Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes | |
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| Born | (1849-11-15)November 15, 1849 New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. |
| Died | (aged 78) Omaha, Nebraska, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Straight University |
| Occupation(s) | Customs Officer, Journalist, Historian |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouses |
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Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes (French pronunciation:[ʁɔdɔlflysjɛ̃dedyn]; November 15, 1849 – August 14, 1928) was aLouisiana Creole civil rights activist, poet, historian, journalist, and customs officer primarily active inNew Orleans, Louisiana.
In Louisiana, Desdunes served as a militiaman during the Reconstruction era and fought in theBattle of Liberty Place. Later, he was a member of L'Union Louisianaise and wrote for the weekly of the same name. He also wrote for the daily paper, theCrusader, and taught at theCouvent School in New Orleans.
In 1890, Desdunes was among the founders of theComité des Citoyens, which fought the 1890Separate Car Act through legal challenges, leading to theUS Supreme Court Case,Plessy vs Ferguson (1896). He also wrote an important French-language history ofCreoles in America calledNos Hommes et Notre Histoire, the first such book written in French by a member of theLouisiana Creoles of Color.
Later in life he moved toOmaha, Nebraska, where his sonDaniel had settled.
Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes was born November 15, 1849, as one of at least five children of Pierre Jérémie Desdunes and Henriette Angélique (Sonty) Gaillard; siblings were Pierre Aristide, Joseph, Elmore, and Sarazin.
Their father, Pierre, lived in New Orleans at least as early as 1840 and was probably born in the city. The Desdunes family wereSaint Dominican Creole refugees who fled fromSaint-Domingue (now Haiti) during the 1791Haitian Revolution,[1] at which time they gained asylum in New Orleans. Rodolphe's education was likely provided by family and family friendsArmand Lanusse andJoanni Questy, as well as at theCouvent School.[2]
Rodolphe's brother Pierre Aristide also became involved in civil rights as an adult. By profession, he was a poet, a cigar maker, a carpenter, and owner of a tobacco plantation. He fought in the American Civil War. He served on the board of directors of the Couvent School, which had been created byMarie Couvent in 1848. In 1873 Aristide married Louise Mathilde Denebourg.
Rodolphe married Mathilde Cheval, and they lived for some time with her mother, also named Mathilde. Before 1880, they had childrenDaniel (born in about 1873), Agnes (about 1873), Louise (about 1874), Coritza (born in 1876), and Wendelle (born winter 1876-1877). The Chevals may have descended from early Cheval settlers of theTremé district, Pierre and Léandre.
In 1879, Rodolphe started a relationship with Clementine Walker, born in 1860 and a daughter of John and Ophelia Walker. Rodolphe and Clementine had at least four children, Mary Celine (March 25, 1879), John Alexander (1881), Louise (1889), and Oscar Alphonse (1892). Clementine died on September 23, 1893. Mary Celine later became known as Mamie Desdunes and was a blues pianist. Clementine lived nearJelly Roll Morton's godmother, and Jérémie and Henriette Desdunes were neighbors of Morton's mother. From this proximity, Morton learned the song he recorded as "Mamie's Blues" or "2:19 Blues" and attributed it to Mamie, singing, "Can’t give a dollar, give a lousy dime,/ I wanna feed that hungry man of mine." Other associates of Mamie included performerBunk Johnson and promotersHattie Rogers andLulu White. Mamie married George Degay in 1898, and died of tuberculosis on December 4, 1911.
Oscar was also a musician. After his nephew Clarence's death in 1933, Oscar played with his band, the Joyland Revellers.
Rodolphe had three other daughters, possibly by Clementine, named Edna, Lucille, and Jeanne (born about 1893).[1][3]
In the early 1870s during Reconstruction, Desdunes was a member of theNew Orleans Police Department. In 1874, under the command of former Confederate General and then adjutant general of the Louisiana MilitiaJames Longstreet, Desdunes was among the injured in theBattle of Liberty Place, fought between the pro-Republican city, state, and federal forces, and a pro-Democratic, largely ex-Confederate group called theWhite League.[1] His experience was important to him. He remained a strong supporter of the rights and honors due to the black veterans of theUnited States Civil War.[4]
Desdunes began to attend law courses atStraight University in the early 1870s.[1] He graduated with a Bachelors of Law fromStraight University in the spring of 1882.[5]
Desdunes was appointed in 1879 as secretary of the parish vice committee upon the resignation of Charles A. Baquie.,[6] was an active member of theOdd Fellows, and translated rituals of his lodge,La Creole, into French.[7] Also, he was a member of Lodge Amité Sincere No. 27.[1]
In 1891 he was elected secretary of the Republican state central committee in Louisiana.[8] He was a frequent contributor to Republican politics. In 1892, he was a speaker in a Louisiana Republican organizational rally, calling on blacks to support more moderate candidates with strong Louisiana ties.[9] In 1897, Desdunes's activity included the support of Louisiana State SenatorHenry Demas, denouncing lynching, calling for more schools, opposing thepoll tax, and denouncing the constitutional convention, which he felt sought to deprive black suffrage.[10] He was a member of the Republican Committee until 1900.[1]
From 1870 to 1885, Desdunes worked for theU.S. Customs Service in New Orleans as a messenger and as a clerk. He also worked at the Customs office from 1891 to 1896, and from 1899 to 1912.[1] In 1880, Desdunes was appointed assistant cashier of theNew Orleans Customhouse by CollectorAlgernon Sidney Badger.[11] In 1891 Desdunes was appointed chief clerk of the sub treasury in New Orleans.[12]
In 1908, as a part of his Customs department duties, Desdunes was supervising the weighing of cargo on a ship when granite dust blew into his eyes, blinding him. He retired the following year and moved toOmaha, Nebraska, to live with his son, Daniel, who was a musician and activist there.[1]
In the 1870s, Desdunes became involved in the pro-black rights Young Men's Progressive Association. As part of theCompromise of 1877, most of the federal troops were withdrawn from the South, enabling white supremacists to work more freely to suppress black rights. In 1878, the association, with Desdunes an officer andThomas J. Boswell as president, were active in condemning lynchings: dozens of blacks had been killed in Louisiana in the 1870s. They noted the murders of Daniel Hill and Herman Bell of Ouachita Parish, Commodore Smallwood, Charles Carrol, John Higgins, and Washington Hill of Concordia Parish, Charles Bethel, Robert Williams, Munday Hill, James Stafford, Louis Postlewait, and William Henry of Tensas Parish.[13]
In 1884, Rodolphe and his brother, Aristide, as well asPaul Trévigne,Arthur Estèves, andLouis André Martinet, as a part of a group called L'Union Louisiannais, reopened theCouvent School. Both Desdunes brothers served on the board of directors and Rodolphe also taught.[14] In 1887, a French-language weekly paper was produced in New Orleans under the same name (L'Union Louisiannais) withEugene Lucy (president),Homer Plessy (Vice President), Rodolphe Desdunes (recording secretary and solicitor),Pierre Chevalier (treasurer), and O. Bart (solicitor).[15] In 1889, Martinet formed the Republican newspaper, theCrusader, and Desdunes was a frequent contributor. Publishing in both French and English, theCrusader took up the civil rights cause.
Desdunes was a part of the American Citizens' Equal Rights Association of Louisiana in 1890, protesting to the state assembly against legislation that imposed second-class status on blacks.[16] He also wrote for other papers in Louisiana, such as theBusiness Herald inDonaldsonville in 1904.[17]
Desdunes was incensed by the 1890 Separate Car Act, writing in an 1891 letter to the editor in theCrusader, "Among the many schemes devised by the Southern statesman to divide the races, none is so audacious and so insulting as the one which provides separate cars for black and white people on the railroads running through the state. It is like a slap in the face of every member of the black race, whether he has the full measure or only one-eighth of that blood."[18] Aristide, Rodolphe and Daniel Desdunes, Louis Martinet, Eugene Luscy, Paul Bonseigneur, L. J. Joubert,P. B. S. Pinchback,Caesar Antoine, Homer Plessy and others formed the Comité des Citoyens to organize black civil rights efforts. Rodolphe enlisted his eldest son, Daniel, to violate the act to allow for its challenge in the courts. On February 24, 1892, Daniel boarded a train bound for Mobile, Alabama. While stopped at the corner of Elysian Fields and Claiborne in New Orleans, Daniel was arrested. However, JudgeJohn Howard Ferguson ruled that the Separate Car Act could not be enforced for interstate travel because the US Constitution granted the federal government the authority to regulate only interstate travel and commerce.
The Comité then challenged the law again, this time focusing on intrastate travel, and Plessy volunteered to break the law.[1] Luscy, Bonseignure, Rodolphe Desdunes, Joubert, and Martinet secured Plessy's release on bail that same day.[19] When the case,Plessy vs. Ferguson, finally reached the U. S. Supreme Court in 1896, it was found that Plessy's rights had not been violated, Desdunes writing, "our defeat sanctioned the odious principle of the segregation of the races." The Comité des Citoyens activistsAlbion Tourgee and James C. Walker defended in both cases. About that time, both the Comité and theCrusader disbanded.[1]
| To the French High Commission (Hommage de la population de couleur/ tribute from the coloured people.) Messieurs: Vous, defenseurs du droit et de la libert[é]; Des humbles descendants de la race Africaine, Veuillez bien accueillir l'hommage merit[é] Nous, aussi, nous voulons temoigner a la France, Au nom de l'avenir, du present, du pass[é], Nos sinceres souhaits, notre reconnaissance, Tel que, de tous les temps, notre ame la pense. Nous avons admir[é] l'illustre Lafayette, Le Divin Lamartine et le sublime Hugo, De nos Dumas, la France est seule qui s'inquiete, Qui, par amour du bien, sait consacrer le beau. Rodolphe Desdunes[20] |
Desdunes was very interested in the history and art of Creoles in Louisiana. From July through October 1895, Desdunes published translated excerpts fromJoseph Saint-Rémy’s five volume work,Pétion et Haïti, for theNew Orleans Crusader.[14] Just before losing his sight, Desdunes finished a book about the contribution of Creoles to Louisiana history,Nos Hommes et Notre Histoire, which was published in Quebec in 1911. In the book, Desdunes uses personal reminiscences and scholarly biography to explore the lives of remarkable men in letters, fine arts, music, war, peace, and teaching. The story starts with the role of free black soldiers under GeneralAndrew Jackson in theBattle of New Orleans in the War of 1812 and continues to explore the contribution of creoles to Louisiana and to the United States. It contrasts this with the hatred, contempt, and injustice that were faced by the men described and all blacks faced. In this way, Desdunes' work follows the example ofLa Campagne De 1814-15 byHippolyte Castra, a commonality that Desdunes points out by including Castra and Castra's activities in his book. The introduction of the original edition was written byLouis Martin.[21]
In Omaha, he continued to work on his poetry, submitting his work to various outlets. He also became close to others in the Omaha black community, particularly FatherJohn Albert Williams, who praised Desdunes as "Omaha's Blind Negro Poet" in theOmaha World-Herald.[22] His poems in the Herald included praise for black soldiers serving inWorld War I, "To the French High Commission (Hommage de la population de couleur.)", and a tribute to Nebraska entitled "Aksarben, Eloge", both of which appeared in 1917.[23]
He lived in his own house in Omaha with his wife, and died on August 14, 1928, ofcancer of the larynx. His remains were sent to New Orleans and he was interred in a family tomb in St. Louis Cemetery No. 2.[1]
