Defying Jim Crow

African American Community Development and the Struggle for Racial Equality in New Orleans, 1900–1960

Donald E. DeVore

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780807160374
• eBook ISBN: 9780807160398
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African American History
• Index: History

From the earliest days of Jim Crow, African Americans in New Orleans rallied around the belief that the new system of racially biased laws, designed to relegate them to second-class citizenship, was neither legitimate nor permanent. Drawing on shared memories of fluid race relations and post–Civil War political participation, they remained committed to a disciplined and sustained pursuit of equality. Defying Jim Crow tells the story of this community's decades-long struggle against segregation, disenfranchisement, and racial violence.

Amid mounting violence and increasing exclusion, black New Orleanians believed their best defense depended upon maintaining a close-knit and politically engaged community. Donald E. DeVore's peerless research shows how African Americans sought to reverse the trends of oppression by prioritizing the kind of capacity building—investment in education, participation in national organizations, and a spirit of entrepreneurship in markets not dominated by white businessmen—that would ensure the community's ability to keep fighting for their rights in the face of setbacks and hostility from the city's white leaders. As some black activists worked to attain equity within the "separate but equal" framework, they provided a firm foundation and crucial support for more overt challenges to the racist government structures.

The result of over a decade's research into the history of civil rights and community building in New Orleans, Defying Jim Crow provides a thorough and insightful analysis of race relations in one of America's most diverse cities and offers a vital contribution to the complex history of the African American struggle for freedom.

1

The Rise and Decline of Black Equality

After the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, citizens in both the North and the South rallied to support their respective governments, and many of them rushed to volunteer their services. From Virginia to Texas southerners joined the growing Confederate army. Confederate leaders believed not only that victory would be theirs but that the war would last only a short time. Initial army strength was set at one hundred thousand and required enlistees to serve for one year. Confederate leaders such as Secretary of War Leroy P. Walker were not alone in thinking that this new war would resemble past wars and that a decisive battle would bring the war to an early end. Federal government leaders shared that view as well. Indeed, President Abraham Lincoln and his military leaders established initial Federal troop levels at seventy-five thousand. Lincoln’s general- in-chief at the start of the Civil War, Winfield Scott, entered the conflict confident of a Union victory but not as convinced as many other military and civilian leaders that victory would be easy or achieved quickly. Scott’s Anaconda Plan reflected his views and encompassed defending the nation’s capital, applying military pressure on Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital, and maintaining a blockade along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Another part of Scott’s plan, however, would have profound repercussions for the city of New Orleans and its African American population: securing control of the important transportation arteries of the Cumberland, Mississippi, Ohio, and Tennessee Rivers.¹

Building an effective naval force proved a more daunting task for the new Confederate government than raising an army. The task was difficult because a smaller percentage of naval officers defected to join the Confederacy than army officers, and the Confederate states had a modest number of merchant ships and a more limited shipbuilding capacity. Nonetheless, Confederate secretary of the navy Stephen R. Mallory and commanders Raphael Semmes and James D. Bulloch managed to build a navy and sustain a naval campaign using tugboats, steamboats, revenue cutters, and ships. At the start of the war Confederate leaders committed considerable resources to make New Orleans a key shipbuilding site. And Confederate leaders had success, despite Great Britain’s neutrality laws, in obtaining ships from Britain. But as one scholar has shown, although the Confederate nation “built and bought abroad numbers of swift blockade-runners they were better adapted … to making fortunes for their owners than to denting the barrier the North erected around the South’s coasts.” Nonetheless, Confederate ships such as the Alabama, Florida, and Shenandoah destroyed or disrupted millions of dollars of maritime commerce. These naval efforts, though important to the overall war effort of the Confederacy, had much less of a bearing on the Civil War military experience of New Orleans.²

Participation by New Orleans in the Confederacy was brief. In April 1862, a year after the start of the Civil War, union military forces under the command of Capt. David G. Farragut captured the important Confederate port city of New Orleans. The Confederacy’s “patchwork flotilla composed of needlessly expensive intermediate type vessels” offered little resistance to Farragut’s superior naval forces.³ The fall of New Orleans to Union control had different meanings for different people, but jubilation or despair fell primarily along racial lines. The brevity of their city’s participation in the war chagrined most New Orleans’s whites and astonished its blacks. The majority of whites acknowledged the surrender, but having supported the Confederate war effort, few of them conceded that the surrender entailed an end to white dominance. Most African Americans, no matter what their pre–Civil War status, believed a certain way of life had ended and anticipated a new social order. It took longer for President Lincoln and Congress to transform the conflict — from a war to preserve the Union to one that also aimed to secure black freedom — than it took for Union forces to capture New Orleans. But a few months after the fall of New Orleans, Congress gave President Lincoln the authority to accept African Americans, both enslaved and free, into the military. So, when President Lincoln issued his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, the war’s goals started to mirror the position of abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, who had insisted since the beginning of the conflict that the Civil War should be fought to end slavery.⁴

Although historians and researchers continue to analyze and debate Lincoln’s views on race and slavery, there is widespread consensus on his motivation for arming African Americans. Lincoln’s assessment of the North’s military situation in the summer of 1862 convinced him that preserving the Union entailed using African Americans soldiers. Lincoln may have exaggerated when he wrote to the governor of Tennessee Andrew Johnson that “the bare sight of 50,000 armed and drilled black soldiers upon the banks of the Mississippi would end the rebellion at once,” but his appreciation for the military contribution of African Americans increased throughout the war. As early as August 1863, in a lengthy letter to James C. Conkling, a lawyer, friend, and fellow Republican from Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln disclosed that commanders had started to acknowledge the contributions of African American soldiers. “I know as fully as one can know the opinions of others,” he maintained, “that some of the commanders of our armies in the field who have given us our most important successes, believe the emancipation policy, and the use of colored troops, constitute the heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebellion; and that, at least one of those important successes, could not have been achieved when it was, but for the aid of black soldiers.”⁵ In addition, black military participation helped to legitimate the transformation of the Civil War into a war to both save the Union and end slavery.

African American soldiers from New Orleans and Louisiana made important military contributions to Lincoln’s positive assessment of the worth of black troops. “Not only did Louisiana earn the distinction of providing more black troops — 24,000 — than any other Southern state,” one scholar observed, “but its black troops were also the first units tested under fire.”⁶ In May 1863 members of the First and Third Louisiana Regiments participated in a battle at Port Hudson, the first major battle employing African American soldiers. The two regiments fought well in the Union’s unsuccessful effort to capture the Confederate-held fort.⁷ The lack of military success did not prevent observers and opinion leaders from noticing and commenting on the conduct of the African American soldiers during the battle. A northern newspaper maintained that after Port Hudson it was “no longer possible to doubt the bravery and steadiness of the colored race when rightly led.” Less than two weeks after the Port Hudson battle, African American soldiers, mostly former slaves from Louisiana and Mississippi, helped repulse a Confederate attack at Milliken’s Bend. Again national opinion leaders expressed favorable comments. Assistant Secretary of War Charles Dana believed “the employment of negro troops has been revolutionized by the bravery of the blacks in the recent Battle of Milliken’s Bend.”⁸ African American military service in the Civil War did change the racial attitudes of some Americans, including some in New Orleans, but failed, of course, to produce significant changes in race relations. President Lincoln understood this as he considered not just issues of war but also issues of peace and national restoration.⁹

The fall of New Orleans helped bring the problem of normal relations between the federal government and the Confederacy to the fore. President Lincoln had pondered the question even before the first shots at Fort Sumter. Lincoln had rejected the right of states to secede and considered the Confederate states to be fomenting rebellion. The spring of 1862 was still too early to consider a general or comprehensive policy of relations with the eleven seceded states, so he addressed the conquest of New Orleans and parts of Louisiana on an ad hoc basis. Using the power contained in the July 1862 Confiscation Act to pardon or give immunity to individuals who had rebelled against the United States, Lincoln brought enough white Louisianians back into the Union to enable the state to send representatives to Congress from the First and Second Congressional Districts. These early political developments suggested that little had changed to disrupt New Orleans’s traditional centers of political power. Lincoln’s Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, outlined in his Annual Message to Congress in December 1863, suggested that he still possessed a limited view of the citizenship status of African Americans. His enthusiastic embrace of the “Christian principle of forgiveness” that enabled him to support policies that made it easy for most Confederates to regain their citizenship and for their states to reenter the Union was matched by a very tepid response for calls for black suffrage. And Lincoln’s eloquence clarified rather than masked his views on southern race relations: “The proposed acquiescence of the national Executive in any reasonable temporary State arrangement for the freed people is made with the view of possibly modifying the confusion and destitution which must, at best, attend all classes by a total revolution of labor throughout whole states.” This was not the first nor would it be the last time that a national leader stood ready to sacrifice African American equality for civic peace and racial harmony.¹⁰

Lincoln’s Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction was not related to conducting the war but, rather, to dictating the terms of peace. Congressional leaders had surrendered powers to Lincoln to allow him to conduct the war, but they now sought to recover them so they could control or influence the peace. Congress spent the first several months of 1864 debating the proclamation but also considered fundamental questions of the legality of secession, the function of the American presidency, and the role of Congress. The debates and discussions produced the first comprehensive congressional plan of reconstruction, the Wade-Davis Bill. The bill’s sponsors, Henry Davis and Benjamin Wade, and supporters believed it a fair and just one. Wade-Davis, if passed, would have made it decidedly more difficult for Confederate states and their citizens to reenter the Union. But like the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction that members of Congress had criticized and denounced, Wade-Davis was silent on the question of black suffrage, leaving the post-fighting and postwar citizenship status of black southerners in doubt. Lincoln vetoed Wade-Davis and maintained his plan, which left the pre–Civil War levers of power in the South in the hands of white leaders, levers that they intended to use to maintain the racial status quo.¹¹

The entire social, economic, and political fabric of the New Orleans community, however, eventually experienced the effects of the victorious Yankees, who had condemned slavery and other facets of southern society. The northern critique of the South had extended to its economy, which they considered stagnant; the social structure, which they considered rigid; and its politics, which they believed to be the bastion of slave-owning elites. After the fall of New Orleans, white citizens had started to adjust to the end of slavery but remained determined to preserve a social and economic order that had been erected on the rock solid foundation of white domination and supremacy. They expressed their determination to maintain the antebellum status quo in various ways that included the relatively benign, such as the refusal to observe federal holidays, and the politically significant, such as the establishment of so-called Black Codes, which restricted black freedom and thwarted the efforts of black leaders in several areas that African Americans considered crucial to a successful transition from slavery to freedom. To give meaning to their change in status, African Americans sought tangible indices of freedom: land, jobs, suffrage, education, and improved race relations, among others. Despite the obstacles, many of them embraced the challenge with vigor and optimism.¹²

As the dreams and aspirations of white southerners and Confederates for independence and a nation secure for slavery faded and died under the assault of Union armies in 1864 and 1865, the fruits of Lincoln’s “awful arithmetic” produced dreams and aspirations of a quite different kind for black southerners. And when the Civil War came to its bloody and fitful end during the long spring of 1865, unlike most other southern cities, New Orleans possessed a significant number of educated and prosperous African Americans who were determined to win full equality. From their ranks would emerge many of New Orleans’s black leaders. In the main these men had been free men of color before the Civil War and heirs to what historian Caryn Cossé Bell considers an Afro-Creole protest tradition. Although possessing wealth and intelligence, they had endured the status of second-class citizenship during the antebellum period. After the war, not surprisingly, they emerged as some of the most outspoken and relentless champions of political and social equality. They realized that the attainment and retention of both forms of equality would depend on gaining suffrage.¹³ African American leaders and some white leaders throughout the nation shared similar views. And no national black leader was more resolute in support of suffrage than Frederick Douglass. For Douglass the psychological benefits of black suffrage were as important as the political and civic ones. “By depriving us of suffrage,” Douglass insisted, white Americans “declare before the world that we are unfit to exercise the elective franchise, and by this means lead us to undervalue ourselves, to put a low estimate upon ourselves, and to feel that we have no possibilities like other men.”¹⁴ But getting the vote would prove a challenge because most whites in Louisiana and the South shared the political view of J. P. Montanot, a state representative from New Orleans. Montanot vowed that “when this state extends to the Negroes the right of suffrage, I shall leave it forthwith.” Although no records exist to show that Montanot made good on his threat, his sentiment found expression in continued white resistance to black suffrage.¹⁵

One of the ablest black advocates of suffrage in New Orleans was Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez, who understood the depth of white resistance to racial change in New Orleans. In September 1862 he was a member of the leadership group that started the black newspaper L’Union. Written almost entirely in French, the newspaper made its antislavery position clear in the inaugural issue. And before its demise in May 1864, the newspaper had joined the fight for both black suffrage and racial equality. Shortly after the demise of L’Union, however, Roudanez spearheaded another newspaper effort that was designed to reach a wider audience. The new publication, the New Orleans Tribune, was written in French and English and was, according to one historian “perhaps the most brilliant newspaper to appear in the entire South during Reconstruction.” Editorials and articles in the Tribune constantly called for black suffrage and criticized early reconstruction policies that continued to deny suffrage to African Americans. To those who opposed suffrage or counseled gradualism, the newspaper argued: “We can compromise with interests, but we cannot compromise with principles. Assured of the sound basis of our rights, we proclaim them, we uphold them fully and completely, and we will hear nothing of sacrificing them.”¹⁶ Despite the efforts of national black leaders and local ones such as Dr. Roudanez, African Americans made little progress toward full citizenship before 1868. The lack of suffrage and of an overall improvement in southern race relations was especially troubling events to African Americans, who had donned Union blue to save the Union, end slavery, and extend democracy. Black veterans believed their military service gave them and their race rightful claims for full citizenship, or, as many viewed it, “the same rights as white men.”¹⁷

The refusal of white leaders to extend suffrage and civil equality to wealthy and educated African Americans eventually forced free blacks into a political alliance with the former slaves. In the 1860s white racism and solidarity helped to unite the black community; thirty years later segregation institutionalized black community solidarity well into the next century. New Orleans’s antebellum free black population linked, in part out of necessity, its political and civil liberation with that of the former slaves. That is not to say, however, that cleavages did not exist within the black community. African Americans, both formerly free and newly freed, carried experiences and certain cultural traits into post–Civil War New Orleans, not least of which was a language difference. Many free blacks spoke French exclusively or were bilingual. Indeed, their first newspaper appeared in French. Their relative wealth also separated free blacks from freedmen. Some of that wealth had been accumulated through the ownership of slaves, making suspect any initial appeals to solidarity based solely on race. Edmonia Highgate, a black woman who came to New Orleans to teach, recognized the challenge shortly after her arrival, observing: “Of course some of them are wealthy but do not feel in the least identified with the freed men or their interest. Nor need we wonder when we remember that many of them were formerly slaveholders.”¹⁸ And as scholars have demonstrated, skin color also separated segments of black New Orleans. Free blacks’ initial attempts to distance themselves from the former slaves, however, had less to do with skin color than perceived status based on wealth and education. Free blacks had no more inclination to associate with poor whites than they had to associate with poor blacks. In the main wealth, education, and social relations determined leadership in the black community during Reconstruction (and, of course, in the white community as well). Many light-complexioned Creoles worked and associated with black Anglos without discord related to skin color. Disagreement over tactics, strategy, and conflict over the spoils of victory eventually contributed more to disunity among African Americans than color prejudices.¹⁹

During one of Louisiana’s many constitutional conventions, this one in 1867–68, African Americans from New Orleans participated for the first time. The meeting, convened under congressional oversight, included a total of ninety-eight delegates. African Americans constituted a slight majority of fifty, with twelve of these delegates from New Orleans. As a group, the African American delegates possessed talent and diverse backgrounds but were all staunch supporters of the Republican Party. In the main they were educated, intelligent, ambitious, and courageous. Some had served in the military. What they did not share, however, were the same ideas and beliefs about political goals and tact...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. The Rise and Decline of Black Equality
• 2. Higher Education and Individual Initiative
• 3. The Religious Dimensions of Community Development
• 4. The Secular Dimensions of Community Development
• 5. Public Education
• 6. Business and labor
• 7. Jim Crow Attacked
• 8. Freedom Now
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index