Digital Commons Network^™

“The Very Class For Our Country”: How The Cuban Exploitation Of Chinese Coolie Laborers Inspired Louisiana Sugar Planters, Joseph Ledesma

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Sugar planters in Louisiana during Reconstruction needed to replace the enslaved labor force that had fled the plantation system after the Civil War. These Louisiana planters took inspiration from the system of coolie labor in Cuba, wherein exploited Chinese indentured servants would work on sugar plantation alongside enslaved Africans. The white Cuban planters’ goal was to racially dilute their plantation labor force, thus making the existing power structures easier to maintain while avoiding Haitian-style slave uprising. Sugar planters in Louisiana intended to recreate the Cuban system to compel Freedmen to work for less than their worth by importing Chinese laborers, …

“The Very Class For Our Country”: How The Cuban Exploitation Of Chinese Coolie Laborers Inspired Louisiana Sugar Planters, Joseph Ledesma

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Sugar planters in Louisiana during Reconstruction needed to replace the enslaved labor force that had fled the plantation system after the Civil War. These Louisiana planters took inspiration from the system of coolie labor in Cuba, wherein exploited Chinese indentured servants would work on sugar plantation alongside enslaved Africans. The white Cuban planters’ goal was to ethnically diversify their plantation labor force, thus making the existing power structures easier to maintain while avoiding slave uprising by manufacturing racial divisions among the labor force. Sugar planters in Louisiana intended to recreate the Cuban system to compel Freedmen to work for less …

Sleeping With Storyville: The Influence Of Media, Race, And Morality In New Orleans’ Red Light District, Tiffany R. Nelson

Masters Theses, 2020-current

In 1897, the red-light district of Storyville was officially consecrated in New Orleans, Louisiana. Storyville encapsulated centuries’ worth of Southern cultural, social, and political values that culminated in the creation of a legally recognized district of vice. New Orleans was an economically situated city, profiting from the business and tourist routes provided by the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi River. Known throughout the nation for a plethora of negative attributes, such as disease, prostitution, and murder, New Orleans developed a national reputation as a city of immorality, which was only furthered by the creation of a red-light district.

In exploring …

Putting Cajuns On The Map: Music's Role In Popularizing Louisiana's Bayou Culture, Christine Broussard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Southern Louisiana witnessed a grassroots Cajun cultural revival whose most active years stretched across three decades in the latter half of the twentieth century. While important local and world events created conditions favorable to its development, actors and events within the Cajun musical sphere specifically, and the establishment and use of iconography within that sphere, played integral roles in sustaining the Cajun renaissance into the 1980s. Activist efforts that recast long-held negative tropes about Cajun culture ensured modern-day Cajuns had access not only to cultural traditions but to the same spaces created to help keep those traditions alive. While those …

Free People Of Color In West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, Evelyn Lenora Wilson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

“Free People of Color in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana” documents the presence, land ownership, business development, and personal relationships of free people of color in a rural Louisiana parish. Beginning with how free people of color came to be in the parish, it shows an absence of segregation by skin color in home ownership, business relationships, and friendships. Free people of color found themselves accepted in a community that valued their talents and skills and disregarded the color of their skin.

Free people of color bought and sold homes in whatever part of the parish suited them. Most lived surrounded …

All Hands On Deck: German U-Boats And The Civil-Military Defense Of The Gulf, 1941 - 1943, Richard Brunies

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

During the Second World War, Germany unleashed a relentless U-boat campaign against shipping in the coastal waters of the United States. While most of this campaign was fought in the Atlantic Ocean, merchantmen in the Gulf of Mexico also received their fair share of U-boat attacks. The presence of the U-boats in the Gulf was brief but endangered vital merchant shipping, and the U.S. armed forces had to meet this threat. In nearly all aspects of defending the Gulf Coast and improving antisubmarine warfare, civilians participated with a will. Civilians were involved in reporting U-boat activity, monitoring coastal waters, reporting …

A Red River City During War: Shreveport, Louisiana's Experiences During World War Ii, Katelyn N. Woodel

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This project provides research that details Shreveport, Louisiana’s experience during World War II. A physical exhibit at the Spring Street Museum and a digital exhibit display Shreveport’s World War II history, based on research conducted for this thesis. Based on a combination of archival collections, and Shreveport Times articles, the project tracks Shreveport communities and the contributions to war efforts from the broader community and local industry. Shreveport’s involvement in World War II began with the Louisiana Maneuvers in 1941. Support for the war continued with heavy metals manufacturing such as the production of shells at the J.B. Beaird Company …

Hyear Come De Parade: The History Of The Black Mardi Gras Tradition In Baton Rouge, Kirsten L. Campbell

LSU Master's Theses

The aim of this thesis to emphasize the importance the role of photography in preserving and archiving cultural memories and histories as well as demonstrate the impact of digital archives. Using archival materials such as local newspapers and press photographs, this thesis offers, for the first time, the history of the African American Mardi Gras parading tradition in Baton Rouge between the years 1910 through 1941. This thesis, too, provides an art historical analysis of the visual material that exists of these early African American parades in Baton Rouge, and contextualizes the histories that shaped, influenced, and made these parades …

Carceral Extractivism, Livelihood Strategies, And “Acting Right” In The U.S. South, Edward L. Bullock

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

Mass incarceration and its effects are well documented and carceral privatization is hotly contested on moral and economic grounds. This dissertation examines the local effects of carceral privatization in the U.S. south in historical context. Tallulah is a small, rural predominately African American town in northeastern Louisiana that endures high rates of poverty, unemployment, and low educational attainment. It also hosts four private prisons operated by LaSalle Corrections, LLC. Two primary and overlapping questions guide the research. 1) How has an history of carceral entrepreneurship and mass incarceration impacted the way persons and communities create livelihoods and imagine futures, and …

‘Where Do We Go From Here?’: Discourse In Louisiana Surrounding The Foundation Of The State Of Israel, May 1948, Devan Gelle

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

A study of ten Louisiana newspapers during May 15-31,1948 revealed a period in which articles varied in their coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict and wider international relations. Discourse about Arabs and Israelis which became evident in newspapers in later years had emerged but was not fully developed. This coverage revealed a silence about the Holocaust and a subtext about the United Nations.

The State And The Spirits: Voodoo And Religious Repression In Jim Crow New Orleans, Kendra Cole

Honors Theses

Voodoo transitioned from a religion that caused its practitioners to be criminalized and apprehended by the state to a lure used to entice visitors to the Crescent City. This thesis attemtps to show how the public perception of Voodoo shifted in the late nineteenth-century from a hidden threat to a public novelty. I explain this shift through analyzing New Orleans guidebooks, newspapers, and court cases at the turn of the twentieth-century. This thesis fills the gap in the scholarship pertaining to the twentieth-century. I achieve this by drawing upon more extensive literature on the oppression of African-derived religions in other …

Women Of The Edward J. Gay Family As Textile And Dress Consumers In Louisiana, 1849-1899, Lindsay Danielle Reaves

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Economic, social, and cultural historians have studied and analyzed consumption behaviors throughout the 20^th century and into the 21^st century. Decorative household textiles and dress items are two product categories that follow the consumption process. American consumption behaviors during the introduction of mass-produced textiles and dress items throughout the 19^th century have not been well documented.

The purpose of this research is to expand the knowledge of Southern planter-class women’s consumer behavior in relation to decorative household textiles and dress items. Arnould and Thompson’s (2005) Consumer Culture Theory and Belk’s (1988) research into possessions and the extended …

Using Digital Mapping Techniques To Rapidly Document Vulnerable Historical Landscapes In Coastal Louisiana: Holt Cemetery Case Study, Alahna Moore

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis outlines a technique for rapid documentation of historic sites in volatile cultural landscapes. Using Holt Cemetery as an exemplary case study, a workflow was developed incorporating RTK terrain survey, UAS aerial imagery, photogrammetry, GIS, and smartphone data collection in order to create a multifaceted database of the material and spatial conditions, as well as the patterns of use, that exist at the cemetery.

The purpose of this research is to create a framework for improving the speed of data creation and increasing the accessibility of information regarding threatened cultural resources. It is intended that these processes can be …

Both Sides Of The Barbed Wire: Lives Of German Prisoners Of War And African Americans In Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, 1944-1946, Claire Delucca

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Located outside of Alexandria, Louisiana, Camp Claiborne was temporarily home to more than 500,000 U.S. servicemen and women during its short existence. Thousands of German prisoners of war also were held for more than two years in a section of the camp. Racial problems stemming from the policies of Jim Crow South and the blatant inequality eventually led to an African American mutiny within the camp. The events from 1944 to 1946 at Camp Claiborne provide insight into the mindsets of white Southerners and the generation of African Americans who would influence the major civil rights victories in the following …

“The Commercial Union Of The Three Americas:” Major Edward A. Burke And Transnational New South Visionaries, 1870-1928, Michael Powers

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Traditional images of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century American South are of an inward-looking region characterized by economic stagnation, xenophobia, cultural isolation, and reactionary politics. This dissertation contends that vibrant transnational links connected the South to the wider world through an analysis of the political and economic landscape of postbellum Louisiana, the 1884 New Orleans World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial, the Louisiana State Lottery Company, and Central America. An examination of Edward Austin Burke demonstrates that the era’s New South creed comprised a seminal transnational component.

This dissertation will explore how Burke became a central cog in Louisiana’s Democratic …

An Impossible Direction: Newspapers, Race, And Politics In Reconstruction New Orleans, Nicholas F. Chrastil

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis examines the racial ideologies of four newspapers in New Orleans at the beginning and end of Radical Reconstruction: the Daily Picayune, the New Orleans Republican, the New Orleans Tribune, and the Weekly Louisianian. It explores how each paper understood the issues of racial equality, integration, suffrage, and black humanity; it examines the specific language and rhetoric each paper used to advocate for their positions; and it asks how those positions changed from the beginning to the end of Reconstruction. The study finds that the two white-owned papers, the Picayune and the Republican, while political opponents, both viewed …

Codofil's Ally: Local French Teachers In Louisiana, Natalie Ducote

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In 1968, in the midst of the Civil Rights Era, the Louisiana government created the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL). During this period of heightened ethnic awareness, CODOFIL aimed to rectify the damage done by prior Louisiana legislation, which prohibited French language on public school grounds. In an effort to revitalize the French language in Louisiana, the organization hired teachers from foreign francophone countries and advocated for a curriculum rooted in Standard French. According to historians, many locals felt Louisiana-specific French dialects were once again rejected. Alongside these foreign teachers were teachers local to Louisiana. Utilizing …

A Vast Injustice: The Public Debate And Legislative Battle Over Compulsory Eugenic Sterilization In Louisiana, 1924 -- 1932, Adelaide Hair Barr

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

From 1924 to 1932, Louisiana lawmakers considered five bills that would have granted superintendents of state institutions and some private hospitals the authority to forcibly sterilize their patients. Based on similar legislation passed in thirty-six other states, the bills cited eugenics as evidence that stripping these patients of their ability to reproduce would prevent the conditions such as feeblemindedness from passing on to the next generation. Although none of the bills passed both houses of the Louisiana legislature, a couple of them came dangerously close to becoming law. The debate among legislators, professionals, and social reformers provides a greater understanding …

Defying Convention: Atypical Perspectives Of Slavery In Antebellum New Orleans, Amanda N. Carr

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

During the first half of the nineteenth century, slavery became a vital economic component upon which the success of the southern states in America rested. Cotton was king, and slavery was the peculiar institution that ensured its dominance in the domestic and international markets of America. Popular portrayals, however, often neglect the complicated dynamics of American slavery and instead depict the institution in simplistic terms. The traditional view has emphasized an image of white southerners as slaveholders and blacks as slaves. In New Orleans, the lives of three men—all of whom were tied to slavery in varying capacities—reveal a much …

The “True American”: William H. Christy And The Rise Of The Louisiana Nativist Movement, 1835-1855, Brett R. Todd

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In New Orleans during the 1830s, Irish immigration became a source of tension between newly settled Anglo-American elites and the long-established Creole hegemony. Out of this tension, in 1835 Anglo-American elites established the Louisiana Native American Association (LNAA) to block Irish immigrants from gaining citizenship and, ultimately, the right to vote. The Whig Party, whom most Louisiana Anglo-Americans supported, promoted nativism to prevent naturalized Irish from voting Democrat, the preferred party of the Creoles. This study will argue that the LNAA, under the leadership of William H. Christy, was not merely a reaction to increased Irish immigration, but was also …

Reporting Rumors In The Reconstruction South: The Aftermath Of The New Orleans Riot Of 1866, Joanna L. Gunnufsen

Honors Theses

At the end of the American Civil War, political divisiveness, economic turmoil, and violence plagued the South. Riots occurred across the Reconstruction South, from New Orleans to Memphis. Though scholars have examined the causes of Reconstruction violence, this study examines the role of newspapers in promulgating fear, paranoia, and violence in Southern communities in the wake of the New Orleans Riot of 1866. This thesis analyzes nine Louisiana newspapers to investigate whether newspapers published local and national rumors of violence or potential uprisings in the first three months after the riot. Though the rise of telegraphic news aided the rapid …

Policies Of Loss: Coastal Erosion And The Struggle To Save Louisiana's Wetlands, Rebecca B. Costa

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost approximately 1,800 square miles of land due to the subsidence of the state’s coastal wetlands. By the early 1970s, public officials and private citizens were starting to become aware of the crisis on the coast, and a broad agreement developed among state and federal representatives that action was needed to address the problem. Over the course of nearly forty years, policymakers in Louisiana and Washington, D.C., implemented a series of laws and regulations meant to protect vulnerable ecosystems like the state’s wetlands. In the 1980s, officials also started crafting policies to help restore Louisiana’s …

From Containing Communism To Fighting Floods: The Louisiana Army National Guard In The Cold War, 1946-1965, Rhett G. Breerwood

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In the decades following World War II, the Louisiana National Guard evolved due to world, national, and local events. In response to the United States’ Cold War policies to contain Communism, the Guard expanded, professionalized, and was occasionally called to federal service. In conjunction with Cold War fears of external attack and internal subversion, a civil defense mission brought coordination between federal, state and local response agencies. Despite the lack of large scale war service or an attack on the U.S. homeland , the skills and responsibilities acquired by the Louisiana Guard during this time period resulted in an enhanced …

White Manhood In Louisiana During Reconstruction, 1865-1877, Arthur Wendel Stout

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Economic, political, and social landscapes changed for white men in Louisiana after the Civil War. Suffering displacement, business interruption, property confiscation, and lower social and political standing vis-à-vis the former slaves, white men’s standing in every realm seemed diminished, including their core identity as men. It was important to them and to their families for white men to regain a sense of competence as men. Using letters, diaries, and court cases involving white people with strong connections to Louisiana during the Reconstruction era, this dissertation analyzes the gendered problems that white men and their families sought to resolve. Newspaper articles, …

From Swamps To Swamping: The Usage And Perceptions Of Swamps By African-Americans In Antebellum And Postbellum Arkansas And Louisiana, Tessa Annette Neblett Evans

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This project is a landscape study that examines how different members of the antebellum and postbellum community in Arkansas and Louisiana perceived and used the swamplands, and how this changed over time. This project suggests that the swamps played an absolutely crucial role for individual slaves and free blacks both before and after the Civil War. Unlike Europeans and the white community who viewed the swamps as static, physical spaces on the plantation without value, African-Americans viewed them as fluid places filled with value. Religious practices were often performed near swamps, and even so-called aberrant religions practices, like voodoo, happened …

Two Histories, One Future : Louisiana Sugar Planters, Their Slaves, And The Anglo-Creole Schism, 1815-1865, Nathan Buman

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

During the five decades between the War of 1812 and the end of the Civil War, southern Louisianans developed a society unlike any other region. The vibrant traditional image of moonlight and magnolias, the notion that King Cotton dominated the South’s economy as Anglo-Saxon masters lorded over their enslaves African-American workers still dominates the image of the American South. This image of a monolithic South, however, does not give a clear indication of the many sub-regional distinctions that both challenged and rewarded the inhabitants of those areas and provides exciting ways to understand slaveholding society culturally. Louisiana’s slaveholding class consisted …

From Confederate Expatriates To New South Neo-Filibusters: Major Edward A. Burke And The Americas, Michael Powers

All Theses

The traditional historiography of the American South presents the New South creed as a vision emphasizing national reconciliation based upon the advancement of Southern commerce and industry. In addition, scholars broadly define New South spokesmen as men who came to maturity after the Civil War and did not involve themselves in state or national politics. An examination of Major Edward Austin Burke, however, reveals that at least one pivotal New South booster was a Confederate veteran and leading political figure; it also suggests the presence of an international component inherent in the New South paradigm of the 1880s. It is …

The French And Indian Wars: New France's Situational Indian Policies During The Fox And Natchez Conflicts, 1701-1732, Stephen Jay Fohl

Online Theses and Dissertations

This research examines the often-glorified relationship between New France and the American Indians with which that empire came into contact in North America, focusing primarily on the conflicting policies seen during the Fox Wars and the Natchez Wars. Many recent histories of New France, including Richard White's seminal study The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics, 1650-1815, focus primarily on the lands surrounding the Great Lakes. These histories champion a French Indian policy that was dominated by the fur trade and illustrated by the outbreak of the Fox Wars in 1712. However, New France's Indian policy was not always dictated …

Shades Of Grey: Slaveholding Free Women Of Color In Antebellum New Orleans, 1800-1840, Anne Ulentin

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the economic opportunities that free women of color could derive from slaveholding, their motivations, and their impact on New Orleans’ antebellum society and economy. Another aim is to find out the role and impact of free women of color from Saint Domingue (later Haiti), whose arrival in New Orleans doubled the number of free women of color in the city. Finally, the analysis of relationships between free women of color and their slaves and with the diverse population of New Orleans plays an important part in this study. Notarial deeds (sales and purchases of slaves, mortgages of …

Remaking Of Race And Labor In British Guiana And Louisiana: 1830-1880, Amanda G. Lewis Ms.

History Theses

During the nineteenth century, the Gulf of Mexico fostered the movement of people, ideas, and news throughout the surrounding regions. Although each colony and state surrounding the basin had distinct cultures and traditions, they shared the legacy of slavery and emancipation. This study examines the transformation of labor that occurred for sugar planters in British Guiana and southern Louisiana during the age of emancipation. In this comparative project, I argue that in the 1830s planters from the British West Indies set the trajectory for solutions to the labor problem by curtailing the freedom of former slaves with Asian contract labor. …