'Black, white, or indifferent': Race, identity, and Americanization in Creole Louisiana

In colonial and antebellum Louisiana, the Creoles of color were traditionally positioned on the second rung of a three-caste social system. However, they lost separate status some time between Reconstruction and the early twentieth century, when the one-drop guide to racial identity pronounced them "Negro," and they disappeared in a racial system that allowed for no "in-betweens." However, despite the loss of separate status, Creoles of color did not disappear from the social landscape. Instead, they managed to maintain their distinct social identity despite the binary language of Jim Crow that made them invisible in a black-and-white world.; This work examines how this separate Creole identity developed in the community of Isle Brevelle, in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, and how it persisted through Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow, when American laws and language forced the Creoles of Isle Brevelle to "pass for black." In imposing a biracial system on a traditionally tri-caste society, Americanization may have legally redefined Louisiana's population, but the social lines of the tri-caste system were never completely erased. Instead, old cultural distinctions remained, and institutions like churches and schools in the Creole and African-American communities actually augmented separate identities among them through time.; This work is an effort to circumvent the traditional monolithic view of the experience of color in America. It is based on a refusal to accept that peoples of color share the same cultural heritage or social realities because of the African blood they may have in common. It is an attempt to break free from the prescriptive, binary language of Jim Crow to see beyond one drop of blood to unveil at least a few of the complexities of race, religion and identity in American history.