{"id":56116,"date":"2018-04-03T19:56:03","date_gmt":"2018-04-03T19:56:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=56116"},"modified":"2018-04-04T02:08:07","modified_gmt":"2018-04-04T02:08:07","slug":"white-creole-identity-on-trial-the-haitian-revolution-and-refugees-in-louisiana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=56116","title":{"rendered":"White Creole Identity on Trial: The Haitian Revolution and Refugees in Louisiana"},"content":{"rendered":"

White Creole Identity on Trial: The Haitian Revolution and Refugees in Louisiana<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Age of Revolutions<\/a>
\n2018-03-26<\/p>\n

Erica Johnson<\/strong><\/a>, Assistant Professor of History
\nFrancis Marion University, Florence, South Carolina<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nLouisiana<\/a>, c. 1814<\/small><\/p>\n

The flight of refugees from the Haitian Revolution<\/a> intertwined the histories of Louisiana<\/a> and Saint-Domingue<\/a>. The story of one refugee, Pierre Benonime Dormenon illustrates how perceptions of the Haitian Revolution and racial prejudices within Louisiana affected an emerging white Creole<\/a> identity. In Louisiana, Dormenon was the Point Coup\u00e9e<\/a> parish judge, but political opposition forces sought his disbarment based on alleged activities in the Caribbean<\/a>. According to the Louisiana Superior Court Case court report, accusers contended that Dormenon \u201caided and assisted the negroes in Santo Domingo in their horrible massacres, and other outrages against the whites, in and about the year 1793.\u201d What role Dormenon played in the Haitian Revolution is not clear, nor is it clear how slaves and free people perceived him. Nonetheless, claims of Dormenon\u2019s actions during the Haitian Revolution called into question his own racial identity.<\/p>\n

Dormenon\u2019s accusers focused heavily on his racial sympathies. The most shocking portrayal of Dormenon as black was in the testimony of Antoine Remy. Remy recounted a discussion with an innkeeper, a Mr. Prat, in a southern parish of Saint-Domingue. \u201cHe [Prat] heard him [Dormenon] say several times that he hated whites and was ashamed to be one of them,\u201d testified Remy. He added, \u201cHe [Dormenon] believed that by opening a vein he could take in some black blood.\u201d This testimony is questionable, because Remy based it upon hearsay. However, it was still significant within Dormenon\u2019s case, because it deepened Dormenon\u2019s connection to and sympathy for people of color…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The flight of refugees from the Haitian Revolution intertwined the histories of Louisiana and Saint-Domingue. The story of one refugee, Pierre Benonime Dormenon illustrates how perceptions of the Haitian Revolution and racial prejudices within Louisiana affected an emerging white Creole identity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,1467,369,8,20],"tags":[28168,28343,1734,28341,28344,18995,28342],"class_list":["post-56116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-law","category-louisiana","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-age-of-revolutions","tag-antoine-remy","tag-code-noir","tag-erica-johnson","tag-erica-r-johnson","tag-haitian-revolution","tag-pierre-benonime-dormenon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56116","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=56116"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56130,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56116\/revisions\/56130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}