Ìrìnkèrindò: A Journal of African Migration
Issue 5 (December 2011)
31 pages
Megan Kareithi, ABD History
Tulane University, Louisiana
This paper explores the methods free men of color used to assert their masculinity in Spanish New Orleans. Jose and Carlos Dupard were free, mulatto brothers living in New Orleans in the late eighteenth century, at a time when Spanish officials attempted to force new laws, like coartación, on resistant French masters. Coartación was a Spanish law that allowed for slaves to buy their freedom or self-purchase and views on the French population. Thus at the same time that new opportunities opened up for free people of color, challenges appeared as French masters attempted to enforce their hegemony by limiting the social and economic aspirations of New Orleans’ free people of color. Free men of color like the Dupard brothers fought against this and solidified their claims to masculinity and respectability through land ownership, slave ownership, patronage, and participation in the colonial militias.
Introduction
From its beginning in 1718, New Orleans was filled with a mix of people of European, Indian, and African descent, some free and some enslaved. Due to the heterogeneous nature of the settlement, the small number of settlers, and the myriad potential threats the frontier settlement faced, a complex racial hierarchy developed over the years. This was further complicated by the transition from French to Spanish control in 1768. The social ideal the French ruling elite planter class envisioned and enforced had the white male patriarch at the top and the slave of African descent at the bottom. The complex relationships that developed between people of different races meant that reality often challenged this ideal. And while the upper and lower echelons of this hierarchy were firmly established, the place of free people of color in society was much more ambiguous. Throughout the era of Spanish control in New Orleans, the community of free people of color continually tested and negotiated its place in society. This was especially true of the free men of color, whose claims to full citizenship, masculinity and social respectability were often challenged by the ruling class. Two men who embodied this struggle in Spanish New Orleans were Jose and Carlos Dupard, two mulatto brothers who both typified the successes and struggles of the free community of color. Free men of color like the Dupard brothers solidified their claims to masculinity and respectability in the same way that white men of Spanish New Orleans did: through land ownership, slave ownership, patronage, and participation in the colonial militias.
Jose and Carlos Dupard, living in New Orleans in the late eighteenth century, were descended from Pedro Delille Dupard, a French patriarch and plantation owner. In the mid-eighteenth century, Pedro Delille Dupard lived with his wife Jacquelina Michel and their children on St. Anne Street in New Orleans. His brother, Pierre Joseph Delille Dupard, was also a prominent landowner in New Orleans and lived with his wife and children at their large cattle ranch at Cannes Brulées above Tchoupitoulas. Both the Delille Dupard men owned slaves and the cattle ranch at Cannes Brulées was home to 69 slaves by 1763. As the patriarchs of elite wealthy Creole families Pedro and Pierre Delille Dupard embodied the ideals of masculinity in colonial Louisiana. They had all the necessary titles, possessions and duties that made a man honorable and respected in colonial Louisiana: they were vecinos, or citizens of the city of New Orleans, owned large properties, served in the militia, were the masters of numerous slaves, and heads of their families.
Land and slaves were concrete markers of wealth and prosperity in colonial New Orleans. But illegitimate mulatto sons of respected white men, such as Pedro Delille Dupard’s sons Jose and Carlos, faced great challenges in establishing and maintaining their masculinity. While some mulatto sons inherited homes or slaves from their white fathers, most had to start from scratch in their accumulation of wealth. In their business dealings and in society in general, mulatto and Black men faced the racism of a slaveholding society that equated darker skin with slavery. Society viewed the masculinity of these free men of color as a threat and a challenge to the traditional patriarchy of white men. Despite these challenging social conditions, Jose and Carlos Dupard were able to accrue many of the markers of masculinity and respect, such as land ownership and slaves, and proudly called themselves vecinos of New Orleans.
Much has been made of Louisiana’s French colonial heritage in both academic scholarship and popular culture. The American antebellum period from 1803-1860 has also been intensely studied as well, but the period of Spanish rule over New Orleans, 1763 –1803, and its influence on the city is often ignored, despite the fact that this era was a crucial time in the development of New Orleans’ distinctive society. The city grew from 6,375 people in 1766 to 12,000 total residents in the beginning of the nineteenth century. At the close of the French period there were about 200 free people of color. By the end of the Spanish era, there were around 1,355 were free persons of color, roughly one-fifth of the city’s population. In fact, recently scholars such as Jennifer M. Spear, in her comprehensive and groundbreaking work, Race, Sex, and Social Order in Early New Orleans, have shown that the introduction of Spanish slave laws and attitude helped strengthen and solidify the position of free people of color in New Orleans.
Interracial sexual relationships and the system of plaçage in colonial New Orleans are aspects of New Orleans’s history that have received much attention from both scholars and popular media, but the focus of most of this scholarship is on the mulatto or quadroon woman, her relationship with white men, and her place in society. On the other hand, the history of the sociological status of free men of color has often been overlooked. Comparing and contrasting the lives of the Dupard men and the white Delille Dupards can illuminate the ambiguous and multifaceted roles that free men of color played in Spanish New Orleans society…
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