Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

The suggestion of a fruitless future for the black American is reinforced in the faces of the two young figures. Homer endows the women with traditional Caucasian features by painting them with light skin and slender facial bone structure. By representing the figures with a combination of both prototypical black and white physical characteristics, Homer portrays them as products of sexual mingling between the races. Although interracial cohabitation had been prevalent since the Colonial era, mulattos born in the period from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries were often the result of sexual relations between white males of the planter class and their domestic slaves. Common almost to the point on institutionalization, wealthy Southern planters kept regular concubines and bred entire families of mixed-race children, the result being an unprecedented increase in mulatto slavery during the years 1850-60. Based on the appearance of the two figures in Homer’s 1876 painting, their logical birth dates would fall near the height of interracial procreation, raising the distinct possibility that these women were fathered by the plantation owner.

Susanna W. Gold, “A measured freedom: national unity and racial containment in Winslow Homer’s The Cotton Pickers, 1876,” The Mississippi Quarterly, (Spring 2002).

To a Dark Girl

Posted in Biography, History, Louisiana, Media Archive, Religion, United States, Videos, Women on 2022-01-12 01:13Z by Steven

To a Dark Girl

North Star
Louisiana Public Broadcasting
Source: Louisiana Digital Media Archive
1985

Contributors:

Genevieve Stewart, Host
Sister Barbara Marie, Interviewee
Leslie Williams, Interviewee
Michelle Diaz, Interviewee

This episode of the series “North Star” from 1985 focuses on two intertwined stories related to the history of New Orleans in the 19th century: the quadroon balls held at the Orleans Ballroom, clandestine events where white men met free women of color, who would become their mistresses; the founding of the Sisters of the Holy Family, an African American congregation of Catholic nuns, by Henriette DeLille; and a visit to St. Mary’s Academy, the school run by the Sisters of the Holy Family, which was once located at the Orleans Ballroom. Host: Genevieve Stewart

Watch the video (00:14:20) here.

Tags: Barbara Marie, Bourbon Orleans Hotel, Genevieve Stewart, Henriette Delille, Henriette Díaz DeLille, Leslie Williams, Louisiana Digital Media Archive, Louisiana Public Broadcasting, Michelle Diaz, New Orleans, North Star, plaçage, quadroon balls, Sisters of the Holy Family, St. Mary's Academy

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Mixed Race Studies

To a Dark Girl

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