Race, Ethnicity, and Food in Modern New Orleans
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Consumable City: Race, Ethnicity, and Food in Modern New Orleans The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation McCulla, Theresa. 2017. Consumable City: Race, Ethnicity, and Food in Modern New Orleans. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:41140192 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Consumable City: Race, Ethnicity, and Food in Modern New Orleans A dissertation presented by Theresa Ann McCulla to The Program in American Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of American Studies Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts April 2016 ! 2017 Theresa Ann McCulla All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Professor Joyce Chaplin Theresa Ann McCulla Consumable City: Race, Ethnicity, and Food in Modern New Orleans Abstract This dissertation is an interdisciplinary history of race and ethnicity in 19th- and 20th- century New Orleans, told through the lens of food. It explores the diverse ways in which food functioned as a uniquely powerful, though virtually ignored, medium in enacting the exclusion of people of color. I argue that it was exactly because the consumption of New Orleans’s cuisine felt pleasurable and evanescent to locals and visitors that it seemed harmless and ahistorical, incapable of generating savage prejudices. Within the culinary realm, though, racist biases flourished. They inflicted far-reaching social, political, and economic damage on New Orleanians of color, yet their origins escaped notice. To tell this story, I integrate methodologies of history, material culture, and food studies to interpret postcards, stereographs, cookbooks, menus, souvenirs, markets, monuments, and restaurants. Long after the abolition of slavery, and increasingly within the arena of tourism, the Crescent City’s food industry continued to collapse person and thing, designating New Orleanians of color as consumable commodities who produced consumable commodities. In exploring how invented public memory became history in New Orleans, I shed light on the persistent inequalities of many American places and the means by which people of color resisted. ! iii Table of Contents List of Figures …………………………………………………………………………………… v Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………………….. vii Introduction: Setting the Scene in a New Orleans Café ………………………………………… 1 Chapter One: Building a Consumable City: Buying and Selling Food and People in Antebellum New Orleans ……………………………. 27 Chapter Two: From Babel to Open Book: Whitewashing the French Market’s Colonnades ………………………………………………. 84 Chapter Three: Greetings from the Levee!: Labor and Leisure on the Docks of Postbellum New Orleans ………………………………... 146 Chapter Four: Creole Uncanny: Embodied Nostalgia in the Vargas Dolls of New Orleans …………………………………… 207 Chapter Five: Contextualizing Creole Cuisine: Reading Race and Ethnicity in Culinary Texts ……………………………………………….. 258 Chapter Six: Fava Beans and Báhn Mì: Ethnic Revival and the New New Orleans Gumbo …………………………………………... 322 Conclusion: Making Sense of the Past ………………………………………………………... 387 Appendix A: Mary Longfellow Greenleaf Diary, 1852 ………………………………………. 396 Appendix B: Wilson S. Howell Photographs, March 13, 1890 ………………………………. 398 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………………….. 400 ! iv List of Figures 1.1!United States Capitol, east front elevation, ca. 1846 ………………………………………. 53 1.2!Old slave block in St. Louis Hotel, New Orleans, ca. 1900-1910 ……………………… 56-57 2.1 A.R. Waud, “Sunday in New Orleans – The French Market,” Harper’s Weekly, 1866 …… 89 2.2 “Up the Mississippi,” Emerson’s Magazine, 1857 ……………………….………………... 99 2.3 John W. Alexander, “In the Old French Market, New Orleans,” Harper’s Weekly, 1882 .. 103 2.4 George François Mugnier, “Fruit Stand, French Market,” ca. 1880-1910 ……………….. 106 2.5 French Market Corporation, Glorified French Market, 1938; and “In the Old French Market, New Orleans,” Harper’s Weekly, 1882 …………………………………………………… 141 3.1 Detroit Publishing Co., Smallest news & post card stand in New Orleans, 1900-1915 …... 154 3.2 “Louisiana – The Business Boom,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 1881 ……….. 160 3.3 W.Y. Barnet, “New Orleans Entertains,” The Banking and Mercantile World, 1902 ……. 173 3.4 Detroit Publishing Co., “Unloading Bananas (Steam Conveyers)” and “Sugar on the Levee, New Orleans, La.,” ca. 1900 ……………………………………………………………… 176 3.5 Detroit Publishing Co., “Weighing Cotton,” 1909 ……..………………………………… 177 3.6 “Fun on the Levee in New Orleans,” ca. 1912 …………………………………………… 177 3.7 Keystone View Co., “Cotton! Cotton! Cotton!” 1900 ……..……………………………... 187 4.1 H.C. White Co., “King Cotton,” Louisiana Purchase Exposition, 1904 ………………….. 209 4.2 Theriault’s Antique Doll Auctions, “Outstanding Collection of Ten American Wax Figures by Vargas” ………………………………………………………………………………... 214 4.3 St. Charles Hotel, “Where and How ‘Ole Mammy’ Pralines are Made,” ca. 1920 ………. 222 5.1 “Godchaux Sugar Presents a New ‘Sell-Idea’ for the Grocers of America,” ca. 1940 …… 265 5.2 “Godchaux Sugar Presents a New ‘Sell-Idea’ for the Grocers of America,” ca. 1940 …… 266 5.3 Menu from La Louisiane restaurant, 1953 ………………………………………………... 283 ! v 5.4 Oysters Rockefeller card, no. 1427201, Antoine’s Restaurant, ca. 1938 ………………… 295 5.5 Menu from Antoine’s restaurant, 1943 …………………………………………………… 297 6.1 Piazza d’Italia, 2014 ………………………………………………………………………. 329 6.2 Piazza d’Italia, 2014 ………………………………………………………………………. 334 6.3 Foran & Greer, Inc., Piazza d’Italia rendering, 1978 ……………………………………... 336 6.4 Rotolo family St. Joseph altar, 1926 ……………………………………………………… 340 6.5 St. Joseph altar prepared by Angelina Corona Accardo, Nancy Stillone Roppolo, and Rosalie Corona Canal, 1948 ………………………………………………………………………. 342 6.6 Women making pignolate for the St. Joseph altar, ca. 1940s …………………………….. 344 6.7 Women with fig cakes for the St. Joseph altar, ca. 1940s ………………………………... 347 6.8 “Here’s that piazza…,” ca. 1975-1976 …………………………………………………… 351 6.9 “Here’s that piazza…,” ca. 1975-1976 …………………………………………………… 353 ! vi Acknowledgements At some point during graduate school I realized that I had assembled, unintentionally, an array of teachers, advisors, a general exams committee, and a dissertation committee composed almost entirely of women. In complementary ways, they model the kind of scholar, mentor, and person I would like to be. My first thanks go to Joyce Chaplin, who let me enroll in her graduate seminar in American food history while still an employee of Harvard University Dining Services. That course gave me my first taste of archival research and confirmed my hopes to make historical work my daily work. Joyce is ever-reliable. I thank her for her sense of humor, for hashing out dissertation ideas over lunch at Café Pamplona, and for suggesting that I purchase my first plane ticket to New Orleans. I thank Liz Cohen, too, for teaching me how to write. When I write, her voice is in my head. I articulate an argument and hear her ask, “But so what?” Which means: make it bolder, clearer, better. Along with Herrick Chapman, Liz has offered professional and personal advice more times than I can count. She is generous with her time and wisdom. I am also grateful to Jennifer Roberts. She is a gifted lecturer and I am fortunate that my first teaching experience came in her course, American Art and Modernity. I watched students come alive as they left the classroom and entered the gallery. Learning to teach with objects convinced me that I wanted to write about objects. Her writing feedback and reading suggestions greatly improved this dissertation. Nancy Cott taught the 20th-century U.S. history reading proseminar that met during my first semester of grad school. It was a rigorous, perfect introduction to graduate study that gave me confidence for everything that followed. At different points I benefitted also from the instruction and writing advice of Glenda Carpio, Rachel St. John, Matthew Jacobson, and Lisa McGirr. ! vii Far from Cambridge, my research developed thanks to the skillful assistance of many archivists and librarians. They pointed me toward unexpected collections and patiently pulled box after box of materials, let me comb through vertical files, and showed me for the second, third, and fourth time how to load microfilm reels onto the reader. I am particularly grateful for the work of Yvonne Loiselle and the staff of the Louisiana Division/City Archives and Special Collections at the New Orleans Public Library; Sean Benjamin at the Louisiana Research Collection at Tulane University Library; Susan Tucker of Tulane’s Vorhoff Library; and Sal Serio of the American Italian Research Library. I also thank the archivists of the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute. It was in their sunny reading room that I first discovered the excitement that archival research can hold: the sense of anticipation when a new box is delivered to the researcher and she flips back the top, wondering what will be discovered inside. Researching New Orleans holds many pleasures beyond research, of course. For friendship and hospitality there, especially over a meal or cocktail, I thank Ashley Rose Young, Jessica Pearson, Brett Anderson,