
From Louisiana Creole people .
As a group, the mixed-race Creoles rapidly began to acquire education, skills (many in New Orleans worked as craftsmen and artisans), businesses and property. They were overwhelmingly Catholic, spoke Colonial French (although some also spoke Louisiana Creole), and kept up many French social customs, modified by other parts of their ancestry and Louisiana culture. The free people of color married among themselves to maintain their class and social culture. The French-speaking mixed-race population came to be called "Creoles of color".
The status of mixed-race Creoles as free people of color (gens de couleur libres) was one they guarded carefully. By law they enjoyed most of the same rights and privileges as whites. They could and often did challenge the law in court and won cases against whites. They were property owners and created schools for their children. There were some free blacks in Louisiana, but most free people of color were of mixed race. They acquired education, property and power within the colony, and later, state.
It was said that "New Orleans persons of color were far wealthier, more secure, and more established than freed Africans and Cajuns elsewhere in Louisiana."
notables
- Sidney Bechet, jazz musician
- Edgar Degas, artist
- Bryant Gumbel, newscaster
- Valerie Jarrett, presidential advisor
notes
- Creole people and culture are distinct from the Cajun who adopted and assimilated into Creole culture.
- In the 1930s, the governor of Louisiana, Huey Long, claimed that you could feed all the "pure" white people in New Orleans with a cup of beans and a half a cup of rice, and still have food left over!
- From On and Off the Bandstand: A Collection of Essays Related to the Great Bands ... By Arthur Bradley. Page 1914. "The uniquely American Creole culture gave nourishment and enrichment to jazz, the uniquely American art form, with its dying breath."