More On Louisiana's First Possible Native Saint- Henriette Delille

I taled abou this some at Who Dat Wants to Be A Louisiana Catholic Saint - Mother Henriette Delille Dat Who

Intentional Disciples has a great post on this that talks about the strange and exotic world she was born into at Henriette de Lille, Servant of the Slaves

I was always a big fan of author Ann Rice. If you read her books centered around New Orleans she keys in quite well on this. Of course her book Feast of All Saints examines this in some detail.

For those outside Louisiana we do not only see this dynamic in New Orleans. You also saw it in North Louisiana around the historic city of Natchitoches, Louisiana where there is a quite proud Creole people still.

I think the blogger is quite right to focus in on the sinfullness of this structure that was there. She also is right that for a Catholic City the authority of the Church was a tad precarious in the early days. In fact there was a abundant anti Clerical attitude that went on for some time.

Still it is a shame that depite the sinful social structure that is described here that some of the positives were not taken advantage of after the Civil War. There were limited rights and opportunities that were granted to Creoles and in fact slaves themselves had some amount of legal protection.

After the Civil War Louisiana was at a cross roads. It could have used the positive experiences and lessons that came from the interaction of races or go down the path of severe Jim Crow laws.

Louisiana chose the latter. Thus in Louisiana where there was great number of educated and somewhat economically viable blacks post Civil war we saw a resource squandered. We went from a rather "liberal" view at the time of sexual relation between the races( at least between white men and black women) that also recognized some areas of responsibility to well the full horror of Jim Crow.

The Creole people that are our possible future Saint is descended from could have been a bridge for the future. Sadly that was lost.