Mixed Race Studies

Mulatto Bend: Free People of Color in Rural Louisiana, 1763-1865

Tulane University
2012-04-02
307 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3519906
ISBN: 9781267512932

Johanna Lee Davis Smith

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED ON THE SECOND DAY OF APRIL 2012 TO THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE SCHOOL OF LIBERAL ARTS OF TULANE UNIVERSITY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

This dissertation examines community and identity formation among free people of color in rural Louisiana between 1763 and 1865. The group studied here used the family, community, and financial benefits available to them as the mixed-race descendants of European and African ancestors in order to set themselves apart from the larger enslaved community and to avoid possible re-enslavement. Atlantic World influences played a key part in the establishment of Mulatto Bend, a small community of white and free black residents located on the Mississippi River in close proximity to Baton Rouge. Ideas of race and the paternalism of the French period resulted in a group of mixed-race offspring of French men and African women who were freed by their fathers and sometimes received financial assistance from them. Spanish control of Louisiana resulted in the even more relaxed environment in which authorities hungry to find settlers suitable to populate and guard their colony freely granted land to free people of color as well as whites. The community which developed was constituted of free mixed-race individuals who were property-owning Catholics, who intermarried, lived in a single geographical area, and cooperated in almost all facets of social, legal, and economic life in order to maintain their identity as a group. The records of the Spanish government of West Florida, parish probate documents, church parish sacramental records, and census records provide the major sources of information regarding the community. While quite successful during the Spanish period, the community began to decline in size by the 1830s as a result of financial stress brought on by general economic malaise and the sociopolitical hardening of the American period. Finally, emancipation removed the major difference between free people of color and slaves, forcing the former to search for ways to maintain their pre-emancipation social and economic status, most of which had been eroded by the depredations of war. This study will add to the body of knowledge regarding the lives of free people of color in the Gulf South who did not live in the more intensely studied city of New Orleans.

Purchase the dissertation here.

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