A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana - (Page 70)

its earlier Creole character. While the great plantations and the social hierarchy these immigrant laborers supported were dramatically weakened and often changed ownership, by the estimation of some historians, such as Joe Gray Taylor and Roger Shugg, the self-sufficient yeoman farmers throughout the state suffered the worst losses in the aftermath of the war. An entire class of largely self-sufficient farmers was supplanted by the more exploitative system of tenant farming that took its place. In addition to the yeoman farmers, the class of people arguably most adversely affected by Emancipation were the gens de couleur libres or free people of color who in a single stroke lost their privileged distinction from the enslaved blacks, but became subject to all the racist Jim Crow laws and abuses targeting the newly freed slaves. Members of this uniquely Louisiana social following the trial of nine Italian immigrants for the murder of New Orleans Police Chief David Hennessy in which six were acquitted, hundreds of vigilantes attacked the jail hanging two prisoners and shooting nine others housed there. Politically, in the decades following the Civil War, Louisiana briefly enacted, endured, and eventually undermined the enfranchisement of African Americans under Reconstruction and the Radical Republican administrations, only to see them replaced by Bourbonism, Agrarianism, and a reassertion of racism in the form of virulent Jim Crow laws, even to the state’s own detriment. “The Bourbons who ruled Louisiana until after the turn of the century would probably have liked to do away with public schools all together, but they did not dare go so far,” wrote Joe Gray Taylor. In a sad legacy not yet resolved to this class prior to the Civil War had distinguished themselves from the enslaved Africans and achieved considerable education and social distinction, often sending their children abroad for education, and made signal contributions to New Orleans art and culture as well as being active in business affairs. All this distinction was set at naught by a society writhing at the idea of so many freedmen in its midst. Even after the official end of federal occupation in 1877, violence continued to predominate in Louisiana in magnitudes unknown prior to the Civil War and its aftermath. The year 1890 bore witness to a shocking example of mob rule when, 70 CIVIL WAR THROUGH THE NEW CENTURY WILLIAM HENRY BUCK (b. 1840, Norway – d. 1888, New Orleans, Louisiana) Swamp Scene, 1887 Oil on canvas; 16 x 28 in. New Orleans Museum of Art Gift of Mary Bell Swanson Mayer day, Louisiana was the only state in the Union where from 1880 to 1890 white illiteracy increased and black illiteracy remained above 70 percent. To its eternal shame, Louisiana was the source of the case that was at the center of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson that validated “separate but equal”  http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1163 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1163

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana

A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana

https://www.nxtbook.com/leh/uniqueslant2012/uniqueslant2012
https://www.nxtbookmedia.com