Descendants

Based on extensive genealogical and archival research, Descendants traces evolving attitudes and laws regarding racial identity and relationships in New Orleans over 250 years through the lives of descendants of a French couple who arrived in the city in the 1750s. Spanning eight generations, this work highlights the complexities of race in Louisiana, touching on those who were enslaved and those who were enslavers, those who were wealthy and those of fewer means, those who were of solely European descent and those with mixed European, African, and American Indian ancestry. The stories take the reader from colonial French and Spanish rule through the Civil War and Reconstruction and into the Jim Crow era of the twentieth century. Author John Durel culminates his research with a final chapter that juxtaposes his personal experience growing up middle class in the segregated South and a Black, working-class relative who labored at two jobs to provide for his family. Through it all, Descendants tracks the changing definition of what it meant to be Creole in New Orleans and the complex cultural, economic, and social connotations of one's parentage.