Making Race: The Role of Free Blacks in the Development of New Orleans’ Three-Caste Society, 1791-1812
University of Texas, Austin
May 2007
219 pages
Kenneth Randolph Aslakson, Assistant Professor of History
Union College, Schenectady, New York
Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May, 2007
“Making Race: The Role of Free Blacks in the Development of New Orleans’ Three-Caste Society, 1791-1812” excavates the ways that free people of African descent in New Orleans built an autonomous identity as a third “race” in what would become a unique racial caste system in the United States. I argue that in the time period I study, which encompasses not only the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, but also the rise of plantation slavery and the arrival of over twelve thousand refugees from the revolution torn French West Indies, New Orleans’s free blacks took advantage of political, cultural and legal uncertainty to protect and gain privileges denied to free blacks elsewhere in the South. The dissertation is organized around three sites in which free blacks forged and articulated a distinct collective identity: the courtroom, the ballroom, and the militia. This focus on specific spaces of racial contestation allows me to trace the multivalent development of racial identity. “Making Race” brings together the special dynamism of the Atlantic world in the Age of Revolution with the ability of individuals to act within structures of power to shape their surroundings. I show that changing political regimes (in the time period I study New Orleans was ruled by the Spanish, the French and the Americans) together with the socio-economic, ideological and demographic impact of the Haitian Revolution created opportunities for new social and legal understandings of race in the Crescent City. More importantly, however, I show how members of New Orleans’s free black community, strengthened numerically and heavily influenced by thousands of gens de couleur refugees of the Haitian Revolution, shaped the racialization process by asserting a collective identity as a distinct middle caste, contributing to the creation of a tri-racial system.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Free Blacks in Slave Societies
- Race and Revolution in the Atlantic World
- The Laws and Legal Systems in Racially Based Slave Societies
- Organization of the Dissertation
- Chapter 1 Racial Identity Formation in a Burgeoning Port City
- Chapter 2 “When the Question is Slavery or Freedom:” The Legal Construction of Three Races in Early New Orleans
- New Orleans in the Age of Slavery and Revolution
- Making Slavery: The Precariousness of Freedom
- Making Freedom: Status Suits in the New Orleans City Court
- Making Race: The Legal Resolution of the Slave-Free Paradox
- Conclusion
- Chapter 3 The Power of Weakness: Free Black Women in the New Orleans City Court
- Black Litigation in Spanish Louisiana and the Impact of the Louisiana Purchase
- Escape From Marriage Law: The Litigiousness of Free Women of African Descent
- The Power of Weakness: Fraud and Assault Cases in the New Orleans City Court
- The New Racial Order: Changing Color and Changing Laws
- Conclusion
- Chapter 4 The Politics of Dancing: Control, Resistance, and Identity in the Early New Orleans Ballroom
- Fear of Black Dancing and the Origins of the Public Ball
- Vice, Violence, and the Origins of the (Tri-) Colored Balls
- The Great Purchase, Immigration, and the Segregation of Dancing Centers
- Control, Resistance, Identity and the Origins of the Quadroon Balls.143
- Conclusion
- Chapter 5 “We Shall Serve with Fidelity and Zeal:” The Citizen-Soldiers of the Free Colored Militia
- The Demographics of Defense: Free Colored Militias in New World Slave Societies
- Fear and Opportunity: the Free Colored Militia in Spanish Louisiana During the Age of Revolution
- “Free Citizens of Louisiana:” The Free Colored Militia in Territorial New Orleans
- The Militia’s Swansong: Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans
- Conclusion
- Conclusion “In [and Outside] the Eye of Louisiana Law:” Creole of Color Identity Before and After Plessy
- Bibliography
- Vita
Introduction
In October of 2003, having recently arrived in New Orleans to do research for this dissertation, I attended the “Creole Studies Consortium” held at Tulane University. Most of the people attending this gathering (which was part academic conference, part genealogical convention, and part family reunion) called themselves “Creoles of color” or simply “Creoles,” though it soon became clear to me that there was some disagreement as to the precise meaning of this term. For some, a Creole is someone whose ancestors were free people of color when slavery still existed in Louisiana. For others, the European ancestors of Creoles must have been of Spanish or (preferably) French descent. The most exclusive definition holds that a true Creole can trace his or her French and African ancestry back to the colonial period in Louisiana before the Louisiana Purchase. Nevertheless, all agreed that a Creole is a person whose ancestors were free and of mixed European and African descent with roots in pre-Civil War Louisiana. While they do not deny their partial African ancestry, most of Louisiana’s present day Creoles do not self identify as “black” or even “African-American,” even though most people from outside of the state Louisiana (and many within) would consider them to be such.
This dissertation examines the origins of the distinct racial identity of the group of people who today call themselves Louisiana “Creoles” (or “Creoles of Color”) by excavating the ways in which free people of color in early New Orleans built an autonomous identity as a third “race” in what would become a unique racial caste system rise of plantation slavery and the arrival of over twelve thousand refugees from the revolution-torn French West Indies, New Orleans’s free people of color took advantage of political, cultural and legal uncertainty to protect and gain privileges denied to free blacks elsewhere in the South. I show that changing political regimes (in this time period New Orleans was ruled by the Spanish, the French and the Americans), a transforming economy, and the ideological and demographic impact of the Haitian Revolution combined to create opportunities for new cultural and legal understandings of race in the Crescent City. More importantly, however, I show how members of New Orleans’s free colored community, strengthened numerically and heavily influenced by thousands of gens de couleur refugees, shaped the racialization process by asserting a collective identity as a distinct middle caste, contributing to the creation of a tri-racial system. In other words, the emergence of a three tiered racial caste system in the Crescent City was not the necessary product of global structures. Rather, the free people of color of New Orleans made their own distinct racial identity, and protected the relative rights and privileges that went with it.
Read the entire dissertation here.
