A genealogical and archival history tracing eight generations of a Louisiana Creole family descended from a French couple who arrived in New Orleans in the 1750s, revealing how racial identity, law, and social meaning shifted across 250 years.
John W. Durel follows descendants who were enslaved and those who enslaved others, those of solely European ancestry and those of mixed European, African, and American Indian heritage — spanning colonial French and Spanish rule, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Jim Crow era. The book culminates in a final chapter that sets Durel's own experience growing up middle class in the segregated South against that of a Black, working-class relative, grounding the broader history in lived personal reckoning. Throughout, Descendants tracks the evolving definition of what it meant to be Creole in New Orleans and the complex cultural, economic, and social weight of lineage.
- John W. Durel, Author
- Published in 2025
- Paperback
- 244 pages
- ISBN: 9781959569213
A genealogical and archival history tracing eight generations of a Louisiana Creole family descended from a French couple who arrived in New Orleans in the 1750s, revealing how racial identity, law, and social meaning shifted across 250 years.
John W. Durel follows descendants who were enslaved and those who enslaved others, those of solely European ancestry and those of mixed European, African, and American Indian heritage — spanning colonial French and Spanish rule, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Jim Crow era. The book culminates in a final chapter that sets Durel's own experience growing up middle class in the segregated South against that of a Black, working-class relative, grounding the broader history in lived personal reckoning. Throughout, Descendants tracks the evolving definition of what it meant to be Creole in New Orleans and the complex cultural, economic, and social weight of lineage.
- John W. Durel, Author
- Published in 2025
- Paperback
- 244 pages
- ISBN: 9781959569213