Reconstruction: Une Phase Oubliée

New Orleans physician and free man of color Louis-Charles Roudanez (1823-1890) founded two radical newspapers during the Civil War & Reconstruction eras, including The New Orleans Tribune, which holds the distinction of being America’s first Black daily newspaper. The virtual downfall of Reconstruction in Louisiana in 1877 brought with it a death knell for the memory of Roudanez and his Creole of color compatriots who were once lauded as so “distinguished by the nobility of their character, the integrity of their intentions, their profound knowledge and vast experience” that they were “as powerful in Washington as in New Orleans.” The livelihood decisions faced by these leaders and their progeny in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries obscured their accomplishments and rendered the era of Reconstruction, as Rodolphe-Lucien Desdunes called it, “a forgotten phase” in history.