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Louisiana Historic and Cultural Vistas
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Fridayday, 17th June 2016
European theses explore Louisiana history
In 2015 and 2016, students in England and the Netherlands finalized research on Louisiana history, culminating in dissertations (called theses in the United Kingdom and Holland). It probably will sound far-fetched, but there’s good reason behind it. The University of Sussex in Brighton, England, has a scholar named Richard Follett. Richard conducted his doctoral research at LSU in Bâton Rouge and has written and spoken extensively on the sugarcane industry in Louisiana, especially on race and emancipation in Louisiana’s sugarcane-growing parishes. The University of Leiden, in Leiden, Holland, has Adam Fairclough. Adam’s career also hinges on US history, specifically on race, racism and the African American experiences in the US South.
Richard supervised 3 theses on Louisiana. Carin Peller-Semmens’s thesis discusses issues preventing Reconstruction from materializing its intended goals on a longterm basis in Louisiana’s Anglo Red River valley (northwest Louisiana). Darryl Barthé and I both wrote on 20th century transformations in the Creole community of New Orleans and southwest Louisiana.
Mark Leon de Vries, like Carin, explored Reconstruction in Louisiana’s Red River valley.
Below is a summary of each of those theses, as well as a url where they can be downloaded free of charge. I’ve grouped them in Creole and Red River, since they present different periods, cultural milieux, ethnic groups, realities and experiences in Louisiana’s Latin and Anglo communities.
THESES ON LATIN LOUISIANA
Darryl Barthé
“Becoming American in Creole New Orleans: Family, Community, Labor and Schooling, 1896-1949”
Summary:
“The Louisiana Creole community in New Orleans went through profound changes in the first half of the 20th-century. This work examines Creole ethnic identity, focusing particularly on the transition from Creole to American. In “becoming American,”
Creoles adapted to a binary, racialized caste system prevalent in the Jim Crow American South (and transformed from a primarily Francophone/Creolophone community (where a tripartite although permissive caste system long existed) to a primarily Anglophone community (marked by stricter black-white binaries). These adaptations and transformations were facilitated through Creole participation in fraternal societies, the organized labor movement and public and parochial schools that provided English-only instruction. The “Americanization of Creole New Orleans” has been a common theme in Creole studies since the early 1990’s, but no prior study has seriously examined the cultural and social transformation of Creole New Orleans by addressing the place and role of public and private institutions as instruments and facilitators of Americanization. By understanding the transformation of Creole New Orleans, this thesis demonstrates how an historically mixed-race community was ultimately divided by the segregationist culture of the early-twentieth century U.S. South.
In addition to an extensive body of secondary research, this work draws upon archival research at the University of New Orleans’ Special Collections, Tulane University Special Collections, the Amistad Research Center, The Archdiocese of New Orleans,
and Xavier University Special Collections. This thesis makes considerable use of census data, draws upon press reports, and brings to bear a wide assortment of oral histories conducted by the author and others.
Most scholars have viewed New Orleans Creoles simply as Francophone African Americans, but this view is limited. This doctoral thesis engages the Creole community in New Orleans on its own terms, and in its own idioms, to understand what “becoming
American” meant for New Orleans Creoles between 1896-1949.”
Download Darryl’s thesis here (4MB pdf).
Christophe Landry
“A Creole Melting Pot: the Politics of Language, Race and Identity in southwest Louisiana, 1918-45”
Summary:
“Southwest Louisiana Creoles underwent great change between World Wars I and II as they confronted American culture, people, and norms. This work examines that cultural transformation, paying particular attention to the processes of cultural assimilation and resistance to the introduction and imposition of American social values and its southern racial corollary: Jim Crow. As this work makes clear, the transition to American identity transmuted the cultural foundations of French- and Creole-speaking Creole communities. World War I signalled early transformative changes and over the next three decades, the region saw the introduction of English language, new industries, an increasing number of Protestant denominations, and the forceful imposition of racialized identities and racial segregation. Assimilation and cultural resistance characterized the Creole response, but by 1945, southwest Louisiana more closely resembled much of the American South. Creole leaders in churches, schools, and the tourism industry offered divergent reactions; some elite Creoles began looking to Francophone Canada for whitened ethnic identity support while others turned toward the Catholic establishment in Baltimore, Maryland to bolster their faith. Creoles were not the only distinct community to undergo Americanization, but Louisiana Creoles were singular in their response. As this study makes clear – in ways no historian has previously documented – Louisiana Creoles bifurcated as a result of Americanization. This study also contributes to, and broadens, the literature on Acadian identity. Previously, scholars simply assumed that whitened Latins in Louisiana had always identified with Acadia and their black-racialized brethren with Haiti. This thesis, however, suggests that Cajun and Creole are not opposites. Rather, they derive from the same people and culture, and their perceived and articulated difference emerged in response to Americanization. Through a critical analysis of that bifurcation process, this thesis demonstrates how Acadianized identity and culture emerged in the first half of the 20th century.”
Download my thesis here (11MB pdf).
THESES ON LOUISIANA’S ANGLO RED RIVER VALLEY
Carin Peller-Semmens
“Unreconstructed: slavery and emancipation on Louisiana’s Red River, 1820-1880”
Summary:
“Louisiana’s Red River region was shaped by and founded on the logic of racial power, the economics of slavery, and white supremacy. The alluvial soil provided wealth for the mobile, market-driven slaveholders but created a cold, brutal world for the commoditized slaves that cleared the land and cultivated cotton. Racial bondage defined the region, and slaveholders’ commitment to mastery and Confederate doctrine continued after the Civil War. This work argues that when freedom arrived, this unbroken fidelity to mastery and to the inheritances and ideology of slavery gave rise to a visceral regime of violence. Continuity, not change, characterized the region. The Red River played a significant role in regional settlement and protecting this distorted racial dynamic. Racial bondage grounded the region’s economy and formed the heart of white identity and black exploitation. Here, the long arcs of mastery, racial conditioning, and ideological continuities were deeply entrenched even as the nation underwent profound changes from 1820 to 1880. In this thesis, the election of 1860, the Civil War, and emancipation are not viewed as fundamental breaks or compartmentalized epochs in southern history. By contrast, on plantations along the Red River, both racial mastery and power endured after emancipation. Based on extensive archival research, this thesis considers how politics, racial ideologies, and environmental and financial drivers impacted the nature of slavery, Confederate commitment, and the parameters of freedom in this region, and by extension, the nation. Widespread Reconstruction violence climaxed with the Colfax Massacre and firmly cemented white power, vigilantism, and racial dominance within the regional culture. Freedpeople were relegated to the margins as whites reasserted their control over Reconstruction. The violent and contested nature of freedom highlighted the adherence to the power structure and ideological inheritances of slavery. From bondage to freedom, the Red River region remained unreconstructed.”
Download Carin’s thesis here (31MB pdf).
Mark Leon de Vries
“The politics of terror : enforcing reconstruction in Louisiana’s Red River Valley”
Summary:
“Was the failure to establish civil and political equality for the former slaves during Reconstruction the more-or-less inevitable consequence of the essentially conservative nature of the federal Reconstruction project? The Politics of Terror instead suggests that even the limited program enacted by lawmakers in Washington DC might have achieved far more, had the federal government enforced its provisions vigorously when faced with extra-legal, often violent resistance by Southern whites. Reconstruction’s ultimate failure represented not so much a ‘Compromise of Principle,’ as an all-out capitulation to terrorism. In the decade after Appomattox, Southern whites developed increasingly effective strategies to thwart the promise of civil and political equality embodied in Congressional Reconstruction. These included a transition from widespread violence to more targeted threats and intimidation, as well as a media campaign aimed at deflecting a vigorous Northern response by undermining the perceived legitimacy of Southern Republicans. Even so, local military commanders achieved successes, albeit limited and temporary, in containing violence and enforcing the civil and political rights of the black population. Such episodes provide a crucial counterpoint to the narrative of violent resistance, reminding us of what Reconstruction might have achieved had organized terror not triumphed over the rule of law.”
Download Mark’s thesis here (7MB pdf).
Learn more about Richard Follett’s scholarship here.
Click here to learn more about Adam Fairclough’s work.
– Christophe Landry
Is there a clear definition of the identity “Creole?” Creole to me means second generation Spanish born in the New World. To others, it seems, Creole means a racial mix of African slaves and predominantly French settlers in antebellum Louisiana. The theses would be clearer if there is an agreed definition of Creoles.