Agents of Change: Education and Creole Children of Color in Post-Civil War New Orleans

Immediately after the Civil War, Creoles of color, a group of francophone Catholic free people of color in New Orleans, assiduously began their campaign to achieve racial equality by securing equal access to public facilities. They transformed themselves into radical Republicans and continued grassroots campaigns until the end of the nineteenth century. In particular, education became a major focus of their struggles. Creoles of color argued that school segregation originated in slavery and from racial prejudice. Their persistent activism culminated in partial desegregation of public schools from 1871 to 1877.

Still inadequately addressed in extant scholarship are the relations between activism and childhood experience among Creoles of color in post-Civil War New Orleans. This paper studies their struggles for racial equality through the lens of their children. It focuses on the Fillmore School, one of the desegregated public schools in the city located in a predominantly francophone neighborhood, and how desegregation and political changes during and after Reconstruction affected Creole children. The paper argues that Creoles of color nurtured their own ideal of social equality through direct desegregation. Creole children at Fillmore maintained strong lifetime bonds. Some Creoles further developed their ties through kinship and social organizations. In the late 1880s and 1890s they used their social networks to continue their community movement for social equality. This shared educational experience in childhood sustained Creole’s post-Civil War struggles for more than thirty years.