American routes. Racial palimpsests and the transformation of race

297 Pages·2017·3.34 MB·English

by  Adams Parham

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American Routes
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American Routes
Racial Palimpsests and the
Transformation of Race
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Angel Adams Parham
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C ON T EN T S

List of Figures and Tables vii

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Louisiana and the Advent of a New America 1

1 . Racial Systems and the Racial Palimpsest 19

2 . St. Domingue as Training Ground: Color, Class, and Social Life
Before Louisiana 51

3 . White St. Domingue Refugees and White Creoles
in Nineteenth-C entury Louisiana 68

4 . St. Domingue Refugees and Creoles of Color 94

5 . Twenty- First Century Remnants of a White Creole Past 120

6 . Into the Twenty- First Century: Creoles of Color Finding
Teir Way 154

7 . Conclusions: Racial Palimpsests and the Transformation
of US American Regions 188

Appendix I: Notes on Methodology 211

Appendix II: Cajun/ Creole Survey Results 221

Appendix III: St. Domingue/ Haiti- Louisiana Interview Instrument 225

Appendix IV: Creole Oral History Guide 235

Notes 239

Bibliography 263
Index 271
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L I S T OF FIGUR E S AND TABLE S

FIGURES
I.1 Te dances in Congo Square 9
3.1 Tree municipalities: Te schism of New Orleans 79

TABLES
I.1 St. Domingue Refugee Impact on New Orleans 7
1.1 Te Two Layers of the Palimpsest 47
5.1 Times-P icayune Creole Family Search 150
7.1 Bonilla-S ilva’s Triracial Stratifcation System 195
A.1 Cajun/C reole Interviewees 213
A.2 White Descendants of St. Domingue 216
A.3 St. Domingue Descendants of Color 217
A.4 Oral Histories with White Louisianans with Creole
Heritage 218
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A C K NOWLEDGMEN T S
Te creation of American Routes has been a truly transformative experi-
ence. I could not have imagined when I started this project in August 2005
that I would be putting the fnishing touches on it only in 2016. I launched
the core stage of data collection just days before Hurricane Katrina hit the
Gulf Coast and the levees broke, devastating the city I had come to love.
I thought then that the project was dead before it had begun, but the city
rallied and my respondents returned. Ten in 2011 another storm threat-
ened to ruin six years of work. My family and I were on our way to live
in Princeton for the 2011–2 012 academic year. Te day we left a tropical
storm hovered over our car and followed us up the East Coast. Te day
before we arrived in Princeton I discovered to my horror that the back of
our minivan had leaked so badly that my cassette tapes and research docu-
ments were all soaked, foating in a couple inches of water. My husband
Jonathan, who is a sound engineer, saved the day and is to be credited
for saving the core data reported in American Routes. Tinking quickly, he
instructed me to use a hair dryer to individually dry out each cassette tape.
We then laid out every single page of every document across the room so
that they could dry. When we got to Princeton the next day and settled
into our housing, he set up the cassette recorder, connected it to my laptop,
and transferred the recordings to the laptop to create digital fles which we
saved on our computer and burned onto CDs. His expertise saved six years
of work.
Among others who have helped to bring this project to readers, I want
to thank Ed McCaughan, who was the chair of the sociology department
when I  frst came to Loyola University– New Orleans in 2003. It was he
who encouraged me to consider doing a project that would connect my
long-s tanding interest in Haiti with my newfound home in Louisiana. I am
extraordinarily grateful for his suggestion. It is a very special thing to be
able to dig deeply into the history and culture of the place where one lives,
and to come to appreciate it in new and wonderful ways.
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