White Like Her

by Gail Lukasik

  The closer one’s skin tone was to white, the higher one’s status was in the mixed-race and black communities, making stepping over the color line to sit in the white section of a street car or a restaurant acceptable if one knew how to act white. Such hyper vigilance to subtleties in skin tones, requiring comparisons to an item as arbitrary as a paper bag seems biblical to me in its search for a stain like the unseen stain of original sin that permeated my Catholic education. And what did it mean when you couldn’t pass the paper bag test? Were you undesirable, less of a person, tainted?

  Though my mother was aware of such distinctions and meanings about skin color, what she didn’t know was she was from a long line of free people of color, stretching back to colonial Louisiana.

  This racial designation, free people of color, was one I wasn’t aware of until I began digging deeper into her ancestry. Like many Americans, I learned about slavery in American history classes, which presented a simplistic view of slavery. The Civil War was in part fought to free the slaves. All people of African descent residing in the Southern slave-holding states were slaves until after the Civil War when the Emancipation Proclamation freed them. That there was a racially designated classification in Louisiana (most heavily concentrated in New Orleans) known as “free people of color” was left out of my history lessons. Though I was well aware of free black people and free black communities in the Northern cities such as Philadelphia, Boston, Providence, and New York. A group of people designated as free people of color in a Southern state was a revelation to me.

  Michael Taylor, Curator of Books at Louisiana State University Libraries, discusses the perplexing absence of free people of color in American history in his article, “Free People of Color in Louisiana: Revealing an Unknown Past.”

  “The fact that free people of color, particularly in the South, never made it into the mainstream narrative of American history is extraordinary considering their status were one of the most talked about issues of the first half of the nineteenth century. Even where their numbers were small, they made significant contributions to the economies and cultures of the communities in which they lived, and, as a group, exerted a strong influence on government policy and public opinion at a time of increasing polarization over the issue of slavery.”

  The article refers to the free people of color as “forgotten” people, which is an apt description.1

  The derivation of the designation “free people of color” dates back to Louisiana’s colonial period (1718–1768) when sexual relations among European settlers, African slaves, and Native Americans resulted in a third race of people, the gens de couleur libre, free people of color.2 The history of how these mixed-race people attained freedom is varied. From the beginning of New Orleans there were free blacks who came either from the Caribbean or from France.3 Others were born into freedom in Louisiana as second generations of free blacks and as such didn’t identify with an African identity or slavery. Still others won their freedom through military service during various times of war. And then there were the instances when a slave owner would grant manumission to an individual slave or entire families upon his or her death. And after the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) thousands of free blacks poured into New Orleans, doubling their population by 1810.

  But what prompted free women of color to have interracial relationships with white men as opposed to free men of color who they could legally marry and thus enjoy the privileges that accompanied marital status? As mistresses of white men, they were legally barred from those privileges and were socially ostracized.

  Demographic numbers offer insight into their reasons. In 1777 white male New Orleanians outnumbered white women—175 males per one hundred females and free black females outnumbered free black males about two to one.4

  Left with limited options, women of color sought protectors in long-standing, formalized relationships with white European men, who were only too willing to oblige them. This system of formalizing sexual relationships between women of color and white men was called plaçage. The term comes from the French word placer, which means “to place with.” The people of color referred to these arrangements as mariages de la main gauche, “left-handed marriages.” This practice existed in Louisiana and other French and Spanish slave holding territories from the late seventeenth century through the nineteenth century.5

  Some scholars consider the system exploitative of women of color, others view the system as beneficial to both parties: giving the women “economic security for themselves and their children with the possibility of manumission during the colonial and slavery periods or, later, the possible legal transfer of wealth from the father to the woman’s children through wills and other testaments.” For men during the colonial period, “plaçage allowed men to enjoy the benefits of marriage without worrying that their territorial holdings would be divided among their heirs,” and later they could distribute their wealth among all their heirs if they so desired.6

  The mystique surrounding the white men’s choice of a consort at formalized quadroon balls, which began in New Orleans in 1805, is rife with the stuff of romance novels. Books and movies abound with the tragic tale of the sultry quadroon kept as a mistress only to be cast off later when the white man marries a white woman. The implication was that the sultry quadroon who broke with social and moral codes has made the fatal mistake of falling in love with her white consort and can’t live without him. That narrative not only suggests her powerlessness but also her immorality and self-loathing.

  In reality, this blending of African, European, and Native American blood in New Orleans created women described as “hauntingly beautiful,” often seen as temptresses. Their beauty and refinement so angered white women during the time of Spanish colonial rule that Governor Miró enacted the “tignon law” on June 2, 1786. The law made it a criminal offense for women of “pure or mixed African blood” to give excessive attention to their dress.7 The absurdity of the law attests to Miró’s fear that the women of color needed to be controlled. These women had become too light-skinned, too European in appearance, or dressed too elegantly and thus disturbed the social order.8 Their beauty was its own kind of power.

  What I find compelling about the placées, or “kept women of color”—who by today’s standards would be considered immoral—was their ability to undermine the harsh oppression of their everyday lives and, in the process, protect themselves and the children who were products of these relationships. Historian Joan Martin calls their actions not only moral and ethical but also courageous within the framework of a society whose normal moral and ethical codes didn’t apply to them.9

  It’s not a huge leap for me to view the circumstances surrounding my mother’s decision to pass in the same light of oppression and the need to mitigate that oppression even if it meant breaking the strictures of that oppression by marrying a white man. Though in her case she broke no law since her marriage took place in Ohio and not Louisiana.

  Ironically, the plaçage system, which created people who could pass for white but were genetically mixed race, became the impetus for such laws as the 1924 Act to Preserve Racial Integrity enacted to guard against “white Negroes passing over the line.” Numerous scholars point out how patriarchal institutions sanctioned mixed-race relationships when it was beneficial for white European men and then instituted laws against mixed-race marriages when “white Negroes” threatened the purity of the white race.

  Regardless of one’s viewpoint on plaçage, it created a third race in Louisiana that over time accumulated wealth and power. These free people of color occupied a unique position being “neither black nor white, neither slave nor entirely free,” French-speaking, and mostly middle-class.10 Over time the free people of color would be seen by the white community as a threat to their own way of life because of their unique position and their wealth and power, ushering in stricter laws against them, culminating with the Jim Crow laws and the one-drop rule, which defined the racial designation of black as havin
g any trace of black ancestry.

  Whether or not my ancestor’s mixed-race unions were formalized under the plaçage system, they contributed to that third race in Louisiana. Their stories are woven into the fabric of mixed race in this country.

  15

  Leon Frederic, Light Enough to Fight

  1838–1905

  “YOU WANTED TO know if Leon Frederic is your great-great-grandfather, and if he was a member of the Louisiana Native Guards during the Civil War,” Kenyatta states. “Take a look at what we found.”

  So it’s true, I think to myself, examining the documents as they appear on the screen. Leon Frederic, my great-great-grandfather, was a private in the Louisiana Native Guards. A shiver of excitement runs up my spine at the confirmation.

  Then Kenyatta brings up a newspaper article. Her voice hesitates as she looks into my eyes, gauging my reaction, almost apologetic. She launches into an explanation of the Times-Picayune newspaper article. Leon’s story holds yet another surprise, one that my mother would have found if not shameful, then distressing, supporting her decision to hide her black background.

  Several years before appearing on Genealogy Roadshow, I traced the Frederic line to Leon Frederic (1838–1905) using Ancestry.com. Though I wasn’t absolutely certain he was my great-great-grandfather, what I discovered about him presented me an opportunity to break through my mother’s silence. It would be the last time I’d directly confront her about her racial background.

  I was excited to share with her what I considered amazing news about Leon Frederic, linking him to the Civil War and a little-known, but important, piece of American history. Naively, I believed that if she felt pride about her racially mixed heritage instead of shame, she’d finally open up about her experiences as a mixed-race person.

  “Leon Frederic who I think is your great-grandfather is part of the African American Civil War Memorial in Washington,” I told her. “His name is on a plaque.”

  She went quiet on the phone and I knew that rather than breaking through her wall of shame, I’d only fortified it by breaching my agreement not to talk about her racial heritage. Quickly she changed the subject, asking about my children.

  Never again did I share with her any research my son Chris and I found about her family. We continued searching into the family genealogy, comparing notes, following paths that sometimes led to dead ends. Ancestory.com made my search easier, though sometimes it presented more questions than answers.

  Chris, on one of his solo trips to visit my mother, broached the subject of her racial background by bringing up his research about her family. But she refused to discuss it with him, politely but firmly changing the subject as she’d done with me.

  The need to uncover the unknown, to know the truth burned inside of me. But all I could find were dates and places, tied to records and documents, without dialogue or setting or characterization, like an outline for a scene, waiting for something to happen, for someone to speak.

  On September 2, 1862, my great-great-grandfather Leon Frederic enlisted as a volunteer soldier in the First Regiment of the Louisiana Native Guards. From his enlistment document given to me after the St. Louis taping but before the show aired in January 2015, along with 163 pages of other genealogical documents, I learned that the examining surgeon, Robert Smith, described Leon as having black eyes, black hair, fair complexion; five feet, six and a half inches tall. Other than his gender, the surgeon could be describing my mother, including the height. The skin description seems an odd identifier to my twenty-first-century sensibilities. But in 1862 enlisting as a free person of color, Leon’s light complexion was important to the Union war effort in Louisiana.

  When Leon signed his name with a firm, artistic flourish, he had no way of knowing that his action marked a momentous historical moment. The First Regiment of the Louisiana Native Guards was the first black regiment in the history of the United States Army.

  I trace his signature with my index finger as if I could know what he was feeling as he put pen to paper, enlisting for a term of three years in the Union army.

  La Monte Westmoreland, Genealogy Roadshow’s producer, told me months after the show aired that the genealogist, Rich Venezia, didn’t conclude that Leon Frederic was my ancestor until days before the show taped, comparing and studying Leon’s signatures on various documents. To my untrained eye, there’s no mistaking the similarities in Leon’s various signatures.

  Even before the Roadshow verified that Leon was my direct ancestor, I contacted Isiah “Ike” Edwards, an amateur military historian and expert on the Native Guards whose ancestor had also been a Native Guard. I learned that Ike is the keeper of the flame of these forgotten men to the extent that he’s petitioned the city of New Orleans to honor the men with a plaque, which the city has yet to do. He explained with a touch of pride in his voice that the Native Guards preceded the “Glory Boys,” as he called them.

  “You know,” he said, “the ones they made the movie about.”

  I knew of the movie and the famous poem “For the Union Dead” by Robert Lowell, an ode to “Colonel Shaw/and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry.” But prior to discovering Leon Frederic I’d never heard of the Native Guards. As I listened to Ike, I wondered how much of black history is buried, shoved aside, considered unimportant to the American narrative.

  Though technically, the Native Guards weren’t the first black troops to enlist, they were the first black troops to be mustered into the US Army. The famous Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts, immortalized in the movie Glory, weren’t completely organized until May 13, 1863, eight months after the Native Guards were already part of the Union troops.

  As the first black troops in the US Army, serving in a Southern state, the Native Guards faced enormous obstacles both from the Southern whites and the Northern soldiers and officers, including General Benjamin Butler, commander of the Department of the Gulf.

  Initially Butler was hesitant to enlist blacks as soldiers. Only necessity made him change his mind. Once New Orleans fell to the Union, the War Department wanted him to hold the city at all costs but gave him no additional troops. He was tasked with obtaining recruits from Louisiana. After failing to enlist enough soldiers from the Irish and German immigrants, he reached out to the free men of color of the Native Guards, who had reluctantly served in the Confederate Army.1

  To assuage his own mind about the men’s loyalty to the Union, he questioned one of the captains from the Confederate Colored Brigade, Charles S. Sauvenet, a free man of color and a translator in the Provost Court of German, Spanish, and French.

  “How came you, free colored men, fighting here for the Confederacy, fighting for slavery?”

  Sauvenet answered that if they hadn’t volunteered they would have been forced to join. “We have property and rights here, and there is every reason why we should take care of ourselves.” Then he went on to explain their treatment by the Confederate Army. Although they had participated in drills, they were not allowed to use arms and never given muskets.2

  Butler must have seen the truth in what Sauvenet said. When New Orleans fell, the Confederate Native Guards hadn’t run as the Confederate white soldiers had. They stayed in New Orleans protecting their property and families, waiting to see which way the wind would blow.

  Satisfied with Sauvenet’s explanation, Butler wrote Secretary of War Edwin Stanton of his decision to use colored men if he didn’t receive reinforcements. “I shall call on Africa to intervene. I have determined to use the services of free colored men who were organized by the rebels into the Colored Brigade . . . They are free; they have been used by our enemies, whose mouths are shut, and they will be loyal.”3

  Butler fully understood the political ramifications of taking such a bold and politically unpopular move not to mention his own misgivings about black troops. From the onset of the occupation of New Orleans, he had been hesitant to enlist fugitive slaves as soldiers. He harbored a prejudice against the military ability of blacks, believing they wer
e afraid of firearms. And he was aware that President Lincoln feared turning the border states of Missouri, Maryland, and Kentucky against the Union if black troops were armed.4

  But if he wanted to hold New Orleans and the valuable waterway of the Mississippi River, he needed additional troops.

  By August 1862, Butler could wait no longer for the government’s sanctioning of colored soldiers. He issued an appeal for men of color to join the Union Army.5 Within three weeks, he had one thousand Native Guards ready to fight for the Union.

  On September 1, 1862, Butler wrote to Stanton, asking that the War Department sanction his recruitment of Negroes under the Militia Act of July 17, 1862. “My Native Guards, one thousand strong are to be filled up in the next ten days, the darkest of whom is about the complexion of the late Mr. Webster.”6

  Butler’s comment about Mr. Webster’s complexion was meant to reassure Stanton that the regiment was composed of lighter-complexioned soldiers, who would not arouse fear among the white Southern population when they appeared in uniform bearing arms. These men weren’t slaves nor were they interested in leading a slave rebellion. In fact, some of these free men of color were also slave owners.

  Leon Frederic—a fair-skinned, free man of color, shoemaker by trade, with a pregnant wife, mother, and two sisters to support—was among those one thousand strong.

  And possibly, he shared another commonality with some of the free men of color of the First Regiment of the Native Guards. On the US Military Index of the First Regiment of the Confederate Native Guards, a Leon Frederick is listed. Though the Confederate Native Guard Leon Frederick’s name ends in a K, it is likely that this Leon Frederick is my great-great-grandfather, the same Leon Frederic who enlisted in the Union Native Guards. He’d been a soldier in both the Confederate Native Guards and the Union Native Guards.