A look back at these historical Creole writers

Creoles of Color writers grew prominent in the 19th century, especially during the Civil War era. The forceful shifts of Americanization, trickery, heavy racialization, and violent white American vigilantes revolutionized the Creoles.

Black-owned publications included L’Union (one of the first Black newspapers in the South specifically), La Tribune de la Nouvelle-Orléans (The New Orleans Tribune), the New Orleans Daily Creole, and more allowed and ignited Creoles to tell their stories.

New Orleans natives Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes and Alice Dunbar-Nelson explored the complexities of what it meant to be a Creole of Color in Colonial Louisiana and America throughout the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. They both graduated from the Historically Black College Straight University (now Dillard University) and intertwined English and French in their writings.