{"id":55546,"date":"2018-01-07T23:01:47","date_gmt":"2018-01-07T23:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=55546"},"modified":"2018-01-07T23:01:47","modified_gmt":"2018-01-07T23:01:47","slug":"grappling-with-the-memory-of-new-orleans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=55546","title":{"rendered":"Grappling With the Memory of New Orleans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2015\/10\/new-orleans-black-newspaper\/411973\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em><strong>Grappling With the Memory of New Orleans<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Atlantic<\/a><br \/>\n2015-10-25<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/roudanez.com\/contact-us\/about-the-author\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Mark Charles Roudan\u00e9<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2015\/10\/new-orleans-black-newspaper\/411973\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.theatlantic.com\/assets\/media\/img\/mt\/2015\/10\/NOLA-1\/lead_960.jpg?1445547037\" width=\"550\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<small> Christian Senger \/ <em>Flickr<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n<p><em>A family\u2019s story traces the roots of the eclectic city, the country\u2019s first black daily newspaper, and the evolution of racial injustice.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>My father is listed as white on his birth certificate. His great-grandfather was the founder of America\u2019s first black daily newspaper. But when I tell the story of my family, inextricably linked to the narrative of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/New_Orleans\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">New Orleans<\/a> and, in fact, to the country, I do not start with either of them.<\/p>\n<p>Aim\u00e9e Potens, my third great-grandmother, stares at me. Holding a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Daguerreotype\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">daguerreotype<\/a> from the 1840s, I am transfixed by her eyes. I try to imagine what they had seen. Aim\u00e9e\u2019s eyes are my window to the world that made New Orleans, a world that seems impenetrable, lost somewhere in a gauzy historical memory of tangled white, free-black, and enslaved cultures&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;I was raised to be a white person in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=4781\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jim Crow<\/a> New Orleans. The past was hidden from me, and I grew up not knowing that this history was my history, too. When <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Reconstruction_Era\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Reconstruction<\/a> collapsed, the loss of hope for people of color was devastating. As I reflect on the ways the past has shaped the social construct of race and my own identity, I wonder what my story would be like had the <em>Tribune\u2019s<\/em> crusade succeeded. Would my family have claimed its remarkable heritage instead of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=5864\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">passing as white<\/a>?&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2015\/10\/new-orleans-black-newspaper\/411973\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A family\u2019s story traces the roots of the eclectic city, the country\u2019s first black daily newspaper, and the evolution of racial injustice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,459,369,8,6940,20],"tags":[27928,27929,1438,6001],"class_list":["post-55546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-history","category-louisiana","category-media-archive","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-aimee-potens","tag-mark-charles-roudane","tag-new-orleans","tag-the-atlantic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55546"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55547,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55546\/revisions\/55547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}