What My History Books Left Out

In early November, we visited friends and family in the New Orleans area. On a sunny Sunday afternoon, we found ourselves with some of our oldest friends wandering the French Quarter. For a break, we stopped at the small café operated by the Historic New Orleans Collection, a museum that is all about the history of the city. In the shop (all museums everywhere have shops), our friend pointed me toward a book called Afro-Creole Poetry by Clint Bruce. 

The work is a collection of 79 poems that were published between 1862 and 1870 in two newspapers in New Orleans – L’Union and La Tribune Nouvelle-Orleans. As the names employ, they were published in French: La Tribune also had an English edition. L’Union began publication a few months after the city fell to the ships of Union Admiral David Farragut. The paper lasted about two years, and it was almost immediately replaced by La Tribune.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Hidden, or Ignored, by History: "Afro-Creole Poetry" by Clint Bruce

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.