Group Research Project – New Orleans Cluster Seminar, Fall 2023

Josie Checkett ’25, Olivia DePauli ’24, and Isabella Pimentel ’24

 Fighting for Community: Ms. Gloria’s Garden in the Tremé Neighborhood

Background on the Spanish, French, and American influence on New Orleans 

The period of French colonial rule lasted between 1682-1763, with the first slave ship arriving in Louisiana in 1719 (Hall, 1992). During this time, the French created a series of laws known as the Code Noir. The Code’s sixty articles regulated the life, death, purchase, religion, and treatment of slaves by their masters in all French colonies. It provided that the slaves should be baptized and educated in the Catholic faith. It prohibited masters from making their slaves work on Sundays and religious holidays. It required that slaves be clothed and fed and taken care of when sick.  It prohibited slaves from owning property and stated that they had no legal capacity (Sellers, 2010). It also governed their marriages, their burials, their punishments, and the conditions they had to meet in order to gain their freedom (which listed different ways that slaves could earn their freedom). Two examples were through defending the colony or teaching a master’s children (Sterkx, 1972, 17). 

The Spanish colonial rule lasted between 1763-1800, and the Spanish aimed to prevent insurrection among African slaves while also wanting to maintain favorability among people living in the colony (freed people of color), so they continued to expand the Code Noir. During the Spanish rule, the freed people of color doubled in size because they allowed for sexual relations between white europeans and people of African descent (Hall, 1992; Hangar, 1997). However, it must be acknowledged that women of African descent had to continuously work to secure their freedom, as this was a colony defined by forced labor, oppression, and exploitation. The Spanish and the French were said to have a fluid concept of race, however there were hierarchies that were created and defined by the Spanish: Spanish records distinguished between pardo (lighter skinned) and darker skinned (moreno) people. Distinctions were made between Creole (those born in the colony) and those with African descent (Sumpter, 2008). The period between 1813 and 1830 is called the ‘‘Golden Age’’ for the free people of color in Louisiana because free people of color had accumulated wealth and were famous for their skilled labor throughout the city. Here we circle back to the role that Claude Tremé played within the city of New Orleans: Tremé carved up his plantation and divided it into two suburban plots: the Faubourg (French for suburb) Tremé and Faubourg Marigny. Most black residents resided in Tremé, so the notion of the Tremé as being the oldest African American neighborhood in the history of the United States exhibits an absolutely radical notion: the homeowners of this neighborhood were 80% black, constituting a racially mixed community which was largely nonexistent in the majority of the United States. The Faubourgs Tremé and Marigny also consisted of recent immigrants to America, including whites, free people of color and former slaves fleeing the violence of revolution in Haiti during the 1790s (Crutcher, 2006). These neighborhoods remained rooted in French and creole culture and tradition in opposition to American culture. 

The documentary Faubourg Treme: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans directed by Dawn Logsdon, tells the narrative of the Tremé neighborhood from a perspective that beautifully articulates the empowerment that African Americans fought for, as they developed the community of Free People of Color in New Orleans. Some of the earliest free Black inhabitants came to Louisiana as free people: Marie Baude, for example, traveled to New Orleans from Senegal in 1728 to reunite with her French husband. Yet most free people of color during the French colonial period experienced enslavement. Although the Code Noir did prohibit relationships between white and black people, these relations did occur (Neidenbach, 2022). This ensued primarily through immigration and manumission (when an enslaver legally freed an enslaved person—which required approval from the Superior Council, colonial Louisiana’s legislative body) which were two ways that largely contributed to the community of the Free People of Color. By the end of the French colonial rule there were anywhere from 400-800 Free People of Color, and this dramatically grew during the Spanish colonial rule which encouraged the development of a free Black population in the colony. Unlike the French, the Spanish also allowed enslaved men and women to own personal property, including money made from selling goods or services performed on their own time (Neidenbach, 2022). Between 1771 and 1803, 1,921 men, women, and children gained their freedom through voluntary manumissions and self-purchase in New Orleans. However, as Anglos (Americans) continued to move into New Orleans, there was an immediate separation in socio-economic relationships between Anglos and Creoles, because nowhere else in the deep south were Black people, as a majority, liberated. There was also a significant income gap between Americans and Creole residents, and white Americans (as well as white Creoles) who were increasingly threatened by the insurrections occurring through people of color in other areas of the country, such as the Nat Turner rebellion in 1831 (Sumpter, 2008). Furthermore, there was competition for jobs; the fear of slave insurrections modeled by Haiti, different language, mores, religion; and white immigrants’ unfamiliarity with non-enslaved people of color inhabiting a middle and even upper class created an Americanization of race that strictly polarized white and black people (Sumpter, 2008). By 1850, the freed population of color, beset by the hostility of white supremacy, was economically diminished and residentially segregated. Although the Americanization of Louisiana led to increased economic diminishment and segregation of Black communities in New Orleans, Logsdon’s documentary particularly highlights how Black communities resisted white supremacy leading up to and amid the civil war. 

Particularly featured was the establishment of L’Union, which was the first African American newspaper in the United States, published on September 27th 1862. A group of African American and other creole men, including Louis Charles Roudanez and Paul Trévigne, started and edited the paper. L’Union started as a semi-weekly, Republican, two-page newspaper. The paper published the harmful impacts of slavery on American democracy and relevant information about the Civil War. The Declaration of Independence and its principles were at the foundation of the paper’s purpose and platform (Sellers 2010). It was through various publications in the newspaper African Americans came together to mobilize and implement demonstrations opposing segregation on various fronts. One of these demonstrations was in aims of integrating the streetcar transportation systems. Through various weeks of protesting, civilians ruthlessly banded together to force railroad officials to determine that resistance to integration was not going to succeed, and they ordered that all drivers allow travelers regardless of race to ride the cars (Perkins 2021). This was not the only political feat that African Americans achieved during this time. In November 1867, an interracial coalition of white, freeborn, and formerly enslaved political operatives convened another state constitutional convention in New Orleans.  The election legislature was more than half black, and they wrote one of the most radical constitutions in the history of the nation. This constitution, which remained in force for just over a decade, guaranteed equal justice before the law, equal political and civil rights for men, and universal access to public transportation and public accommodations. It also mandated the creation of a state funded and racially integrated public education system (Bardes 2018). Understanding the resistance and resilience exhibited by the African American community in New Orleans, who primarily lived in and resided in the Tremé neighborhood, leads us to wonder why this narrative is not a foundational component of U.S. history. Fundamentally this speaks to the racism that African Americans and the black community as a whole faces to this day within New Orleans and beyond, as their stories and struggles are not presented as a model of radical rebellion and community collaboration in all senses of social justice. 

It is through documentaries like Faubourg Treme: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans that people from all over the United States, and even the world, may gain a glimpse into the incredible history of black communities, and how they have deconstructed white supremacy amid the aftermath of colonialism.