Roudanez: History and Legacy
February 3, 2017
THE NEW ORLEANS TRIBUNE.
FEBRUARY 4, 1869
Office: NOS. 122 AND 124 EXCHANGE ALLEY
SIXTH YEAR—VOL. 9—NO. 1,196
Let the friends of Justice and Equal Rights see that our paper circulate all over the land and among the oppressed.
WE ARE NOT THEORISTS.
Far from it. We are not in the condition of professional philanthropists and reformers, who from a comfortable distance look off upon the real or imaginary evils of society, and descant in splendid rhetoric upon “equality” and “fraternity”, the “rights of man” and a political and social millennium. We indeed have much to say about the “rights of man” and the rights of colored men in particular; we plead for equality and fraternity; but not as philosophers in their closet write beautiful essays about abstract principles. We are seeking to throw off a tremendous load which has been our inheritance for centuries. With us the burden is a reality and no abstraction. We are free, and yet subject to odious and unjust restrictions upon our liberty. We are citizens, and yet we are not allowed many of the rights and privileges of citizenship. Do we wish to travel for business or pleasure? we are treated as underlings in all public conveyances; do we seek the hospitalities of a hotel, perhaps as a shelter for a night? we are bidden to be gone, or are sentenced to a dirty corner or a shed; do we venture into a theatre or an opera-house? we are seized by the officers of justice, and rudely hustled out amid the jeers of the vulgar. The persons thus subjected to inconvenience, to humiliation, to outrage, may be gentlemen of property, of culture, of refined feelings, and of high social position in some other part of the country; they may be good citizens, honest and intelligent, able and willing to pay for their entertainment, but all this goes for nothing. They are simply “niggers”, and their “sublime modesty” must be rebuked and humbled. Do they expect the same civil rights with white men? Or it may be that some of us seek for our children and education at college or in a professional school. But to obtain it, they must be sent away from their native State, where their fathers are taxed to support home institutions, to a distant part of the country or to a foreign land, where the highest as well as the lowest seminaries of learning are open to all without distinction of race or color.
Now a people who suffer from such grievances, who are rudely denied privileges in their own country which are accorded to them abroad, must have a good deal to say about the “rights of man.” It must be a favorite and fruitful theme with us. We plead our manhood. We equally with proud Caucasians, are children of the one Father of mankind. Who gave the latter the right to doom the former to a position of inferiority? Show us the parchment on which you claim to do so is declared by the Great Maker of all. We know what your feeling is—the majority of us have been slaves, and slavery is a degradation. But that was not the fault of our people. Do you first enslave us, and then, when compelled to acknowledge our freedom, make our former involuntary condition a reason for our perpetual inferiority?
We must speak. We must state our grievances. We must declare our rights. We must labor to obtain them.
Read more Tribune editorials at www.roudanez.com.
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Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez (12 June 1823 – 11 March 1890) was a visionary free man of color, doctor, and journalist. Greatly influenced by revolutions in Saint Domingue and France, and angered by slavery and racial injustice, he took up the cause of equality during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. In 1862, Dr. Roudanez, Paul Trévigne, and Jean Baptiste Roudanez founded L’Union, the South’s first Black newspaper. In 1864, Dr. Roudanez launched La Tribune de la Nouvelle Orléans (The New Orleans Tribune), the first Black daily newspaper in the United States. With his Tribune colleagues and a dynamic community of free and freed persons of African descent, Roudanez courageously attacked racism in the face of some of the nation’s worst violence. He was the guiding force behind one of the most radical and influential journals of its time. The Tribune’s crusade led to Black enfranchisement, the creation of a groundbreaking State constitution with strong equal rights provisions, and the election of many Black representatives. The vision of Dr. Roudanez, articulated in print and manifested in social protest, forged one of the most important civil rights campaigns in American history.
Learn more at www.roudanez.com