Creoles of Color in the Bayou Country

This book provides many answers and insights into an area I often visited during my childhood. I am the child of a black creole from The Washington Plaisance area. This book gave me insight into some of the values and quirkiness I have today.

This is a fine piece of scholarship, as well as one that sheds light on an all-but-forgotten aspect of Louisiana's Creole history. The authors provide a wonderfully detailed treatment of the Southwestern Louisiana Creoles of Color that adds to a growing body of scholarship on the topic. This book stands as a good counter-point to studies of New Orleans's Creoles of Color, and further proves that the Colored Creole identity was not the same as the African American identity, and that the free black community of the state, not just that of New Orleans, was far from a monolithic group unified by racial oppression. The authors describe a community dedicated to maintaining their shared social status above dark-skinned free blacks and slaves, and assuredly below the white community. However, the authors are sure to mention that the color line was not as established in the Bayou Country, or in Louisiana as a whole, as many people have previously believed. Rather, Colored Creoles and whites worked together, intermarried (most often common-law marriages), had children, and inherited property from each other. The Creoles of Color of the Bayou Country provide yet another fine example of a mixed-race population recognizing and treating itself as different from both blacks and whites, inhabiting an ambiguous, complex position in the social hierarchy, and struggling to protect the few privileges (what we would call rights today) granted them by a white-dominated society. This books goes well with the only other first-rate study of Creoles of Color outside of New Orleans, Gary B. Mills's "The Forgotten People" (LSU Press, 1977).

I'd been doing a genealogical study on my and my wife's roots using Ancestry.com. My wife turned out to be a decendant of the Donato Bello, in the book. Donato had two families he'd raised about the same time. One with Suzanne Moreau, a French caucasion, the other, with Maria Jeanne Taliaferro, a free person of color. A large portion of the book could be previewed in line. Knowing my wife's line descended from Moreau, I searched the index of what pages addressed her line. Those pages appeared to be among the few that weren't viewable in the preview. I bought it the book, only to find a paragraph or two that contained information I'd already known. I felt victimized, like I had to buy the book to read of her white ancestors, but if she were a black descendent, all the info we needed was available to us free, on line. Not to say I didn't find Martin Donato's history a tad bit helpful in developing my wife's tree, but she and I were both disappointed at what we paid for the book and how little it pertained to her side of the family. One viewable page on line would have given us all we needed and saved us some money.

Great read. Its very informative and give great incite of pass life,

This is an excellent book that will appeal to anyone interested in the cultural history of Louisiana. It tells a little know story about the people who helped develop and build Louisiana. If you are from Louisiana and a Creole of Color yourself then Creoles of Color in the Bayou Country will be a means of connecting your roots.

painstakingly. Did the Creole of Colour speak creole?How do their Mardi Gras differ from other South Louisiana practices? How do they relate to their African roots? This great book makes you hungry for more.

Was searching for some family history and found it very helpful.

Valuable information for Southern Louisiana researchers. I found it to be informative and well documented. A great piece of United States history.