Historian Clint Bruce just taught me to look for what I don’t know in my own backyard. I’m a native of New Orleans, educated in New Orleans schools, took a Louisiana history course in college, and never heard the story Bruce tells in Afro-Creole Poetry in French from Louisiana’s Radical Civil War-Era Newspapers: A Bilingual Edition.
On April 29, 1862, Admiral David Farragut led the Union Navy past Confederate forts on the Mississippi River and captured New Orleans, the largest and wealthiest city in the Confederacy. New Orleans would remain under Union military control for the next 15 years. Five months after Farragut’s capture of the city, a newspaper made its appearance – L’Union. Published in French, the newspaper was unusual for one primary reason: it was owned, edited, and written by what were then known in New Orleans as gens de couleur, or people of color. Free Blacks.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.
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