As this study makes clear – in ways no historian has previously documented – Louisiana Creoles bifurcated as a result of Americanization.
Creoles were not the only distinct community to undergo Americanization, but Louisiana Creoles were singular in their response. Creole leaders in churches, schools, and the tourism industry offered divergent reactions some elite Creoles began looking to Francophone Canada for whitened ethnic identity support while others turned toward the Catholic establishment in Baltimore, Maryland to bolster their faith. Assimilation and cultural resistance characterized the Creole response, but by 1945, southwest Louisiana more closely resembled much of the American South. World War I signalled early transformative changes and over the next three decades, the region saw the introduction of English language, new industries, an increasing number of Protestant denominations, and the forceful imposition of racialized identities and racial segregation. As this work makes clear, the transition to American identity transmuted the cultural foundations of French- and Creole-speaking Creole communities. This work examines that cultural transformation, paying particular attention to the processes of cultural assimilation and resistance to the introduction and imposition of American social values and its southern racial corollary: Jim Crow. Southwest Louisiana Creoles underwent great change between World Wars I and II as they confronted American culture, people, and norms. From bondage to freedom, the Red River region remained unreconstructed. The violent and contested nature of freedom highlighted the adherence to the power structure and ideological inheritances of slavery. Freedpeople were relegated to the margins as whites reasserted their control over Reconstruction. Widespread Reconstruction violence climaxed with the Colfax Massacre and firmly cemented white power, vigilantism, and racial dominance within the regional culture.
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Based on extensive archival research, this thesis considers how politics, racial ideologies, and environmental and financial drivers impacted the nature of slavery, Confederate commitment, and the parameters of freedom in this region, and by extension, the nation. By contrast, on plantations along the Red River, both racial mastery and power endured after emancipation. In this thesis, the election of 1860, the Civil War, and emancipation are not viewed as fundamental breaks or compartmentalized epochs in southern history. Here, the long arcs of mastery, racial conditioning, and ideological continuities were deeply entrenched even as the nation underwent profound changes from 1820 to 1880. Racial bondage grounded the region’s economy and formed the heart of white identity and black exploitation. The Red River played a significant role in regional settlement and protecting this distorted racial dynamic. Continuity, not change, characterized the region. This work argues that when freedom arrived, this unbroken fidelity to mastery and to the inheritances and ideology of slavery gave rise to a visceral regime of violence. Racial bondage defined the region, and slaveholders’ commitment to mastery and Confederate doctrine continued after the Civil War. The alluvial soil provided wealth for the mobile, market-driven slaveholders but created a cold, brutal world for the commoditized slaves that cleared the land and cultivated cotton. Louisiana’s Red River region was shaped by and founded on the logic of racial power, the economics of slavery, and white supremacy. Last part of the thesis is the analysis of the novel from the point of view of the representation of slavery in the literature and its translations in the Middle European literature. Biography of the author is the main topic of the third part. The second part of the paper is description of the slave narrative and other slave narrators with their works. First part describes slavery in America from its beginning through the gradual development of the system until the abolition. The main aim of my thesis is the answer to the following questions: How was slavery represented in literature, what was the purpose of the slave narrative in “Twelve years a slave” by Solomon Northup.
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Degree of Professional Qualification: Master. Department of British and American Studies – Supervisor: Mgr. Abstract KRÁLIKOVÁ, Lenka: Slavery in American Literature: Twelve Years a Slave University of SS.
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