by Edward Ball
The parallel governments continue for some weeks. One meets in an auditorium, Lyceum Hall, the other in the Mechanics Institute, site of the massacre.
On February 26, 1873, President Grant sends a message to Congress saying that he recognizes the Republican governor, William Kellogg. The message prompts the Democrat, John McEnery, to raise the ante to violence. The following day, McEnery gives a speech to a roomful of supporters and asks them to take up arms and install him in office. He calls out Fred Ogden and names him to lead a guerrilla group, the “McEnery Militia.”
With that, the Ku-klux is back in business, and Constant back on board.
* * *
In October 1872, an artist arrives in New Orleans from Paris. He is Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas, age thirty-eight. Degas paints landscapes, for the most part, although this will soon change. He has come for a visit to his family in Louisiana. The artist moves into the second floor of a house at 372 Esplanade Avenue, near the corner of Bayou Road. The house is big, but it is full. In it, Edgar Degas finds his brother René de Gas, as well as their uncle, a man named Michel Musson. He finds the wives and children of the two men. Edgar’s brother René uses a fake noble spelling of his name—de Gas—although the family is not aristocratic. The painter wants no part of the charade and sticks to “Degas.” He is more a realist than a fantasist.
In later years, Edgar Degas becomes a man famous for his paintings of dancers, his paintings of horses, his paintings of women. He will be loved as one of the most vivid and most decadent of the Impressionist painters, a man who can bring prostitutes to life with his brush hand and hold a glass of green absinthe in the other. But in New Orleans, Degas is largely an unknown. He is just a visitor, with links to certain white Creoles in the Ku-klux.
The painter’s mother, Célestine Musson, is born in New Orleans. During the 1830s, she marries a Frenchman visiting the city, Auguste Degas, and moves with him to Paris. Edgar is her first of five children. But Célestine dies in Paris in 1847, when the boy is thirteen. In 1870, Edgar’s two brothers, Achille and René, move to New Orleans to find new lives. Both go to work for their mother’s brother in Louisiana, Michel Musson, a dealer in cotton.
The Musson household in which Edgar lives for half a year—fall 1872 till Mardi Gras 1873—has familiar signs of white aspiration. There are black servants. There are frequent trips to the French Opera. And there is the sale of cotton, the crop from black hands, which keeps the silver polished and the house in high comfort. Degas’s uncle, Michel Musson, is a cotton factor. He buys raw cotton from planters in the upstate, sorts and grades it, then sells it to buyers for fabric mills—some in New England, some in France, some in England. In early 1873, Edgar Degas paints a picture, A Cotton Office in New Orleans. It shows the cotton factorage belonging to Michel Musson. In the painting, Degas’s uncle sits in the foreground, wearing eyeglasses and fingering a boll of cotton. On the picture’s left, wearing a top hat and doing nothing, is Degas’s brother, Achille. At center reading a newspaper is René de Gas, the second of Edgar’s brothers. René happens to be married to a daughter of his uncle Michel Musson—that is to say, to his first cousin. At the table holding a bunch of cotton in both hands is a man named William Bell, who is married to another of the daughters of Michel Musson.
A Cotton Office in New Orleans by Edgar Degas, 1873
This William Bell, as it happens, is the most important person in the painting. He is a leader in the white supremacist movement. William Bell appears, in the picture, merely to be visiting the Musson office. In life, William Bell is the business partner of the Ku-klux leader, Fred Ogden. Their company, Bell & Ogden, with offices on Union Street, sells cotton baling material—iron ties, rope, and bags.
A year later, Fred Ogden and William Bell will come together to set up a new enterprise. It is not a cotton business. Instead, it is a Ku-klux militia, which they call the White League. The White League is the most important band of guerrillas in the story of the supremacist movement. It is the one that will bring an end to Reconstruction and seal the success of white supremacy. And it is the final militia that Constant Lecorgne will join.
On Mardi Gras day in 1873, the men in the painting (and I think Edgar Degas himself) find themselves at yet another Carnival. Circumstantial evidence says that they attend a key Mardi Gras event, the procession of the Mistick Krewe of Comus. Several of the cotton men are members of Comus, and they would want the painter Edgar Degas to see for himself the beauty of the annual festival. They would want to show off the Comus treatment of Mardi Gras, before they allow Degas to pack and return to Paris.
This year, Comus has a theme—“Missing Links to Darwin’s Origin of Species.” The theory of evolution spread by the naturalist Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, has trickled down to the level of popular culture and festival, and Comus wishes to make good fun of it. In the middle of an hour-long parade, Edgar Degas might conclude that Mardi Gras is not about masquerade, it is really about les nègres. An elaborate float in the middle of the procession carries a giant black creature in papier-mâché, “the Missing Link himself, half-human, half-gorilla,” as a reporter puts it. The ape-like figure plays a banjo and looks out across the float toward a “simian Cupid,” a monkey in the form of the love-nymph, holding a bow and arrow. Cupid himself peers this way and that, “looking for a noble mate” to unite with the banjo-playing ape. In the Comus parade, white supremacy discovers Darwin and tries to put the scientist to work, so to speak. The theme of “Missing Links” revives the old idea of the separate species. Humor is more persuasive than the windy talk of scientists like Samuel Cartwright and Louis Agassiz. And satire is more memorable than the thought balloons of James De Bow. A Carnival joke about the genus of the blacks is one that a hundred thousand drunks can understand.
After Mardi Gras, someone sends a newspaper clipping about the “Origin of Species” parade, plus a folio of drawings of the “missing links,” to Charles Darwin himself. In 1873, the naturalist is a famous and aging gentleman who lives southeast of London. He writes back, sounding confused—“Dear Sir, The abusive article in the newspaper amused me more than Comus. I can’t tell whether the writer is witty or ignorant,” Darwin says.
* * *
It happens quickly, because the gang members are old hands. When John McEnery calls for armed resistance, a movement comes together fast. On Friday, February 28, Alcibiade DeBlanc, old master of the White Camellia, comes out of his yearlong quiet and speaks to a rally in front of Gallier Hall, on Lafayette Square. Leaning over the platform, according to the Republican, and looking at the mass of faces below him, DeBlanc says—
“I see in the future nothing but negro domination! Will you submit to it?”
The crowd shouts—No! No!
“I believe we ought to resist even though the muskets of the United States are leveled at our breasts,” DeBlanc says. “Do you believe that you owe any allegiance to the government of the United States?”
The crowd—No!
“We owe no allegiance! We ought to resist it and raise the flag of the white race of Louisiana. We do not intend to shed blood, but we will raise high the flag of the white race!”
Something tells me Constant is at this rally. DeBlanc is his friend, his old comrade in arms. And Constant is out of guerrilla retirement. DeBlanc calls for a coup d’état that throws out the black-loving administration of Governor William Kellogg and installs the white-loving John McEnery. He throws his support and prestige to Fred Ogden, new captain of the McEnery Militia. It is a fight for white rights, Constant’s cause.
I have described the raid on Precinct 7, in Jefferson City. It begins five days later, on March 4, 1873. That night, Constant joins a commando group of about thirty. They seize a police station in Bouligny. Three miles downtown, in New Orleans, the leader of the guerrillas, Fred Ogden, runs a separate assault on the armory in the city’s old court building, the Cabildo. Alcibiade DeBlanc is absent from the scene. He is probably at
home in St. Martinville, pulling in recruits.
The raid on the Cabildo armory fails, but the raid on Precinct 7 succeeds. Constant and his gang occupy the police station for twenty-four hours. I imagine this feels good to him. It is the same police outpost that fell to the Yankees when Bouligny was invaded by army troops.
According to one newspaper, at 1:00 a.m. on March 6, a company of 120 Metropolitans attacks the precinct. Some of the guerrillas melt back into the neighborhood, but Constant and twelve other Ku-klux make a last stand. They are armed with pistols and shotguns. As the Metropolitans swarm the building, some guerrillas open fire. No one is hit, and the Metropolitans return fire. Inside, Constant’s twenty-seven-year-old cousin, Ernest Livaudais, is shot in the arm. He survives. Another man, Kendrick Chandler, is shot in the abdomen.
The same Kendrick Chandler, eight years earlier, found himself in a jailhouse with one of the Lecorgnes. Constant’s brother Joseph was a prisoner of war with Kendrick Chandler. The two men survived winter in a crude Yankee prison in Ohio, Camp Chase, before being paroled to go home to New Orleans.
The Metropolitans take the building, and Constant surrenders. Kendrick Chandler, shot in the stomach, is carried out by soldiers and brought to Charity Hospital. He dies a few days later. Constant and twelve guerrillas are made prisoner. The men know one another. They are friends. Seven of the thirteen are officers in Jefferson City fire companies. In addition to Constant, the men from Home Hook & Ladder include Émile Chevalley (who runs a coal yard in Bouligny), Charles Piper (a grocer on Chestnut Street), and four others. They have drunk together, paraded together, and raised hell together.
The men are brought downtown to the central jail. A prosecutor in the First District Court of Orleans Parish writes the bill of indictment. (“Not a true bill,” he scribbles on it, meaning there is more to come.) The first charge is violating the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. The second charge is treason. The paperwork shows a district attorney whose anger is seething. Constant Lecorgne, he says—
… wickedly intending and devising the peace and tranquility of the state to disturb and destroy … then and there unlawfully maliciously and traitorously conspired to levy war against the said state and to fulfill and bring to effect the said traitorous compassings intentions and conspirings. [The guerrillas] traitorously assembled, armed and arrayed as aforesaid most wickedly maliciously and traitorously did ordain prepare and levy war against the said State contrary to their duty of allegiance [to it] … and contrary to the form of the statute of the State of Louisiana in such case made and provided and against the peace and dignity of the same.
Constant and comrades sit in jail for six days. On March 12, they have a bail hearing. Yves of God bails out his younger brother, paying a bond of $500. Constant is the only man bailed out by relatives. Other prisoners pay their own bail or get bail from friends. It means that he is poor, and perhaps not much liked.
The day after he leaves the jail, Constant signs an affidavit about an event the night of the raid. The affidavit has nothing to do with the treason charge or the Klan Act. Instead, it is about Kendrick Chandler, the guerrilla shot and killed.
According to The Daily Picayune, Constant says that he lives on Belmont Street near Tchoupitoulas Street. (He and Gabrielle have moved again.) And he attests—
I was at the station at the time of the arrival of the police. I was standing at the foot of the stairs under the market and opposite the telegraph office, when a policeman came up, running through the market, and hailing me to surrender, which I did. Then the policeman took Messrs. Sanders, Regnor, and Ballant prisoners, and turning around fired, at Kendrick Chandler, who was in the telegraph office, under the market; the shot cutting the muzzle of a gun which Chandler held in his hand, with the stock resting on the floor; the barrel of the gun was cut about six inches from the muzzle. There were other shots fired by parties I do not know. Mr. Chandler had surrendered before he was shot. I would know the policeman who fired the shot which killed him. Chandler slowly fell to the floor. I was about two yards from him at the time. The ammunition that we received was from Capt. Guillotte, and was in cartridges. I would know the man who shot Chandler if I saw him again.
These are some of the only words of Constant Lecorgne that survive in print. He is one of us, one of ours. Yet the warm rush that a family historian sometimes feels when seeing the words of someone theirs is missing for me. I am getting tired of him, in the way you tire of a zealot.
A few days later, Constant is called again to testify, and this time he says that a white Metropolitan named Thomas McAlpine “is the man who shot Chandler.” For weeks, the white press covers the death of Chandler. The newspapers and white court are changing the subject. They turn the Ku-klux-and-treason case into the story of a police killing.
On March 25, a grand jury in the First District Court indicts thirteen men with treason, including “P.C. Lacorgne.” The court misspells his name.
Constant and his co-conspirators face the court. Two lawyers, James Lingan and Frank Zacharie, speak for them. The judge is a man with the harmonious name of Arthur McArthur. Judge McArthur has been in office since September 1871. He is a Democrat. He helped Democratic candidates during the election of 1872. McArthur is sympathetic to the guerrillas. Constant is not particularly worried, I think. He knows what to expect. He has seen many people get off in circumstances like his. Within minutes, Judge McArthur dismisses the treason charge against all thirteen. He pauses for a moment, and then he drops the Ku Klux Klan charge. All charges thrown out, the men leave the court and go home.
Two weeks after Constant is freed of the Ku-klux charge, on Easter Sunday 1873, squads of white guerrillas kill some 150 black men and a number of women in the town of Colfax, Louisiana. The mass murder takes place around a courthouse, two hundred miles northwest of New Orleans. It is the so-called Colfax massacre, and it takes place in Grant Parish, a rural outback, half black and half white. As it was for the Mechanics Institute massacre in New Orleans, seven years back, the frame around the Colfax killings is the question of who gets to vote. Grant Parish smolders in a political fight after the election of 1872, in which Republicans win local offices on the votes of black men. In April 1873, about one hundred African American activists take possession of the Colfax courthouse, expecting that white Democrats will try to seize the building and swear in a new, unelected sheriff and judge. On Easter Sunday, heavily armed white militias encircle the courthouse. When the black defenders surrender and give up their handguns, the militias execute them, dozens at a time. They do not stop until stacks of bodies lie in the street, and many more are thrown into the Mississippi. It is the worst episode of race killing in all of Reconstruction. I do not think Constant is involved. Colfax is far from New Orleans, too far to travel.
24
The massacre in Colfax is the last piece of bad news for Louis Charles Roudanez. For years, Roudanez is the publisher of the first black daily in the South, the New Orleans Tribune. He is impressive. He fights white supremacy with scathing invective. Roudanez, as far as I know, is not physically attacked for speaking out, although the threat hangs heavy. He is not targeted, I think, for the reason that he is too impressive to the petits blancs, the little whites who occupy themselves by setting themselves on black people. But with repeated massacres and setbacks, Roudanez grows disillusioned. Soon after the Ku-klux kill 150 in the town of Colfax, he gets out of the newspaper business, gets away from the Republican Party, and leaves politics. Roudanez returns to the private life of a doctor who happens to be of color, his waiting room crowded with white and black patients.
About 150 years later, I decide to look for the Roudanez family. With small effort, I find one of the publisher’s great-great-grandchildren, a man named Mark Roudané, living in the upper Midwest.
The Mississippi River is narrow and slow as it bends around the Twin Cities, St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota. The river is unrecognizable, just 100 yards wide at this point, and during some winters it
carries ice. Yet here is the same stream as the one in Louisiana. The flight from New Orleans to St. Paul is 1,500 miles, three hours due north. By riverboat from Bouligny to Minnesota, it would be a monthlong, 5,000-mile slog upstream on the Mississippi.
Mark Roudané lives with his wife, Barbara, in St. Paul. Theirs is a leafy section of St. Paul, a half mile from the river; a pretty, clapboard house on a sliver of a lot, engulfed by a pleasing 1920s subdivision. Mark Roudané was a public school teacher for decades. He and his wife raised two daughters, after which he retired from teaching. For the past few years, Roudané has been investigating the story of his people in New Orleans, the ones named Roudanez. When we meet, he tells me his father changed the spelling of Roudanez to Roudané during the 1940s.
Mark Roudané is a gentle man in his sixties, trim and fit, easy to smile. He speaks carefully, listens, then speaks again after thought. He has a flat Midwestern accent. The cultural stamp of Minnesota is far from Louisiana, but it doesn’t deter the ex-teacher from spending much of his mental life in the South.
We sit at the kitchen table. He talks familiarly about his predecessor, Louis Charles Roudanez, the doctor and newspaperman.
“He would be my great-great-grandfather,” Roudané says. “I think it is 1879 when Roudanez sends his wife and children to Paris. Later, he goes back and forth from New Orleans to France to visit them—a few times, but not a lot. Finally he dies in New Orleans in 1890. He is buried in the old cemetery there, the one called St. Louis #1. Meanwhile, his children grow up entirely French. Their descendants are all over France today.”
Roudané brings out photographs of a Paris family from the early 1900s. A group photo shows a woman with her family standing in a French window. She is a daughter of Louis Roudanez and his wife, Célie Saulay, now with her own husband and children.