Sex and the Crescent City

This paper analyzes the role and importance of light-complexioned women in the gendered evolution of emancipation in antebellum New Orleans, through the lens of mythological ideals created and perpetuated about them by primarily white travellers and settlers. Myths such as “Quadroon Balls,” plaçage, and “The Fancy Trade” sexualized the bodies of women of colour, particularly those with light complexions. Women of colour living in antebellum New Orleans leveraged the social sphere and demographics of the time to gain social and economic success in an era that aimed to suppress it. Although fictionalized portrayals of these women painted them as a homogenous group of light complexion, it was far from the truth, as women of dark complexion were also key participants in these events, which were themselves exaggerated. The narratives surrounding New Orleanian women of colour, and the emphasis on starkly contrasting them with the ‘Haitian Black man,’ point to underlying and more obvious colourism, in which light complexion is deemed more desirable and worthy of adoration and praise. These mythological systems functioned as an offshoot of slavery to prevent the existence, resistance, and most importantly, the success of folks of colour in an increasingly emancipatory environment of the Antebellum era. The systematic roots of colourism in the United States are thus intricately linked to such developments, which must be studied in further detail.