Creole Sketches

New Orleans in 1878 was the most exotic and cosmopolitan city in North America. An international port with more than 200000 inhabitants it was open to French Spanish Mexican South American and West Indian cultural influences and home to a thriving population descended from free African Americans. It was also a battleground in the fight against yellow fever (malaria) and in the political upheavals that followed the end of Reconstruction. The continued influx of Anglo-Americans and the renewed ascendancy of white supremacists threatened to overwhelm the local blend of languages races and cultures that enlivened the unique Creole character of the city. Writing for an English-language newspaper Lafcadio Hearn presented the speech charm and humor of the Creolized natives on the other side of Canal Street and illustrated his sketches with woodcut cartoons - the first of their kind in any Southern paper. These vignettes published in the New Orleans Daily Item during 1878-1880 capture a traditionalist urban world and its colorful characters with a delicate and sympathetic understanding.