For as long as I can remember, some scholars and lay readers have questioned narratives about the gens de couleur libres (free people of colour) in New Orleans before the Civil War (referred to from here on out as the antebellum era). They have questioned and wondered about the status and roles of women of colour in this society, and about whether these lavish things called quadroon balls really existed, or if they were an exaggeration of what went on.
For the uninitiated, a ‘quadroon ball’ was a practice that, although it has the popular notion of having taken place before the Civil War, took place afterwards in the latter half of the 19th century.
The TL;DR: mixed-race women of colour, particularly those with only a quarter of African descent and three quarters Western European (mostly French or Spanish), and sometimes with Native American ancestry, gave rise to the pejorative term applied to them, ‘quadroon.’ White men and lighter-skinned Black men found them desirable as well as wanting to be in relationships with them and to court them, but only as concubines. Many white men in so-called high New Orleans society, the high-born Creoles, had their white families–“proper” white wives, “proper” white children, and lived as fancy businessmen, lawyers, bankers, or other professions. Of these, a great many were enslavers.
I touched on this in my previous post about free men of colour in New Orleans and about how white enslaver fathers would regularly violate and force themselves onto the African-descended enslaved women and girls that they owned. This produced mixed-race children. Depending on the heritage of the Black woman being violated–for instance, if she were half Black and half of Western European white descent herself, then any children she had would be whiter, and only a quarter Black, or quadroons. If one of these quadroons had a child, they would be considered one-eighth of African descent, or octoroons (also an offensive and dated term), and so on.
Women designated in these racial categories could have a wealthy white man purchase their freedom by making them his concubine. Or they could have been manumitted in other ways to become free women of colour. A mixed-race, lighter-skinned enslaved woman of African descent who had been set free could technically pass this status on to any of her children–but only if the person who owned her free the child or children as well. This was referred to as Partus sequitur ventrem, discussed at great length in the works of scholars such as Jennifer L. Morgan. The status of ‘enslaved’ or ‘free’ was passed down matrilineally. If your mother was considered an enslaved person and owned by an enslaver, you, as her child would also be enslaved. If your father was an enslaved person of African descent but you had a white mother, you would not be enslaved (technically–the history in this area is a bit fiddly).
The story went that eventually, a higher caste of people, the gens de couleur libres, began to make social and political strides in New Orleans. They advanced within society and fought for upward mobility. As you can imagine, most white people were not happy about this, particularly not in the antebellum era when slavery was still an active institution.
Some of these now well-to-do free people of colour, including women, would go to balls or soirées, bal masqués (masquerade balls), where they would meet eligible white men looking for a mistress or concubine. Masquerade balls continue to be quite popular today, including as a theme for birthday parties such as the 2014 bash that Beyoncé and her sister, Solange, threw to fete their mother.
There is some dispute about whether the white men arranged to be in extra-marital or pre-marital affairs with these mixed race women. This arrangement was most commonly referred to as plaçage. And here’s where things get a bit trickier.
The scholars in this area, chief among them Dr. Emily Clark, argue that there just isn’t enough reliable archival evidence in New Orleans archival documents to indicate that this arrangement, this plaçage, existed. Part of the debate that has historians arguing is whether the white men in these relationships married these women, or if they simply took them on as mistresses and concubines.
Scholars like Dr. Clark argue that in addition to quadroon balls being a pure myth, that plaçage also did not exist. Or at least not in the way we may have believed for years. She refers this myth, in her words, as ‘the plaçage complex.’
Here’s where I get confused. Dr. Clark released a landmark monograph on this topic a few years ago called The Strange History of the American Quadroon. In the text, she expands her discussion to populations of free women of colour in Philadelphia and Charleston, South Carolina, dispelling the myth that plaçage only happened in New Orleans. While I agree with the notion that perhaps the image of mothers of mixed-race girls in New Orleans of a certain age may not have made these arrangements with men in lavish ballrooms, these compacts did take place.
I agree that women of colour were oversexualized then and continue to be now, and that the notion of quadroon balls are a historical instance of this. I also agree with the reminder to readers about issues with the Jezebel stereotype–the idea that Black women craved relations constantly, and wanted to ‘breed’ at all times. White men used–and in some cases, still use–this problematic caricaturization as an overall part of Misogynoir, as coined by Moya Bailey. White people have used this degradation and devaluing of Black women’s lives for centuries to justify the worst atrocities committed to them including assault and murder.
Still, there’s more to the story of plaçage.
Other scholars, including Professor Kenneth Aslakson of Union College, Carol Schlueter, and Charles Chamberlain, support Dr. Clark’s claims and argue that quadroon balls were a complete myth and a fallacy.
Adding to my confusion is the WWNO 89.9 interview is the portion in which Dr. Clark concedes that these relationships between white men and mixed-race women of colour existed. They met not at quadroon balls, but rather at church, or through business.
Clark further argues that free women of colour “…were the most pious people in New Orleans in the colonial period. They’re the ones who are filling St Louis Cathedral, literally filling it. But we don’t know that story about them. We know instead the story about quadroon balls and plaçage and all that.”
Additionally, when bringing up the subject of Haiti and how placage got to New Orleans (see my section below), Dr. Clark says that the women of colour who had relations with white men did so for the “short term” and that they may have engaged in prostitution.
Their scholarship is sound, and I hold these historians with a respectful regard. However, the common factor here is that they are white. I want to be very clear that I am not saying in any way, shape or form that I am discounting their scholarship or the tremendous amounts of work they have collectively done in this area. Nor am I saying they should not be considered experts.
What I am saying is that when we look at the work of Black scholars, including Professor Noel Voltz, we find some differences, particularly as told from the lens of a Black woman.
“…Voltz finds that through legal negotiations, some free women of color were able to capitalize upon their unique caste position and their sexual relationship with white men and use the legal system to successfully carve out a space for themselves and move within antebellum Louisiana society.”
American Historical Association description of Dr. Voltz’s presentation, given in January 2016, entitled The Sword in Her Hands: The Legal Maneuvering of Antebellum Louisiana’s Free Women of Color
Voltz, who wrote her senior honour’s thesis at Ohio State University (2008), successfully demonstrated through her scholarship that women of colour in antebellum New Orleans “chose to enter into sexual relationships with white men for the purpose of financial and social gain. Acting as agents in their own lives, the Quadroons made the deliberate choice to enter into symbiotic plaçage relationships despite the invariable risks. Quadroon Balls, unique to New Orleans, were created expressly to facilitate the connubial placement of free women of color into plaçage relationships.”
So, in other words, not only did quadroon balls exist, so did plaçage.
Further, when we look at a particular free woman of colour, Henriette DeLille, who founded the Sisters of the Holy Family, we find more important evidence. The nuns, whose order was founded in 1837 as the Congregation of the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary before changing their name in 1842, were the second Black religious order in the United States.
DeLille, fearing that she would be forced into a plaçage arrangement as a highly-coveted light-skinned woman of colour, forged a different path for herself. She taught other people of colour in antebellum New Orleans how to read and write, often at great risk to herself, before co-founding the Sisters of the Holy Family and taking on religious vows.
This is important because architectural history shows us that the now Bourbon Orleans Hotel used to be one of the places were quadroon balls were said to have taken place. The Sisters of the Holy Family purchased it in 1881 and wanted to transform it from a centre of “sin and debauchery” to a school for free women of colour.
Let’s go back to Professor Chamberlain for a moment. He said in a radio interview with WWNO 89.9 in 2016 that when people try to find proof of plaçage tied to this site, it doesn’t exist.
“I don’t believe that any plaçage contracts have ever been found or uncovered by historians. And so this is part of the legend that historians who have studied it have a hard time actually validating.”
Charles Chamberlain, WWNO article (2016)
During my graduate studies, I pored over Archives and Records Management. I spent gruelling months learning about archival theory and principles of provenance, respect des fonds, and respect for original order. I’ve studied Schellenberg. I’ve studied Jenkinson (link opens a PDF that auto-downloads). I’ve studied why they fought and the differences that contemporary archivists have taken on. I’ve also studied the conflicts that archivists have had, and continue to have, with historians who were not trained in archival theory and who miscatalogued as well as bungled up a series of archives (in the West, anyway) because they didn’t understand the principles of provenance and respect des fonds.
As it relates to this topic, and studying under one of Canada’s leading archival studies specialists, I learned that in order to establish the trustworthiness of a record — i.e. Is this document what it says it is — we need to have a few things in place, including reliability. How do we know that a newspaper article from 1856 is actually from that date? How can we verify authenticity? How do we know something isn’t a facsimile or a duplicate? Of the records that do exist in a collection, how can we establish that they’re the real deal?
Clark and the other scholars who contest the existence of plaçage argue that there aren’t contracts or documents that prove that these arrangements took place. They also cite lack of contracts or other trustworthy documents that can prove that quadroon balls took place.
One of the other people interviewed in the WWNO 89.9 article is Barbara Trevigne, a native New Orleanian, who discovered evidence that one of her ancestors was one of the first women of color to own property in Tremé.
Trevigne…found one documented instance of a quadroon ball, which took place in 1805. Not only that, but when she looked into plaçage, she found the relationships were not so visitation based.
Trevigne also found evidence that women of colour became entrepreneurs in New Orleans and the French Quarter in particular. In some cases, they were able to purchase their own freedom, then a home, and to raise their children.
But in order to understand plaçage, we have to go back to how it got to Louisiana in the first place. We need to back to what’s now Haiti, and was then referred to as Saint Domingue.
In Haiti, plaçage in the 1800s was mostly an institution arranged by the wealthy upper classes–those elite who were of mixed African and Western European (usually French) ancestry, and who held themselves in a higher regard because of the wealth they had amassed. The closer to white you were, the “better” you were considered as a person–handsomer, smarter, kinder, and so on. The blacker your skin was, the more unintelligent, lazy, rude, and other negative traits were assigned to you.
There is reliable archival evidence that suggests marriages or arrangements called plaçage happened in Haiti between white men and mixed race women, particularly those who were lighter-skinned.
One of the biggest waves of migration that came to New Orleans was a result of the Haitian Revolution, circa 1804. The year before that, in 1803, was the Louisiana Purchase.
The TL;DR version was that Napoleon said: “This Louisiana territory is not my thing, and uh, I don’t want to be responsible for it anymore. Also, the Haitians destroyed my armies during their Revolution. Permission to please come back to France with my tail tucked between my legs, and also some wads of cash from the Americans?” Well, Napoleon got his permission and sold the Louisiana territory to the Americans.
Both of these things resulted in more Haitians moving to New Orleans. The other major reason for the influx of Haitians into New Orleans was because of transatlantic slavery and auction blocks. In 1808, the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves was enacted, and contrary to what it sounds like, what this did was make enslavers go “okay, so we can’t bring any more enslaved people from African nations like Ghana, Nigeria, Benin, to the United States. But that doesn’t mean we can’t keep trading the enslaved people who are already here.” Which is how New Orleans became the centre of the slave trade in the nation around 1824.
A month or so ago, the Whitney Plantation just outside of New Orleans posted on Instagram about quadroon balls.
Text: “Most visitors who come to New Orleans looking to learn more about the city’s history can expect to hear some version of the following story: wealthy white men, usually plantation owners, would attend opulent balls full of women known as “quadroons,” or one quarter Black. These men courted quadroons with the purpose of selecting one to enter into plaçage, a quasi-legal system for long term extramarital love affairs with mixed race women. Allegedly, the two would sign a contract wherein the mixed race woman would receive financial support in exchange for living out their lives as the white man’s mistress.
It was understood that the women at these balls were presented by their mothers, who hoped their daughters (and by extension, themselves) would achieve affluence by connecting to powerful white men. The story is so often repeated that it is rarely questioned.
The only trouble is that plaçage never existed in New Orleans, proving the cost of repeating historical tropes without fully investigating them.
“There was no system of mothers brokering placements for their daughters with white men they had met at a quadroon ball,” says historian Emily Clark, author of The Strange History of the American Quadroon—who has never once found a plaçage contract in all her exhaustive searches through the archives. “Instead, there was a broad range of relationships between free women of color and white men that originated in a variety of ways and often lasted for life.”
Clark argues that the quadroon myth served as a way to diminish the historical material and political power of women of color, who in New Orleans were significant property owners, business women, and pillars of respectable society. Far from seeking out wealthy white male protectors, New Orleanian free women of color more commonly sought to marry free men of color, as an abundance of archival records from the St. Louis Cathedral show.”
As you’ll see in the above post, the Whitney cites Dr. Clark’s research in arguing that plaçage “never existed” in New Orleans. I’m not sure which staff member from the institution posted this, or if it was a collaborative effort between multiple staff members. Nonetheless, as some of the comments reveal, there’s more to the story.
In The Strange History of the American Quadroon, Dr. Clark discusses Auguste Tessier’s quadroon balls and accounts of white men’s visits to the Washington Ballroom, as well as the Globe Ballroom (including an image), and in her caption, states that quadroon balls took place here in the 1840s and 1850s “and perhaps later,” all of which I still find confusing. Further, Clark argues that quadroon balls did not feature women who were as physically attractive as the men expected and states that she believes quadroons of the era were prostitutes.
Fair enough. But this is Dr. Clark acknowledging that quadroons existed, and that quadroon balls took place, correct?
To further examine this topic, we need to understand where the image comes from of lavish and fancy quadroon balls. Many commenters on the Whitney’s Instagram post brought up the 2001 film adaptation of The Feast of All Saints, one of Anne Rice’s novels of straight historical fiction. It came out in 1979. While it’s difficult to find book reviews from the early 1980s that offered some insights into what reviewers thought of the book at the time, most reviews of the 2001 adaptation focus on how faithful it was to the source material.
The New York Times review talks about the miniseries set “in the era of the quadroon ball and plaçage, the custom by which a wealthy white man chooses a part-African mistress and sets her up in a lifelong financial and residential arrangement.” It later goes on to criticize the film for being mostly glitz and glam but void of much substance.
The quadroon ball scenes that are depicted in both the novel and the film are shown to be luxurious dances where white men came to look at the mixed-race women of colour, opulently dressed in ballgowns and set in giant ballrooms with chandeliers everywhere. Jennifer Beals, the actress who most fans might recognize from The L-Word as well as its recent sequel, plays a mixed-race free woman of colour in the film.
The story revolves around a mixed-race free man, Marcel (played by Robert Ri’chard) who is a member of the gens de couleur libre class and is a coming-of-age story about how he navigates the world around him and deals with everything from racism to love and marriage to his damaged relationship with his white father, Philippe Ferronaire (played by Peter Gallagher).
Historian Dr. Stephanie E. Rogers, who wrote the award-winning text They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South, commented on the Whitney Plantation’s post: “Many free women of color also owned slaves. Important to note.” (sejr_historian)
Dr. Rogers is absolutely right. Free women of colour owned their own relatives in some cases, and did not have the moral objections that we might expect them to have. In other cases, as mentioned above, these lighter-skinned free women of colour were the daughters of plantation owners and enslavers who inherited their father’s property upon his passing–in some cases, including the enslaved people of African descent that he owned.
One of the most prominent examples of a free woman of colour who owned enslaved people was Marie Thérèse Metoyer. Also known as Coincoin, she struck the fancy of a French merchant, Claude Thomas Pierre Métoyer. When she was threatened with being sold to New Orleans in the late 1700s, Claude purchased her as a way of freeing her. Eventually, the couple had children and moved around to the Cane River, where many plantations were established. She became a property owner and businesswoman. She also owned enslaved people of African descent. One of her sons, Louis, began construction on the famed Melrose Plantation and his son after that, Jean Baptise Louis, continued.
Another commenter on the Whitney’s post, Dr. Darlene Booth-Bell of the Coastal Carolina University, added: “I think oral history counts for something, and their is plenty oral history of these arrangements. Additionally written evidence does exist of the balls (newspaper advertisements, etc.). I don’t think the lack of a formal written contract is proof that the placage did not exists. I think we have to be open to all the ways history survives. IMHO.”
Other commenters also brought up the validity of oral transmission of records and agreements that would not have necessarily been recorded on written documents. Someone else commenting on the thread brought up that white men who engaged in these relations with mixed-race women would have wanted to hide their indiscretions and would not have necessarily been so keen to put on paper that they were entering into such arrangements with women, known as placées. Another colloquial term used for the practice of plaçage was a “left-handed marriage,” a marriage between people of unequal social rank most often used in the context of monarchies or royalty, and later applied to these mixed-race unions.
Here’s where we get into separating out the idea of written, physical archives vs. orality and oral transmission of records. While I would normally argue that in this age of misinformation that we need to be critical, now more than ever, of people who spread rumours or claim all sorts of bizarre things that are untrue, many publications have no problem recording their dubious claims in written form. However, in this context of plaçage, we need to focus on the commenters on the Instagram post who mentioned that just because there isn’t a formal written document that proves that a white male cohabited with, took as a concubine, or married a mixed-race woman of colour in antebellum New Orleans, it doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.
Anyone who has read or heard of the text Orality and Literacy by Walter J. Ong knows that starting from cultures that date back thousands of years, it took humans a while before written things like stories or accounts were recorded in ways that we can point to like cuneiform on stone tablets, manuscripts written on papyrus scrolls, later parchment, then printing and paper, and so on. It took a while before written contracts became a thing. Meanwhile, when we look at cultures, particularly indigenous peoples like First Nations in Canada, we can see that people have been transmitting stories and teachings, including to new generations to pass them on over centuries. As the article on the Canadian Encyclopedia that I have linked to asserts: “Academics, researchers and museum curators use such sources to highlight Indigenous perspectives.”
I think it’s important to examine all of the evidence as it relates to plaçage and quadroon balls. To make a statement as bold as declaring that they “never existed” and that they’re a complete fiction is not an accurate reflection of the history and movements of free women of colour in antebellum New Orleans. We don’t know whether formal, written contracts existed between these white men and mixed-race women into something explicitly defined or named as “plaçage.” We don’t know if quadroon balls were lavish or if they were a more subdued affair. But what we do know is that the the history in this area is not as clear cut as some scholars would have us believe, and that it’s important to consider as many facets of history and evidence before making final conclusions.
Anita E. Siraki, Library Professional 
You must be logged in to post a comment.