Brewed Awakening: Re-Imagining Education in Three Nineteenth-Century New Orleans Coffee Houses
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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 4-4-2018 Brewed Awakening: Re-imagining Education in Three Nineteenth-Century New Orleans Coffee Houses Robyn Rene Andermann Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Curriculum and Instruction Commons, and the Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education Commons Recommended Citation Andermann, Robyn Rene, "Brewed Awakening: Re-imagining Education in Three Nineteenth-Century New Orleans Coffee Houses" (2018). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 4572. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/4572 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. BREWED AWAKENING: RE-IMAGINING EDUCATION IN THREE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NEW ORLEANS COFFEE HOUSES A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The School of Education by Robyn Rene Andermann B.A., Vanderbilt University, 1987 M.Ed., Loyola University of Chicago, 1995 May 2018 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my committee for sharing their vast knowledge with me and for opening my eyes to new ways of thinking about history and about education. Dr. Hendry, through your guidance, I have learned that history is not linear and that not all knowledge is “out there” to be poured into students’ minds. Your willingness to help me understand how foodways and drinkways are forms of education have made this journey worthwhile. Also, thank you for urging me to take my time in the doctoral program. In my years as your student, I have come to realize that learning is never finished. There are always more questions to ask. Dr. Long, thank you for pushing me to read and write more critically. In your class, I learned not only to think about historical evidence in new ways, but also to re-imagine what counts as that evidence. Your feedback on the various drafts of this dissertation has made me a better writer and thinker. Dr. Casey, thank you for agreeing to be part of my committee the very first month you joined the university faculty. Thank you for pointing out the implications of my work for social studies education. It was my love of social studies education that brought me to the doctoral program in the first place, and your feedback helped me to keep that in mind. Dr. Bien-Aime, I know you joined my committee mere weeks before my defense, but your participation was indeed a fortunate stroke of serendipity. Not only was it helpful to my work to hear about your Haitian connections, but your expertise in mass communications helped me to re-think the nature of public space. ii To my mother and father, you always believed that I could do this, and I am happy to celebrate this moment with you. To my husband, thank you for enduring all the tears and all the moments when I threatened to give up. Thank you for reading endless drafts and for helping me think things through. Thank you for providing tech support and for taking me away when I needed a break. This dissertation is as much yours as it is mine. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………..…..ii ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………………...vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION - A BREWED AWAKENING….…………..………….….1 CHAPTER 2: CREOLIZATION AND EVERYDAY PRACTICE…………………………..16 A Common Grammar in a Transatlantic Space………………………………………..21 Power and Resistance in Creolization…………………………………………………25 From Post-Colonial to Post-Structural Understandings of Creolization………………32 History as Creolization and Everyday Practice………………………………………..36 CHAPTER 3: THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN LOUISIANA: EXPANDING POSSIBILITIES …………………………………………………………………...………….43 Beyond Schools in Colonial Louisiana…………………………………………….….47 Education in the Early American Period: A Transatlantic Alternative………………..58 Creolizing “Public” Education in Antebellum Louisiana……………………….……..71 CHAPTER 4: THE CAFÉ DE LA BOURSE ……………………………………….………81 A “New” Exchange…………………………….……………………………….……...86 The Coffee House as Creolized Classroom…………………………….……….……...97 Limitations of the “Public”………………………………….…………….…………..105 CHAPTER 5: THE CAFÉ DES RÉFUGIÉS……………….…………………………………118 A Café of Open Doors…………………………………………………………………125 Strategies of Control…………………………………………………………………...140 Tactics of Resistance……………………………..........................................................154 CHAPTER 6: ROSE NICAUD’S FRENCH MARKET COFFEE STAND………..…………162 A Marketplace of Public Rights………………………………………………………..165 Rose Nicaud’s Market World…………………………………………………………..177 A Coffee Stand Homicide… …………………………………………………………..189 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION: - SPIRITED CONVERSATIONS ON COMMON GROUNDS……..………………………………………………………………………………201 Cafés Were Public Spaces of Democracy and Education……………………………....201 A Reimagined Narrative of Education History Accounts for Creolization…………….204 Limitations of this Research……………………………………………………………206 EPILOGUE……………………………………………………………………………………..209 iv BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………...……215 APPENDIX A: MAP OF NEW ORLEANS SHOWING LOCATION OF COFFEE HOUSES.....................................................................................................................................229 APPENDIX B: TIMELINE OF LEGAL DECISIONS REGARDING PUBLIC RIGHTS IN LOUISIANA…………………………………………………………………………………...230 APPENDIX C: PUBLIC RIGHTS PROVISIONS IN THE LOUISIANA STATE CONSTITUTION OF 1868…………………………………………………………………….231 VITA……………………………………………………………………………………………232 v ABSTRACT In dominant narratives of the history of education in America, the icon of the American educated citizen has traditionally been rooted in Jeffersonian Democracy, eventually taking shape in the Northern, Anglo-Protestant, Common School Movement in which the availability and acceptance of state-supported public education was a key measure of democratic progress. Within the institution of common schools, individuals were taught how to participate in a democratic society. This dissertation reimagines the dominant narrative by suggesting that the multiethnic and multilingual nature of New Orleans, which some early American leaders had framed as discordant and disorderly, was vital to constructing an alternative understanding of democracy. The transatlantic environment of Louisiana and the creolization process that was a part of that environment were instrumental in fostering a public democratic culture which developed outside of formal schools and which was not contingent upon the political rights of national citizenship. Instead, democracy was a matter of public rights which were nurtured through the transatlantic entanglements and everyday practices in public spaces. Public rights, the right to be treated with dignity and respect in public places, are seen in contrast to political rights, which are guaranteed by law. Tracing the history of three early nineteenth-century coffee- houses in New Orleans, the author argues that the everyday practices within these establishments facilitated a public intellectual culture for everyone who entered. Additionally, the author argues that everyday practices in these coffee-houses made public rights possible for people on the margins of society, most notably, slaves, free people of color, and women. These groups were typically denied their rights to public culture by formal republican institutions. Through the interactions which occurred in these coffee-house spaces, these groups developed tactics to circumvent the government and institutional strategies designed to control them. vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION: A BREWED AWAKENING Sebastien LeClerc, Louis XIV Visits the Academie des Sciences, Etching. 1671.Metropolitan Museum of Art. http://www.metmuseum.org. In 1671, French artist Sebastien LeClerc produced the above engraving depicting Louis XIV visiting the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris. The artwork shows eager scholars and natural philosophers meeting with the equally enthusiastic Sun King in a room filled with various objects related to learning. The space is filled with books, maps, instruments, and natural artifacts. A large window behind the men shows the construction site of the new Royal Observatory as well as the formal, geometric Jardin du Roi (king’s garden), which was used by the academy as an outdoor laboratory. In numerous ways the image faithfully captures the values of the Scientific Revolution and early Enlightenment that characterized this point of the French king’s reign. The engraving highlights the growing alliance between science and the government, one that aimed to strengthen the power of the French state. The instruments and specimens speak to human ability to inquire about and to understand the natural world in a rational, scientific way. The symmetrical design of the garden represents attempts at human mastery over that world. 1 Perhaps most importantly, the learned noblemen surrounding the king suggest the elite, gendered perspective of what knowledge was valued and who could pursue it. It was in this climate of an “elite Enlightenment” that the Lower Mississippi Valley was explored and colonized by the French in the early eighteenth