Slavery; Life for Enslaved and Freed
African-Americans in 19th Century Louisiana.

Information on African-Americans in antebellum and postbellum Louisiana is derived in part from historical documents, including state census records and plantation inventories of property. In reality, however, very little information is provided in such records on the day-to-day lives of African-Americans on Louisiana’s cane and cotton plantations. The goal of the African-American Archaeology Research Program at Evergreen Plantation is to help scholars and the public alike to better understand some of the details of African-American life in southern Louisiana using archaeological information as well as data from ethnographic and archival sources.

Census data compiled between 1810 and 1864 relate that slaves in Louisiana resided in a variety of household types, including single families, extended families, multiple families, co-resident siblings, relatives and un-related individuals, and single solitary males and females. The simple family was the dominant household type among both slave and free African-Americans populations in the United States during the 19th Century. Archival records relate that in 1835, a total of 54 slaves resided in twelve cabins at Evergreen Plantation, indicating that roughly between 4 and 5 slaves resided in each of the twelve cabins.

Life for enslaved African-Americans was difficult in Louisiana. The sub-tropical climate, particularly the intense heat and humidity that characterizes much of the year, along with the epidemic diseases such as cholera and yellow fever, took their toll on the overall health of Louisiana’s African-Americans during antebellum times. The threat of family members being sold away from the plantation in antebellum times was a real and terrifying part of life on the plantations.

After the Civil War, freed African-Americans resided in nuclear and extended family groups, often in the Quarters Area. Some historical and archaeological information suggests that improvements occurred in the living standards of African-Americans after Emancipation, although the archaeological and documentary records on this point are far from complete. One of the goals of the African-American Archaeology Research Program is to better understand how living conditions for freed African-Americans changed alter the Civil War. Specifically, we seek to understand how such things as diet, material possessions, and use of the landscape changed after African-Americans were emancipated.

This was made possible by a grant from the Louisiana Endowment of the Humanities administered through the Cultural Resource Management Program at Southeastern Louisiana University.