New Orleans HISTORY From the first years of French rule, slaves labored in New
Orleans and its surrounding plantations. In 1721 more black male slaves than
free white men lived in the city, and, until the massive European immigration of
the 1830s and 1840s, nonwhite residents formed the majority. A large number of
slaves arrived in New Orleans between 1719 and 1731, most of them abducted
directly from Senegal. The influence of African culture, therefore, was stronger
in Louisiana than in the British colonies, whose slave populations often labored
in the British West Indies for a generation or two. Slavery in New Orleans also differed from the English model in
other ways. Owners admitted to sexual liaisons with slaves, often taking
financial responsibility for their mistresses and offspring. Unlike the English
model, in which whites drew a firm line between the two races and considered all
people of mixed race to be black, the New Orleans system produced a third caste,
that of mixed-race Creoles. (The term Creole has been used to describe a
variety of types of people, and in Louisiana it has referred to whites and
blacks with French or Spanish ancestry or culture as well as people of mixed
race.) French and Spanish fathers treated their black Creole children equitably,
often sending them to Europe for education and making them legal heirs. Although
the French and Spanish governments attempted to limit this propagation of a
privileged black Creole class with a series of code noir (black code)
laws, citizens frequently ignored the legislation. By the time of the Civil War
(1861-1865), New Orleans hosted a considerable black Creole population, some of
whose members owned slaves themselves. Antebellum Period The upper-class black Creoles also flourished: Norbert
Rillieux invented a vacuum pump for refining sugar; Victor Séjour wrote plays;
Alexandre Chaumette, James Derham, and Charles Roundanez practiced medicine;
Edmond Dédé composed and directed music; Eugene Warbourg sculpted. In 1850
nearly 85 percent of black Creoles possessed the skills to be classified as
doctors, clerks, teachers, and skilled workers. Educated black Creoles
proliferated as merchants and dominated the trades of cabinetmaking, carpentry,
cigar manufacturing, masonry, and plastering. These middle-class blacks
distanced themselves from the black African slave culture and founded Roman
Catholic churches based on European models. Despite the assimilation of the black Creole community,
however, discrimination intensified toward the mid-19th century. The decision of
the Supreme Court of the United States in Dred Scott v. Sandford
(1857) impinged on black freedom everywhere by ruling that neither free nor
enslaved blacks had constitutional rights. By the start of the Civil War, new
laws restricted the mobility of free blacks and limited the release of slaves
from bondage. Hundreds of free blacks did, for a variety of reasons, volunteer
for unarmed positions in the Confederate Army, but after the Union takeover of
the city in 1862, the majority of black soldiers fought on the side of the
North. Reconstruction and Segregation While Reconstruction-era politics strained relations between
blacks and whites, it also upset relationships within the African American
community. The educated black Creoles, whose racism often rivaled that of
whites, suddenly found themselves grouped with black freedpeople. African
American leaders had to contend with internal prejudice and resentment in
governing this larger community. Despite the growing discrimination, however, African American
culture thrived. In the last quarter of the century, blacks created secret
societies and social lodges, opened theaters, played baseball, and founded three
colleges. Ensembles of children roamed the streets, improvising music in
so-called spasm bands, and blues, ragtime, and jazz music developed. After the riot in 1900, which marked the height of the city's
racial discord, blacks fought a slow battle for civil rights. A branch of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) formed
in the 1920s, under the leadership of A. P. Tureaud, a Creole activist.
Over the following three decades, the chapter won gains in housing
desegregation, salary equalization for teachers, expanded voting rights, and
access to Louisiana State University. Post-World War II These changes in the political sphere reflected the major
demographic shift that came with the advent of the suburbs. New Orleans's
location on the Mississippi River delta had restricted the city's growth for 200
years, because most of the surrounding land was useless swamp. Using modern
technology, developers drained marshlands and built new neighborhoods, and white
residents moved in as soon as they could. Between 1950 and 1975, the greater
metropolitan area doubled in geographic size, and the white population within
the city itself declined drastically. New Orleans lost a good deal of its tax base as whites fled to
the suburbs, yet the city did not die the death of many Northern industrial
cities. Through the end of the 20th century, the distinctive food, music, and
annual Mardi Gras celebration attracted thousands of tourists. The historians
Arnold R. Hirsh and Joseph Logsdon contend, "the delicate cultural amalgam
that gave us jazz, a unique cuisine, and a love for public festivals is
beleaguered but not yet obliterated." MUSIC New Orleans may not have been the sole birthplace of jazz, as
is often claimed, but the city was a principal hub for the singular fusion of
African and European musical elements into what became known as jazz music. The
first documented jazz band, formed in 1895, was led by New Orleans cornet player
Buddy Bolden. Bolden's group played ragtime melodies, marches, quadrilles (a
song form based on a European square dance), and the blues. A typical early New
Orleans jazz ensemble consisted of three melody instruments (cornet, trombone,
clarinet) and a rhythm section of banjo or guitar, string bass or tuba, and
drums. A white New Orleans group, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band,
is credited with making the first jazz recording. The term "Dixieland"
came to refer both to jazz music played by white musicians of the early New
Orleans school and to traditional New Orleans jazz in general. Early New Orleans jazz developed at the same time as ragtime,
principally a piano-based musical style, and ultimately the two styles merged.
In the early decades of the 20th century the new music flourished in Storyville,
the city's red-light district. The most prominent jazz musicians of the era were
trumpeters: Bolden, Freddie Keppard, King Oliver, and Louis Armstrong. Armstrong
is generally regarded to be the first great improviser in jazz. Other
significant musicians from the time included pianist Jelly Roll Morton;
clarinetists Sidney Bechet, Barney Bigard, Johnny Dodds, Jimmie Noone, and
George Lewis; drummer Baby Dodds; and trombonist and bandleader Kid Ory. In the decade after World War I (1914-1918), nearly all of
these musicians, with the exceptions of Bolden and Lewis, followed the Great
Migration of blacks to Northern cities such as Chicago, Illinois, and New York.
Their performances and recordings in these cities helped to popularize New
Orleans jazz far beyond the New Orleans city limits. In later decades, early New
Orleans jazz came to be known as traditional jazz and enjoyed a revival in the
1940s. Beginning in the 1950s, many older Dixieland musicians were recorded
under the auspices of the New Orleans Jazz Club. Since the 1980s, New Orleans has been a spawning ground for a
new school of jazz players, among them trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and his
brothers, saxophonist Branford Marsalis and trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis.
Together with their father, pianist Ellis Marsalis, the Marsalis family has
brought widespread attention to jazz and a new appreciation of the city and its
jazz tradition. The city is also the site of the annual New Orleans Jazz and
Heritage Festival, one of the largest jazz and blues festivals in the country. Jazz was not the only music to flourish in New Orleans in the
20th century. Mahalia Jackson, generally recognized as the greatest of gospel
singers, was influenced both by the hymns of her local Baptist churches and by
the blues and jazz she heard while growing up in the city. In the late 1940s and
1950s, Professor Longhair and Fats Domino became heirs to Morton's legacy of New
Orleans rhythm and blues piano playing. The four Neville brothers—Aaron, Art,
Charles, and Cyril—introduced a decidedly New Orleans brand of pulsing funk
music as leaders of bands such as the Meters and the Wild Tchoupitoulas in the
1970s. As the Neville Brothers they continued the family tradition of
genre-crossing New Orleans music into the 1980s and 1990s.
French Rule
New Orleans spent nearly a century under European rule
before the United States purchased it. Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, sieur de
Bienville, the governor of the French colony of Louisiana, founded the city in
1718. In 1767 it was ceded to Spain. France reclaimed sovereignty in 1800, and
three years later Napoleon I sold all of the Louisiana Territory, including New
Orleans, to the United States.
When the United States purchased New Orleans in 1803, it obtained a thriving and
culturally distinct crossroads. Spanish and French sensibilities intermingled
with African and Caribbean ones, producing a fusion of religions and a
distinctive, innovative cuisine. Black Creoles and slaves, many of whom had
immigrated to New Orleans from Haiti in response to the Haitian Revolution
(1791-1804), combined African beliefs, Haitian rituals, and Catholic pageantry
into the religion of Vodou. New Orleans Catholics celebrated Mardi Gras by
donning lavish costumes and feasting on spicy Creole food.
Although Republican lawmakers enfranchised African Americans in New Orleans
during Reconstruction (1865-1877), conservative whites soon voted these
politicians out of office. Democrats won power in 1867, intent on
"redeeming" the state by returning it to the social and political
conditions of the pre-war period. New white leaders segregated accommodations
and schools, and, after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson
(1896) allowed these "separate but equal" public facilities, whites
pushed for the segregation of public transit. The historian Caryn Cossé Bell
writes, "Radical Reconstruction's promise of freedom, opportunity, and
equal citizenship had ended in a nightmare of semiservitude, Jim Crow laws, and
disfranchisement." The growing tension led to the New Orleans riot of 1900,
which was sparked by an instance of police harassment and marked by rampant
violence of whites against blacks.
Police harassment of the kind that precipitated the riot of 1900 persisted
through the 1950s, and city landlords continued to discriminate by color.
Although a moderate mayor, deLesseps "Chep" Morrison, helped to
curtail police racism, he opposed the desegregation of schools, transportation,
and lunch counters. The NAACP, however, won these gains in the late 1950s and
early 1960s. After the passage of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965,
political victories for African Americans became far more common, and New
Orleans elected its first black mayor, Ernest "Dutch" Morial, in 1978.
In the early 1800s, blacks were allowed to sing, dance, and play drums in
accordance with their African traditions in Congo Square, in what is known today
as the French Quarter. At these Sunday gatherings traditional African music
could cross-pollinate with European musical traditions. African-styled
instruments, made by slaves after they arrived in America, were commonly used in
the festivities. European music and dances were also performed, and
participating musicians added trumpets, clarinets, and even violins to their
collections of African-styled instruments. Congo Square became a melting pot of
music. By the late 1800s, New Orleans at large was filled with the shouts of
black street vendors, the hallelujahs of Baptist church choirs, the strains of
traditional Spanish dance music, the lilt of British folk songs, and the
marching figures of brass bands modeled on French and Prussian ensembles.
A West African tradition, the precursor of the jazz funeral was used by the Dahomeans and Yoruba people to give fellow tribesmen proper burial at the time of their deaths. Enslaved Africans in America continued the tradition. In the 18th century, a brass band was added to the procession. On the way to the cemetery traditional, slow, mournful music is played; upon leaving the cemetery, the band strikes up lively tunes.