The Great And Bizarre Men Of Color Movement In Antebellum New Orleans
Someone once said that had the famous Russian poet Alexander Pushkin (1799-1836) been born in New York instead of St. Petersburg, he would not have been able to aspire to anything more than a Broadway shoe-shiner career. This may or many not be an exaggeration. Pushkin’s maternal great-grandfather was African. Pushkin himself had African features that would have been sufficient to bar him from ‘proper’ New York society where fellow poets, as well as editors and critics, mingled in the 1820′s and ’30′s. (Let us remember that slavery was only outlawed in New York in 1836, the year of Pushkin’s death; and let us remember also that, when all is said and done, Pushkin’s owed his excellent education and professional success to his membership in the Russian aristocracy).
Pushkin’s contemporary and namesake Alexandre Dumas (the author of the Three Musketeers and the Count of Monte-Cristo) was a ‘quadroon’ (his grandfather was black) and it showed (check out his photos on the Web). In New York, he would have had to choose between the career of a house servant and a street performer (at best), and would have run the risk of being abducted and sold to a Southern planter – intriguing options for the most successful historical adventure author to date.
Racial issues (all of them) have more to do with TRADITIONAL OUTLOOKS than actual laws, or with history, for that matter. Mass perception is always slow to change; outlooks transcend generations despite the well-meaning (and oftentimes harmful) efforts of activists and politicians to ‘educate’ the public.
What nearly all Americans have in common is the skewed perception of race we have inherited from the past centuries. Few of us are even aware of how skewed it is, and how humiliating for everyone involved.
Think about it – whether you’re black or white, or Asian, or have some other ancestry – what the world ‘black’ means – to an American of ANY RACE – to you. A ‘black’ person is a person with ANY DEGREE of African heritage so long as he or she has ANY perceptible African features (both Pushkin and Dumas qualify). Now ask yourself what ‘white’ means. A white person is a person all of whose features are Caucasian (no African or Asian admixtures whatever).
The common perception (casually accepted by both races as a matter of course) is that African blood is some sort of contaminating agent; one drop of it makes a person ‘black’; while Caucasian blood is so pure and gentle, it can only affect a person’s racial classification if no other kind of blood flows through his or her veins. This is, of course, perfectly absurd; and yet, I repeat, most of the Republic’s population subscribes to this view, appreciates it, and takes it for granted.
There are, to be sure, exceptions. Tiger Woods, the famous golfer, objects to folks trying to classify him as a member of a race, claiming he is ‘a bit of everything,’ which he certainly is. On the other hand, Barack Obama, the presidential candidate, does not seem to mind being referred to as a ‘black candidate,’ even though both racial backgrounds are represented in him in equal measure. Or maybe he DOES mind, only his advisors have discouraged him from showing it, wary of confusing the population.
From the purely biological perspective the history of the Afro-Caucasian relations around the world seems kind of peculiar, since the two races are very close genetically, more so than any other pair one can think of. The psychological compatibility of the two seems especially striking today; and very few folks of mixed Afro-Caucasian heritage experience any ‘internal conflict’ apart from the superficial politically charged, tradition-driven nonsense their milieu begins to force on them the moment they are born. Cino-Caucasians, Indo-Africans, etc, are a lot more confused.
The humiliating ‘contamination’ idea (supported traditionally by the media, even though they don’t seem to be aware of it) persists, reinforcing (especially among the impressionable young, always on a lookout for a good pretext to get really, really angry) such absurd notions as ‘I don’t care about Paul Revere, that’s white history, which isn’t my people’s history.’
This is nothing new, really, even though sacrificing part of your heritage as a solution to one’s identity problems is counterproductive. There is, however, at least one instance on record when the opposite (i.e. combining heritages to gain identity) came very close to being successful in this country.
The economic and intellectual elite of les gens de couleur libres in Antebellum New Orleans made it a point to distance itself from both races. Their covert mistrust of their Caucasian neighbors was shared by their purely African cousins; their oftentimes distinct contempt for anyone who was not of mixed origin resembled, it must be noted, the Germans’ attitude towards ‘non-Arians’ almost a century later. The idea was that the white race had played itself out, while the black race, or at least its representatives in North America, was in no position to inherit from the whites; folks of mixed racial backgrounds were the logical next step in civilization’s development – a race of soon-to-be rulers and, yes, saviors of the world.
Charles Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’ was still a few years away, with its idea of natural selection and survival of the fittest; and while everyone was familiar with the woes of inbreeding, the word genetics did not yet exist. Richard Wagner’s opera ‘Ziegfried’ had not yet inspired Friedrich Nietzsche to announce the impending arrival of the new man who would be superior to all others and rule by force and wit, the proverbial ‘superman,’ an improved human – and yet such ideas were certainly in the air, and those whom they (supposedly) immediately concerned felt flattered. Flattery is the most efficient form of advertising, as well as the commonly accepted form of political manipulation.
Political flattery is always two-fold. First, the subject’s interest is piqued by the idea that he or she is a member of a large force, sharing in its power (one of the implications is that the force will never betray its own, even though evidence to the contrary has been abundant throughout history). Secondly, the subject is persuaded (easily enough in most cases) that he or she is superior to those who are outside the force (i.e. the rest of humanity). That’s the clincher. (Women, it must be noted, are far less susceptible to political flattery than men; as the more responsible party in the procreation project, women respond to flattery in a vague manner unless it involves complimenting their body or, less often, their eyes). But I digress.
Les gens de couleur libres ran businesses, owned slaves (some were, in fact, planters); their intellectuals were educated in France (projects to organize their own schools in Louisiana were under way); they controlled large portions of real estate in New Orleans and its vicinity (steadily phasing out whites and driving out blacks from some sections, including fashionable ones). According to legend, their leaders met periodically (a stylish brothel on North Rampart served as headquarters) to discuss further strategies. (They invited Alexandre Dumas to lecture in New Orleans. The world-famous author declined politely, fearing he would get captured and sold as a common slave if he set foot in Louisiana).
One of the leaders, mentioned in some chronicles as Victoria Colbert, was a former courtesan who, after Abraham Lincoln became President, was rumored to be his extramarital daughter (a romantic notion invented, no doubt, for political reasons, even though stranger things have happened in New Orleans before and since). Be that as it may, the gens de couleur libre movement’s headquarters, and the movement itself, came to be known as ‘Victoria’s Garden.’
The gens de couleur libres’ political influence may or may not have been exaggerated by some historians; the Federal Government began to take them seriously at some point, though, as evidenced by the fact that a secret agent employed by Washington, D.C. infiltrated the group two years before the outbreak of the Civil War. A Louisiana native, he posed as his own half-brother (a shoemaker who had disappeared some ears previously). Various reports refer to him alternately as ‘Kenneth’ or ‘Manny.’ In a letter to his colleague, John B. Stamford, a Nineteenth Century historian, goes so far as to suggest that during his mission the fair-haired ‘Kenneth’ had to use dye and makeup, which doesn’t sound credible considering New Orleans’ climate. Some chroniclers conclude that, following an unhappy love affair, ‘Kenneth’ came clean to Victoria, severed his ties with government service, and from that point on sided with les gens de couleur libres.
Then came the War.
Inexplicably, the North did not pay any attention to New Orleans for quite a while, even though the city remained virtually undefended. Two years into the War, it was captured easily by a Union fleet under the command of Admiral Farragut. A short while later, a Union land army directed by General Butler moved in. Wary as they were of taking sides, the occupation left the members of Victoria’s Garden no choice. Protective of their special status, they quickly realized that under Union rule folks of mixed racial origin were going to be lumped together with ordinary ‘blacks’ and treated accordingly. With very few exceptions, the upper class of les gens de couleur libres joined forces with the Confederacy. Some left the city to become soldiers, others stayed, engaging in subversive activities. The little-known fact is that for fifteen years after the end of the War, as the rest of the South was busy pulling itself together with only a few representatives of the North here and there ‘overseeing’ the process, the Federal Government had no choice but to keep an entire battle-ready army in the immediate vicinity of New Orleans. Revolts were frequent, and gens de couleur libres (now simply ‘colored folks’) seem to have figured in EVERY SINGLE ONE of them. Gradually, time and tradition prevailed. For better of worse, the singular idea of the Afro-Caucasian Man’s superiority over all other ethnic and racial heritages vanished along with the generation that was inspired by it. Gens de couleur libres’ children and grandchildren gave in instead to the ‘traditional’ view of themselves that is very much with us today, as I mentioned earlier.
Historical accounts of what I just described are few and far between. In fiction, to the best of my knowledge, the only novel that covers some of the events is Ricardo’s ‘The Kept Women of New Orleans.’
Ricardo’s storytelling is a whole separate issue, of course. Suffice it to say that while it might sound overly simplistic to some literary-minded folks, few of today’s authors can match the flare and rapid narrative tempi that make Ricardo’s books page-turners. No doubt the author has taken quite a few liberties with historical events, and may have used questionable sources and a lot of his own inventive skills as he pieced together the historical backdrop for the story. For instance, the secret society known as the Knights of the Golden Circle may have rendered the Federal Government some services; it’s involvement with Victoria’s Garden, however, is highly doubtful – pure conjecture on the author’s part. Geraldo Vargas, a crook, career criminal, highway robber, etc. – of half-Mexican, half-American roots – may have been regarded as a threat by the Mexican government as well as by the Confederacy; but the extensive network covering the entire continent and reporting to him (and styling him ‘the King of North America’) did not really exist. And so forth. That in which Ricardo does succeed (brilliantly, I might add) is showing the REAL gens de couleur libres; the REAL Southerners; the real representatives of the epoch. A complete absence of ideological leaning helps, as well as the fact that the author does not even bother to stylize the dialogue to resemble the three dozen dialects used along the East Coast in the 1850′s (save for the occasional turn of phrase here and there); instead, his characters speak like your next door neighbor or your local congressman, which only accentuates their resemblance to us – all of us. Ideas and traditions change; people don’t. Not much, anyway.
Naturally, the author takes advantage of the ‘Kenneth’ saga (and what good author wouldn’t, what with all the identity changes, makeup, gunplay, fisticuffs, and love affairs?) and makes Kenneth’s position as a member of Victoria’s Garden far more important than it really was.
Even though the narrative is humorous almost throughout, there is a distinct underlying tragic streak. The sobering forays into Mexico, New York, Kansas, and Washington, D.C. only bring out more the precarious abandon of the impossible city built not so much to defy as dance with enemies and the elements, erratically following, yet never quite falling in synch with, the beat of time. The Battle of New Orleans took place after the war of which it was part had already ended; folks of all races confronted one another, but also shook hands, in New Orleans long before it became common practice in the rest of the country; Nietzschean ideas developed on the city’s streets and were extinguished before Nietzsche himself published them. Impossible tales like the story of Victoria’s Garden live on in obscure chronicles and memories, semi-dormant, until the day a gifted author finds one of them intriguing enough to give it a new lease on life – in fiction.
By: Ruggero T. Ricordi
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Ruggero T. Ricordi is the founder and publisher of Mighty Niche Books, your ultimate source of exciting contemporary literature:
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Here’s where you can read a large excerpt from Ricardo’s novel THE KEPT WOMEN OF NEW ORLEANS
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