The Beef between Upper & Lower Class Blacks during the 2nd Great Migration

[invalid]

I'm sorry, I have no empathy.

Ok.

 

[Supper]

It's funny that you mentioned this because that is my father's side. They were from the Florida Parishes, came from French families but did not consider themselves Creoles. I asked some family members why and they said they were known as the "Redbones".

Yeah, the Florida parishes(this is where the capital Baton Rouge is) were originally settled under British Colonialism as part of what was conisdered "west florida" before the LA purchase. Technically the slaves of these people and their descendants would be considered creole, because they settled before the LA purchase. Spanish and later French descendant louisianaians actually settled later after the louisiana purchase. Still of course the largest group of migrants would be people from the old "US".

Yeah redbones originate from a collectiion of "biracial" and tri racial classes of people in the Carolinas like the Lumbees, Brass ancles, Melongeons, and Free POC in Charelston etc

They moved to Louisiana mostly after the LA purchase and became further infused into the Free POC creole society there.

It was interesting, they had French surnames but Anglo first names. They were not Roman Catholic, the French families were Huguenots from Orangeburg and Charleston so they were Protestant. They owned businesses and education and such.

Yeah many Huguenots were slave owners in SC. @IllmaticDelta made a post about them and their slaves' descendants who bare french surnames.

But, most of the original FL parish settlers were full on anglos.

 

[ogc163]

Good find. Classism is always going to be an issue imo, and it usually undermines the potential for substantial change. But internal classism is a huge blind spot in Afram Studies and even within Intersectionality. Thus, I don't expect the next generation to have a better grasp of the class dynamics.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

The same thing played out in the South; for example, Urban New Orleans Creoles vs "rural" LA creoles.

 

[Supper]

AAME :

The AA community in Houston has always been made up of significant contributions of people from out of town and state. Plus, there was never any distinctly 'black elite' community in H town(no riverside terrace doesn't count). But, I have read that there in the 20s to 40s there were some 'differences' between the the francophone catholic creole AAs from southern louisiana and the non-creole anglophone protestant AAs mostly from rural east TX particularly in 5th ward.

Whatever it was it must've blew off quickly within the first generation, because the vast majority of us native black houstonians have mixed rural east tx and rural southern la heritage.

Plus the mixing of those two (sub)cultures gave us zydeco and southeast tx bbq and the rest of this crazy cowboy creole culture.

Repost from https://www.thecoli.com/posts/36999528/

Old article about Frenchtown Houston.

Full article.
Few People Know About Frenchtown, When Cajun’s Spoken and the Kids Are ‘Texas’


Gives you an insight to the community as well as some of the activity going on with some of the lighter skin members. Talks about cultural preservation, "becoming Texan" via assimilation into the non creole AA texan community.

Chevalier’s grocery, 3014 Brewster, which is a kind of social center for Frenchtown, is a clean, well-stocked store run by Armand and Mary Rose Chevalier. Ask Armand whether he thinks the Louisiana traditions are dying out in Frenchtown, and he answers with dignity.

“I don’t know. My wife and I are old, you see. But we are Breaux Bridge people. We have Creole blood. We stay in the store and mind our own business. If the Lafayette and Opelousas people want to live like the Texas Negroes, that’s their business.” Mary Rose says she’s scarcely been any farther away from home than the store in five years. “But there’s a gumbo supper Sunday night,” she says. “Maybe I’ll go.

3 of my grandparents are all from the Opelousas area, so this kinda gives me an insight into my own family history. Seems that those from Lafayette and Opelousas where quicker to embrace becoming part of the black texan community than those from Breaux Bridge. I suspect he views the Lafayette and Opelousas folks as darker on average as well, though it isn't explicitly stated.

My paternal grandpa was a dark skin "TX negro" bapist from Robertson County, home of the largest black rodeo, and my paternal momo was a lighter skinned die hard catholic woman from the Opelousas area. My maternal momo and papa were just regular brown skin creole folk from St Laundry parish.

Very interesting indeed.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

It's funny that you mentioned this because that is my father's side. They were from the Florida Parishes, came from French families but did not consider themselves Creoles. I asked some family members why and they said they were known as the "Redbones".



It was the first time I learned that there were two different groups - the Creoles and Louisiana Redbones.

Yeah redbones originate from a collectiion of "biracial" and tri racial classes of people in the Carolinas like the Lumbees, Brass ancles, Melongeons, and Free POC in Charelston etc

They moved to Louisiana mostly after the LA purchase and became further infused into the Free POC creole society there.

Although many historians and ordinary people today assume that all free people of color in Louisiana were Creoles, it is ahistoric to assume so. In the Summer of 1812, the Louisiana legislature, in its first session as a state, enacted the incorporation of state militias, composed of “certain free men of color, to be chose from among the Creoles.” The provision excluded Americans who were free people of color. Free African Americans and Melungeons had been in Louisiana for three decades by 1812. In New Orleans, these free people of color can be found in the American municipalities “uptown.” In 1825 or 1826, Asa Goldsbury founded the First African Baptist Church in New Orleans with 20 members. Goldsbury’s congregation grew out of an earlier Baptist congregation in New Orleans with a white and a nonwhite minister catering to each separately.2

In the rural setting, a large number of American free people of color had arrived around 1790 from Virginia, North and South Carolinas and settled all over south Louisiana. Their families had intermarried for generations and knew one another before arriving in Louisiana, ensuring continued endagomy in rural south Louisiana. The Chavises (now, Chévis), Drakes, Sweats, Gibsons, Nelsons, Johnsons, Ashworths, and others, were among these American free people of color families. John Chavis, free mulatto, native of North Carolina appears in the 1792 colonial census of the Opélousas District. But he and his wife, Rachel Keys, also appear in Catholic parochial records in the Lafourche District in this same decade. Unlike most members of this American free people of color community, John and Rachel’s children left their parents’ community to marry into local Creole communities. Aaron Drake of Elizabeth County, Virginia, and his two sons Paul and John, all free mulattoes, registered cattle brands in the Attakapas District in 1807. In 1811, George Nelson, a free man of color from Bladen, North Carolina, married a free woman of color named Elizabeth “Betsy” Carter, widow of Robert Sweat, in Opélousas. Betsy was a native of Casswell, North Carolina. Frances “Fanny” Nelson and Gilbert Taylor Nelson, two children of George by his first marriage to Delaney Taylor married Johnson siblings David and Rebecca, natives of the Edgefield District, South Carolina, children of Gideon Johnson and Nancy Sweat. By 1830, we find this nucleic community living huddled together on Bayou Têche near Grand Côteau, on the Mermentau River, and on the Calcasieu River. Thus, Creoles and Americans of various degrees of African descent shared the same land, but separate cultural milieux and residential settlement patterns.3

https://www.mylhcv.com/beyonce-knowles-breaking-boundaries/2/

Yeah many Huguenots were slave owners in SC. @IllmaticDelta made a post about them and their slaves' descendants who bare french surnames.

But, most of the original FL parish settlers were full on anglos.

yup

 

[Cadillac]

It'

It was the first time I learned that there were two different groups - the Creoles and Louisiana Redbones.

what would you say distinguishes the two from being the same?

edit: i might have got my answer, but i if you have any extra info, fill free

 

[UberEatsDriver]

Just look at HBCUs. The students and locals around the school tend to have tension often times.

Responding back to this post. My homegirl from DC whose a lawyer didn’t go to a HBCU and hated Howard university and their students lol

 

[UberEatsDriver]

Let’s keep it real, is it because of classism or is it because some of the locals act like jackasses like that dude who shot up that party at Clark University last year?

Maybe it could be both. In my example Howard is in the hood or used to be in a rough area.

 

[UberEatsDriver]

Idk which one I hate more--them or SoHo nikkas.

What’s a soho nikka? The dudes who dress od flashy and hang in soho all day? Pretty much it right?

 

[IllmaticDelta]

what would you say distinguishes the two from being the same?

edit: i might have got my answer, but i if you have any extra info, fill free

Redbones ancestral stock goes back to Virginia/Carolinas; also of Anglo-African/Triracial. Basically the same stock as Lumbees and Melungeons. Creoles of Color are Franco (or Spanish)-African

 

[Thurgood Thurston III]

What’s a soho nikka? The dudes who dress od flashy and hang in soho all day? Pretty much it right?

Yeah. They're all wannabe models and designers.

Their favorite rappers are always Tupac and Asap Rocky but they pretend to be into old school RnB and Jazz.

 

[Cadillac]

Redbones ancestral stock goes back to Virginia/Carolinas; also of Anglo-African/Triracial. Basically the same stock as Lumbees and Melungeons. Creoles of Color are Franco (or Spanish)-African

Yeah I just read @Supper and your post.

Yeah. They're all wannabe models and designers.

Their favorite rappers are always Tupac and Asap Rocky but they pretend to be into old school RnB and Jazz.

Who are you talking aboout right here?

 

[Cadillac]

You know I stay on my Genealogy research/family tree hobby -- and earlier this year I found out I have some - I guess Creole ancestry.

I recently joined the surname FB group -- and It's crazy how most of them have all transitioned/breeded out their Blackness.

is it surname family from that Treme neighborhood? are the ones you talking about white in the bold?

The ones who are still Black -- are very light. I don't know how I am connected to them -- but I am. Cause, both me and my Mom have a host of them as 2nd/3rd cousins. All from Lousiana.

I have no clue how my people in Alabama got mixed in.

But, I think most of them (Mulatto FPOC) continued to stay connected amongst themselves -- via class and other factors such as skin-tone as well. Sure, many branched out -- but they still kept rank.

yeah You still have alot of the lightskin Elite ADOS/Black people who still dwell sometimes exclusively among each other. shyt i got some on my family side(mom)

Idk if they creole(they might be, i just dont know it) But the branch of my family that i mentioned earlier in this thread were a elite lightskin family. I think my grandma mentioned something about one of them were going into marrying another lightskin family. With another variation i think told by my uncle that the lightskin family was creole or something.

I have to get back to them on that story. Cause its been a while

 

[TNOT]

Repost from https://www.thecoli.com/posts/36999528/

Old article about Frenchtown Houston.

Full article.
Few People Know About Frenchtown, When Cajun’s Spoken and the Kids Are ‘Texas’


Gives you an insight to the community as well as some of the activity going on with some of the lighter skin members. Talks about cultural preservation, "becoming Texan" via assimilation into the non creole AA texan community.



3 of my grandparents are all from the Opelousas area, so this kinda gives me an insight into my own family history. Seems that those from Lafayette and Opelousas where quicker to embrace becoming part of the black texan community than those from Breaux Bridge. I suspect he views the Lafayette and Opelousas folks as darker on average as well, though it isn't explicitly stated.

My paternal grandpa was a dark skin "TX negro" bapist from Robertson County, home of the largest black rodeo, and my paternal momo was a lighter skinned die hard catholic woman from the Opelousas area. My maternal momo and papa were just regular brown skin creole folk from St Laundry parish.

Very interesting indeed.

possibly, but those places are close to each other and I don’t think you could tell where someone is from based on skin color alone, since I’m sure there was a lot of skin tone variation in Louisiana folks migrating to Houston.


I would say it was more about them remaining conservative catholic, and adhering to the catholic religion, than about skin color. I would guess there was a lot of partying, drinking and socializing by recent transplant to the city. A faster way of life, the older couple in the article didn’t condone. But best believe skin tone played a part too. It always does in South Louisiana.