Free People of Color Prospered in New Orleans
Of all the museums I’ve visited recently, the Musee de F. P. C., or the Free People of Color Museum, was by far the most informative experience. In celebration of Black History Month, this is your sign to learn more about those responsible for all the things you love about New Orleans.
New Orleans had one of the largest and most prosperous communities of Free People of Color before the Civil War. The Treme is sometimes referred to as the first Black neighborhood in the United States. The neighborhood along Bayou Road and Esplanade Avenue still features prominent mansions, many of which were homes of free people of color. Black businesses have purchased many of these homes and reclaimed them in an act of resistance. The Free People of Color Museum is located in one such mansion.
The museum requires a guided tour with your admission, but it is more like a performance. My guide was an outstanding storyteller who provided historical facts, and offered emotional testimony, in character, to provide the shading facts need for perspective.
I learned more in a brief tour than all my history classes combined. From Edmund Dede and Norbert Rillieux, geniuses in their fields who eventually chose to leave New Orleans because of deteriorating conditions for people of color, to Marie Laveau and Henriette Delille, women who defied the expectations of their place in society to reign in our time as queens of their chosen vocations.
Very Important Free Person of Color
Coincidentally, I was joined on my tour by four descendants of Edmund Dede. They were family, cousins, but seemed to be meeting for the first time. Two had fair complexions. They would be perceived as white people and seemingly did not know about their African heritage until recently. The two others had dark complexions. This dichotomy of family is a living representation of the myth of race. Our guide made it a point to remind the fair faction that they are Black more than once, which I took to be a welcoming gesture. It was also a very real example of how physical characteristics and ancestry do not align neatly.
The guide also pointed out several other prominent free people of color who were indistinguishable from white people during their time. The blending yielded beauty, which led to the regulations around what free women of color could wear. This included the requirement of a tignon to cover their hair. The tignon was ostensibly to provide an easy way to distinguish women of color from white women since skin color was unreliable. However, it also was an attempt to dampen their exotic beauty so that they would not tempt white men. But these were the same people who, through endless ingenuity, purchased themselves to find freedom. Many decorated themselves with the tignon so ornately that they subversively turned the hinderance into an asset. This is only one of the stories of resistance you can learn at the Musee de F. P. C.
If you have any interest in 19th century New Orleans, visit the Musee de F. C. P. There is so much more to understand. You can book tickets online.
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