I've been trying to read as much about New Orleans as I can. Specifically, I've been trying to find unique opinions about New Orleans written by New Orlenians. Check out this essay "Wading Towards Home" written by Michael Lewis.
Also, I've been doing more research following Bryan's mention of the Free People of Color. One of the very interesting things about NO (which allowed the Free People of Color community to exist in at the same time as slavery was legal) is that freed blacks were granted specific rights under the Code Noir or Black Code. Even slaves were granted very limited rights and a matrilineal code existed to determine the status of the children born to slave. I found two similar versions of the Code Noir on the web:
http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/335/
http://www.toptags.com/aama/docs/lublkcodes.htm
Also, the Library of Congress partnered with the French National Library to present "France in America," which has information on the Code Noir and other great resources relating to New Orleans.
More to come, of course.
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2 comments:
I'm so very glad that Ms. Perrier was found--I found myself terrified for her safety. This was a great article. The historical idea I found most interesting was this man's experiences as so radically different than the state of NOLA as reported in the news. He foregrounds the intersection of news, storytelling, reportage, and historiography. The political idea I found the most interesting was that the the areas of NOLA that were wiped out should have been wiped out long ago and that the influx of money because of the disaster (and only, maybe, because of it) will rejuvinate NOLA in ways that would have never happened without the flood.
Generalizing this idea, it seems that often disaster is requisite for better growth? This connects to an essay that came out to faculty here at BYU a few months ago about the difference between pruning and weeding. Weeding, John Tanner says, is easy--to pick between clear good (pretty flowers) and bad (ugly weeds). Pruning is harder--choosing to cut away good growth in the promise of better growth in the future.
The issues of race, poverty, class, crime, etc. in NOLA clearly needed addressing (the article talks about NOLA as stagnating), but maybe it took a natural disaster to prune existing attempts at a good in favor of a promise of better growth in the future.
The "Code Noir" should definitely be included somewhere in the script.
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