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Free Women of Color with their Children and Servants, oil painting by Agostino Brunias, Dominica, c. 1764–1796.. In the context of the history of slavery in the Americas, free people of color (French: gens de couleur libres; Spanish: gente de color libre) were primarily people of mixed African, European, and Native American descent who were not enslaved.
Major D'Aquin's Battalion of Free Men of Color was a Louisiana Militia unit consisting of free people of color which fought in the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812. The unit's nominal commander was Major Louis D'Aquin, but during the battle it was led by Captain Joseph Savary.
Some free black slaveholders in New Orleans offered to fight for Confederate Louisiana in the Civil War, but confederate laws prevented them from ever becoming soldiers. [2] Over 1,000 free mixed people (Creoles of Color) volunteered and formed the 1st Louisiana Native Guard, which was disbanded without ever seeing combat.
It was common to see slaves walking freely throughout the city, working for themselves and even buying their own freedom. In the 1800s, New Orleans had the largest number of free people of color. As the city of New Orleans expanded over time, Tremé emerged as a blended neighborhood, in which a majority of the inhabitants were free people of color.
The NOAAM of Art, Culture and History seeks to educate and to preserve, interpret, and promote the contributions that people of African descent have made to the development of New Orleans and Louisiana culture, as slaves and as free people of color [1] throughout the history of American slavery as well as during emancipation, Reconstruction ...
The free people of color were on average exceptionally literate, with a significant number of them owning businesses, properties, and even slaves. [11] [12] The Code Noir also forbade interracial marriages, but interracial relationships were formed in New Orleans society.
Their mixed-race children became the nucleus of the class of free people of color or gens de couleur libres in Louisiana and Saint-Domingue. After the Haitian Revolution in the late 18th and the early 19th centuries, many refugees came to New Orleans, adding a new wave of French-speaking free people of color.
St. Augustine Church is a Catholic parish in New Orleans. Established by free people of color, who also bought pews for slaves, it is said to be the oldest Black Catholic parish in the United States, established in 1841. It was one of the first 26 sites designated on the state's Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.