever.)…

Read the entire article here.

New Orleans II: the Halloween Ghost Post

The History Tourist
2015-10-31

Susan Kalasunas

My first chance to encounter a ghost at the Bourbon Orleans Hotel in New Orleans came not long after check-in.

“Can we see the ballroom?” I asked the receptionist.

“Yes. We don’t have an event tonight, but the doors should be open. It’s right up those stairs.” That would be the grand one with the double staircase that swept up to the second floor.

The doors were unlocked but the only light in the room was from street lights peeking through large, heavily draped windows. We wandered in the dark. There’s a ghost associated with the ballroom: a woman who dances, alone, or who hides behind the curtains. I searched for the woman while Mr. History Tourist searched for the light switches. Mr. HT found the switches first and set the chandeliers alight.

This was once the Orleans Ballroom. Says the Bourbon Orleans website: “In 1817, entrepreneur John David…built the Orleans Ballroom: the oldest, most historic ballroom in New Orleans. When it opened, the ballroom became the setting for…the forever famous Quadroon Balls.”…

Read the entire article here.

A Son of the Wealthiest Planter in the South Convicted of a Great Crime.

The Anderson Intellingencer
Anderson Court House., South Carolina
Thursday Morning, 1875-05-20 (Volume X, Number 44)
page 1, column 3
Source: Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. United States Library of Congress.

“William S. Calhoun, convicted of forgery on evidence of his quadroon mistress, Olivia Williams!”

This announcement in the Sunday papers supplies the text for a long and instructive moral discourse, and a very interesting chapter of domestic history.

The Calhoun referred to above is the only son of the late Meredith P. Calhoun, for many years before the war the largest and most lordly planter in the South. The wife of Mr. Calhoun was the daughter of Judge Smith, formerly of South Carolina, where he played a very prominent part in the politics and society of that State. Judge Smith was one of the most ancient and respected families in South Carolina, and inherited large estates, which he augmented in value by his judgment and enterprise. In the political arena he was regarded as the only formidable rival of the great John C. Calhoun. Judge Smith was the acknowledged leader of the Union party in the great secession fight of 1835. Shortly after this he removed to Huntsville, Alabama, where he bought large estates and established himself in an elegant residence, which was the home of a large and generous hospitality. The eldest daughter of Judge Smith married Meredith Calhoun, a young adventurer from the North, of polished manners and good address. Mrs. Calhoun received as her dowry a large sum, which was invested in an immense tract of the rich land on Red River, then held in great demand as the most valuable and productive in the State. This is the land which embraces the greater portion of what is now known as Grant parish. It extends ten miles on the river, and has been leveed at a vast expense, and possesses unlimited resource for the production of cotton and sugar. Upon this estate Mr. Calhoun expended a very great sum, stocking it with eleven hundred slaves, and all the expensive structures and machinery required to produce cotton and sugar. In the palmy days of this culture the yield of this large investment was highly remunerative. For several years before the war the regular income was between $250,000 and $300,000.

Having made several visits to France with his family, Mr. Calhoun acquired a taste for French society and habits, and during the latter period of his life resided in Paris. Here he expended his large income in affording his wife and daughter every opportunity of participating in the elegant and fashionable enjoyments of the gay and luxurious capital. Besides his daughter, an accomplished and elegant young lady, who was born and educated in France, so that she speaks the French language with more facility than her own, Mr. Calhoun had a son who came into this world partially deformed, but not on that account was regarded with less affection and tenderness by his parents. No child was ever more carefully and tenderly watched and cared for than the poor little hunchback, Willie Calhoun. Preferring to live on the plantation rather than expose himself in the brilliant society of Paris, Willie did not accompany his parents abroad. Devoting himself to agricultural life, he finally became a sort of head manager or agent for his father. This was the condition of the family when the war broke out. Mr. Calhoun was residing with his wife and daughter in France, and Willie had charge of the plantation. Of course the war produced most disastrous effects on the Calhoun estate. The destruction of the slave property alone was enough to swamp the whole estate. Mr. Calhoun died about the close of the war, and the widow had given her power of attorney to Willie. In 1868 she returned with her daughter to Louisiana, and proceeded on a steamboat to the landing now known as Colfax, with a view of seeing her son and investigating the condition of her affairs. Her mind had been greatly disturbed by rumors of her son’s “carryings on” from old servants and others. Among other stories which had reached her was one to the effect that he had become a practical as well as a political miscegenationist—that he had been elected by an exclusive negro vote to the Legislature, and had formed a liaison with a buxom quadroon who claimed to be his lawful wife, and who assumed all the airs and authority of the lady of the Calhoun mansion.

It may be imagined with what crushing force these terrible stories fell upon the pride of the high-born mother. Whether it was from the realization of their truth or from some other warning, Mrs. Calhoun, after a brief conversation with some of her old servants at the river landing, came to the conclusion not to expose herself to the humiliation of witnessing the son’s degradation and the profanity of the family mansion, so with her daughter she returned on the boat to the city, and procuring board for herself and daughter at the Bay of St. Louis, sojourned there for some months. Here Mrs. Calhoun died in the summer of 1868, leaving her daughter alone in the world, moneyless and almost friendless. Nothing could be got from the estate. It had been hopelessly involved by Willie.

Miss Ada had been nurtured with boundless indulgence. She had never known what it was to want anything which money could command; and here was she, totally inexperienced, an orphan thrown upon the world, from a position of long-assured wealth and high rank, with no other relative but a brother, who was now her most bitter enemy; but the young lady proved equal to her great emergencies. It would perhaps be an intrusion upon her private affairs to refer to shifts and expedients to which she was driven to regain her fortune, and to save her from the miseries of a poverty which would be tenfold bitter to one reared as she had been.

Suffice it to say that, with the aid of a zealous and persevering young lawyer, she has been placed beyond the reach of the perils so much feared by her, and we sincerely hope her fortunes are in a fair train to restoration, and that her future will realize the old dramatic climax of “virtue rewarded and vice punished.”

And surely this conviction of the bad brother for forgery would seem to fill the last condition of dramatic and poetic justice. After degrading and disgracing himself and family by a disreputable alliance, and incumbering his mother and sister’s estate by consenting to a judgment of breach of promise of marriage of $50,000, in favor of his quadroon mistress, he sought to rid himself and the estate of this incumbrance by an act which the jury had decided to be a forgery.

Truly has the psalmist declared “the ways of the transgressor are hard.” —New Orleans Times.

Off the record: Wright State’s Natasha McPherson pulls histories of Creole women from obscure public documents

Dialogue: Newsletter for Faculty & Staff
Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio
2015-02-03

Jim Hannah, Assistant Director of Public Relations

Natasha McPherson, an assistant professor of history, has spent 10 years documenting the previously untold history of Creole women.

With the nuns of the Sisters of the Holy Family butterflying around her, Natasha McPherson used a pencil to painstakingly scrawl hundreds of names and histories down on paper at the copy machine-less mission in New Orleans.

Many of those records would be washed away when Hurricane Katrina battered and wounded the city, leaving more than 1,800 people dead and causing $108 billion in property damage.

But McPherson’s hand-copied records have survived and are part of a manuscript the Wright State University history professor has produced in a 10-year labor of love that reveals a previously untold history of Creole women.

“Getting this manuscript published is extremely important in preserving some of the history that might have been lost,” McPherson said. “My handwritten copy is the only thing left of some of these records.”…

…For most of their history, Creole women lived in the margins of two political classes — free and slaves. In the 19th century, they had more social freedom than African-Americans and even white women. But after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 freed the slaves, Creole women found themselves more strongly associated with African-Americans and thus more socially restricted.

McPherson discovered that many Creole women were able to preserve their status and previous privilege even without political representation by marrying white or Creole men and turning that into financial opportunity.

“Creole women have very shrewd business practices,” she said. “Even if they are given just a little bit of money, they will turn it into a business. If they own their own home, they rent out rooms in their house for income.”…

Read the entire article here.

Meet Yaba Blay

WUNC 91.5 North Carolina Public Radio
2016-03-07

Charlie Shelton, Digital News Producer

Frank Stasio, Host
“The State of Things”

Yaba Blay is the Dan Blue Endowed Chair in Political Science at N.C. Central University Sabriya Simon

Growing up in New Orleans, Yaba Blay saw firsthand the different roles one navigates as an African-American. At home, she had to adjust to the Ghanaian culture of her parents, but outside the house, her dark skin set her apart from New Orleans’ light-skinned Creole community.

As Blay grew older, she began to explore how the ways in which she presented herself as a black woman defined her sense of self. Her work as a scholar, producer and publisher includes projects analyzing skin color in the U.S. and Ghana and hair care in black communities.

She is the author of the book “(1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race” (BLACKprint Press/2013), and she served as consulting producer for the CNN television documentary “Who Is Black in America?” She now serves as the Dan Blue endowed chair in political science at N.C. Central University in Durham.

Host Frank Stasio talks with Blay about growing up in New Orleans and her multimedia work.

Listen to the interview (00:48:10) here. Download the interview here.

The Louisiana Convention.

The Spirit of Democracy
Woodsfield, Ohio
1867-12-17
page 2, column 3

The Convention for the reconstruction of Louisiana, now in session at New Orleans, is one of the smallest affairs in the way of brains ever before assembled in the United States. It is composed of cooks, boot-blacks, field-hands, bureau officers, and men unknown five miles from their place of residence. It is with weapons of this sort that the Radical Revolutionists are ruling the South, and trampling the rights of White men under their feet. Here is a list of the  members, taken from the N. Y. World:

• W. Jasper Blackburn, white, is a Northern man who edits the Homer Iliad, a little Radical paper of intense bitterness published in Claiborne parish.
• O. C. Bladin is a New Orleans mulatto.
• Hyacinthe Bonseigneur is the same and chairman of a standing committee that on “conteengeent expanses.”
• Emile Bonnefoi is a mulatto.
• Wm. Brown is an unknown white
• Dennis Burrel is a negro.
• Wm. Butler is a negro.
• Wm. H. Cooley is a white man; a District Judge in Point Coupee and chairman of the standing committee on the new constitution. He is not so Radicals he was and swears freely.
• W. R.  Crane is a truly loyal man whose name appears subscribed to this oath: “I do solemnly swear that I am qualified according to the Constitution, and the laws of the State to vote. I will be faithful and true allegiance bear to the State of Louisiana and the Confederate States of America, and that I will support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the State and of the said Confederate States. So help me God. March 20, 1862.”Some years prior to this the reconstructing Crane offered a resolution in the Louisiana Legislature to unseat J. P. Benjamin then United States Senator; because the said Judah was in favor of Mr. Clay’s compromise measure, instead of being as Soule, Quitman and the reconstructing Crane then were for instantaneous secession. After Butler the beast came to this city, Mr. Crane became curator of the estates of persons sent beyond the line, and of registered enemies. In personal appearance he is adust as to the face, orange-tawny as to the beard, and stringy as to the neck, around which, without any intervention of a collar is twisted a wispy black cravat.
• Thos. S. Crawford is a melancholy unknown young white man in blue steel specs.
• R. J. Cromwell is a negro doctor.
• Samuel E. Curey is a very black negro.
• Geo. W. Dearing, Jr, is a mulatto.
• A. J. Demarestis white, unknown.
• Chas. Depasseau, is a mulatto.
• P. G. Deslonde, mulatto.
• Jos. DeBlonde, mulatto.
• Auguste Donator Jr., mulatto.
• Davis Douglas, mulatto.
• J. G. Drimkard, white, unknown.
• Gustavus Duparte, mulatto.
• Ulger Dupart, mulatto.
• C. H. B. Duplessis, white, unknown.
• J. B. Esnard, mulatto.
• G. W. Furgeson, white, unknown.
• John Gair, mulatto.
• R. G. Gardiner, a very black negro, temporary president of the Convention.
• Abraham N. Gould, negro.
• Leopold Guichard, mulatto.
• Peter Harper, Jno. S. Harris, Thos. P. Harrison, O. H. Hempstead, and W. .H. Hiestaud, all white and entirely unknown.
• J. H. Ingraham, mulatto, a cook in the Washington artillery during the war, and now Chairman of the Committee on Bill of Rights.
• R. H. Isabelle, mulatto.
• Thos. Isabelle, mulatto.
• Simon Jones, white.
• Geo. Y. Kelso, mulatto.
• Jas. H. Landers, white, wears a brimstone colored vest an is Solon Shinge to a hair. Otherwise unknown.
• Victor Lange, mulatto.
• Chas Leroy, mulatto.
• J. B. Lewis, Viite.
• Richard Lewis, black.
• Jno. J. Ludwig, white, a German—Has good sense, but speaks English fewly.
• Jno. Lynch, white. “Give ye me wor’rd of honor he has” said he the other day, sotto voce, in debate. And of such is delegate Lynch.
• Frederic Mane, white.
• Thomas M. Martin, mulatto.
• J. A. Massicot, white.
• Win. R. Meadows, white.
• Ben. McLeran, white.
• W. L. McMillan, white of Ohio, ex-U. S. A.
• Milton Morris, a very black negro.
• S. R. Moses, still blacker.
• Wm. Munell, mulatto.
• Jas. Mushaway, white.
• Theophile Myers, mulatto.
• J. P. Newsham, white, ex-U. S.
• Jos. C. Oliver, mulatto.
• S. B. Packard, white.
• Jno. Pierce, mulatto.
• P. B. S. Pinchback, mulatto. Great friend of. Banks, N. P.
• Curtis Pollard, negro, black as jet.
• Geo. W. Reagan, white, ex-U. S. A.
• D. Reese, white.
• Fortune Riard, mulatto.
• D. D. Riggs, white.
• J. A. N. Roberts, mulatto.
• L. Rodriquez, mulatto.
• N. Schawb, white, German.
• Charles Smith, white, Internal Revenue assessor.
• Sosthene Snacr, mulatto.
• Jno. Scott, negro.
• G. Snider, white.
• H. G. Steele, white.
• Chas. Thibaut, white.
• E. Twichant, mulatto.
• M. H. Twichell, white, ex-U. S. A.
• Napoleon Underwood, white.
• P. F. Valfroit, negro.
• Jno. B. Vandergriff, white.
• Michel Vidal, white.
• Rufus Naples, white.
• G. M. Wickliffe, white, is a truly loyal man. In 1860, he edited a paper at Clinton, in this State called The Spirit of the South, full of death to abolitionists, hang the abolitionist devils, whet the knife, prepare the fuel, etc., etc., in the very worst style of the fire-eating school. As before observed he is a truly loyal man. He looks, big black mustache “hilang!” air and all as though he had just dropped down out of the Bowery and with two negroes Williams and Wilson, closes the roll of this Convention.

Were the people of the South true to their own interests they would rise in the name of the Constitution of the United States, and wipe the vampire band of howling, blood-thirsty Niggers and unknowns, who are now engaged in eating out their substance and outlawing them, from existence.

Here is a specimen of the blood-thirsty speeches daily thrown into the faces of disfranchised white men:

New Orleans, December 7.—In the Convention to-day, while discussing the preamble and resolutions denying the statements contained in the memorial to congress expressing a fear of a war of races, a negro named Cromwell declared: “We will rule; until the last one of us goes down forever.” That negroes were going to have their rights, if it was by revolution and blood, in spite of Andy Johnson or any other man, and declared that he was ready for revolution.

From the above the people can very readily see what, the negro doctrines of Sumner and Wilson have brought the country too.

On ‘Jackson Five Nostrils,’ Creole vs. ‘Negro’ and Beefing Over Beyoncé’s ‘Formation’

ColorLines
2016-02-08

Yaba Blay, Dan Blue Endowed Chair & Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science
North Carolina Central University, Durham, North Carolina

As you know, the video for Beyoncé Knowles’ “Formation” does the most, from invoking police violence, to flashing back to Hurricane Katrina, to celebrating Blue Ivy’s adorable afro. Here, Yaba Blay, a dark-skinned, New Orleans-bred scholar who researches skin color and identity politics, gets into a topic we’ve been avoiding: the message Beyoncé is sending about complexion and worth.

I was born and raised in New Awlins and never miss the opportunity to remind folks of that. So when Beyoncé’s video for “Formation” dropped on Saturday, I, like the majority of my homegirls, was hype.

I wasn’t excited because I’m a certified Beyoncé stan, because the video is visually stunning, or because this seemed to be the Blackest iteration of Beyoncé yet. I was hype because she seemed to be reppin’ New Awlins hard, and not in a tepid “I heart N.O.” kind of way, but more in line with our playfully defiant brand of Blackness. That she unleashed the video during Mardi Gras weekend? It just couldn’t get any better!

Until it got worse…

…I cheer Bey on as she sings, “I like my Negro nose with Jackson Five nostrils.” But I cringe when I hear her chant, “You mix that Negro with that Creole make a Texas bamma” about her Alabama-born dad and her mom from Louisiana. This is the same reason I cringed at the L’Oreal ad that identified Beyonce as African-American, Native American and French and why I don’t appreciate her largely unknown song “Creole.”

Having grown up black-Black (read: dark-skinned) in colorstruck New Awlins, hearing someone, particularly a woman, make a distinction between Creole and “Negro” is deeply triggering. This isn’t just for me but for many New Orleanians.

For generations, Creoles—people descended from a cultural/racial mixture of African, French, Spanish and/or Native American people—have distinguished themselves racially from “regular Negroes.” In New Orleans, phenotype—namely “pretty color and good hair”—translates to (relative) power…

Read the entire article here.

Viewing Los Angeles Through a Creole Lens

The New York Times
2016-01-21

Farai Chideya

The pulse of the train on the tracks sets a rhythm as its passenger cars seem to skim over Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans. These six miles of nothing but sky above and water below are the gateway into the city by rail. Next come the cemeteries at the edge of New Orleans, and all of a sudden, a day and a half of travel ends at the Amtrak terminal in the business district. I had just completed the first leg of my cross-country journey by sleeper train, starting in New York, and was beginning the second: a foray into the cultural ties between the Crescent City and California.

This trip had been inspired partly by the travel writer and blogger Greg Gross, who grew up in New Orleans and California. “I had a great-uncle who ran away at 15 to become a Pullman porter,” he said. These black men served a predominately white customer base as sleeping-car porters, often simply called “George” by their customers. Their union became a powerful force during the civil rights movement. Mr. Gross’s great-uncle Ellis Pearson worked on the Sunset Limited train from New Orleans to Los Angeles.

He was something like an usher for Mr. Gross’s family, which is full of cross-country transplants, including his parents and a deceased uncle who played jazz trumpet. When black New Orleans families like his moved to California, “They brought their food with them, their music,” he said. “They brought an energy, an attitude with them. ‘We survived there; we can make it here.’ They brought it to their churches and their neighbors.” It’s a refrain I hear many times as I speak to members of this diaspora.

The Grosses weren’t the only ones. The migration of black and Creole families moving to California from Louisiana began as a trickle in 1927, in the wake of that year’s great flood, and grew to a mass migration from the 1930s to 1960, years that encompassed the Depression, World War II and the growth of employment opportunities for blacks, and Jim Crow. While many families went from the South to the North, the train lines led many in New Orleans to the West instead. The better part of a century after its start, some migrants resettled in California after Hurricane Katrina. I wanted to follow the path that others had, to trace a thread of our cultural lineage, however faint. I wanted to see both cities through a black Bayou and Creole lens, to see if they’d drifted apart or were overlapping, remixing culture in the same way that Creoles originally had…

…Once in Los Angeles, I headed to the venerable Creole restaurant Harold and Belle’s on Jefferson Boulevard to meet up with Roger Guenveur Smith, an actor, writer and producer, and the actor and musician Mark Broyard. The dining room — scheduled to reopen next month after a renovation — was filled with locals wearing fleur-de-lis T-shirts or other symbols of their fealty to Louisiana. Mr. Broyard and Mr. Smith have known each other since childhood, and collaborated on a play called “Inside the Creole Mafia,” staged several times over the course of two decades. I got a taste of their razor-sharp banter over my gumbo.

Mr. Broyard explained how his family left Louisiana during the Jim Crow years because, “as my mother said many times,” he said, “she was not going to fight the civil rights movement with her children. We, the Creole kids, the light-skinned kids, we had been integrating schools for a lot longer because we weren’t dark. So we had been in and out of all these white institutions for years, with a tacit understanding that these people were colored, but it was O.K. that they were here because maybe they had half of one drop or something.”…

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