{"id":9004,"date":"2010-09-18T04:09:16","date_gmt":"2010-09-18T04:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=9004"},"modified":"2013-06-17T20:35:00","modified_gmt":"2013-06-17T20:35:00","slug":"quadroon-balls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=9004","title":{"rendered":"Quadroon Balls"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quadroon Balls functioned as a form of entertainment but also served a meeting space for its participants to enter into pla\u00e7age<\/a>\/sexual relationships. It was at these dances that free young women of color, guided by their mothers, charmed their way into the hearts and pockets of Louisiana\u2019s<\/a> white males. At the balls, quadroon<\/a> women \u201cshow their accomplishments in dancing and conversation to the white men.\u201d Upon finding a quadroon to his liking, a man would negotiate with the quadroon woman\u2019s mother. If both mother and daughter were satisfied with his financial and social ranking, she would be \u201cplaced\u201d as his plac\u00e9e. According to literary traveler George William Featherstonhaugh<\/a>,<\/p>\n

When one of them [a quadroon] attracts the attention of an admirer, and he is desirous of forming a liaison with her, he makes a bargain with the mother, agrees to pay her a sum of money, perhaps 2000 dollars, or some sum in proportion to her merits, as a fund upon which she may retire when the liaison terminates. She is now called \u201cune plac\u00e9e;\u201d those of her caste who are her intimate friends give her fetes, and the lover prepares \u201cun joli appartement meuble.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0Each quadroon had a \u201cvalue\u201d which \u201cdepended on the attractiveness of the subject, the fairness of her complexion, and her mother\u2019s ability to show her off against the competition.\u201d This \u201cvalue\u201d was derived through negotiations between the quadroon\u2019s mother and the white suitor. If an agreement was reached, the quadroon would become a concubine or plac\u00e9e for the white man in exchange for financial support for the woman. These exchanges frequently meant that the quadroon woman would receive housing, a sum of money, and promised financial support for any children that would come from these relationships. The \u201cprice\u201d for a quadroon varied, but could be as much as $2,000. Often times, the quadroon woman would be set up in an apartment (\u201cun joli appartement meuble\u201d) located on Ramparts Street<\/a> in New Orleans<\/a> that was rented by the white gentleman for their use. These pla\u00e7age relationships could last for weeks, months, years, and, much less frequently, a life-time. In these exchanges, sexual exploitation by both parties is particularly noticeable; the quadroon exploited the pocketbook and the man exploited her body.<\/p>\n

Quadroon women who participated in the balls had been groomed from early childhood by their mothers to take advantage of this unique opportunity to become the exploiters, using their bodies, beauty and assumed exotic sexuality to enter into contracts with wealthy white men. Monique Guillory discusses this exchange that gives women some power when she states, \u201cThrough this strategic commodification of the quadroon body, which I have called the commercial, women of color seized an opportunity beyond the confines of slavery to set the price for their own bodies.\u201d These quadroon women chose to use their bodies as leverage to raise their own social status above the \u201cnegro\u201d slave and the dark-skinned free people of color. This population of women became agents who exploited themselves and white men in an effort to transcend the racist system of antebellum<\/a> Louisiana.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No\u00ebl Voltz, \u201cBlack Female Agency and Sexual Exploitation: Quadroon Balls and Pla\u00e7age Relationships<\/a>\u201d (PhD dissertation, Ohio State University, 2008).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quadroon Balls functioned as a form of entertainment but also served a meeting space for its participants to enter into pla\u00e7age\/sexual relationships. It was at these dances that free young women of color, guided by their mothers, charmed their way into the hearts and pockets of Louisiana\u2019s white males. At the balls, quadroon women \u201cshow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,459,6940,20],"tags":[3177,3850],"class_list":["post-9004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts","category-history","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-noel-voltz","tag-quadroon-balls"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9004","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=9004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}