Daniel Brook's new book looks to Reconstruction-era New Orleans to unravel the present
Daniel Brook's latest was reviewed by New Orleans'
Gambit.
❝ In “The Accident of Color: A Story of Race in Reconstruction” (W.W. Norton & Company, June 18, $28), Brook surveys the “misfit metropolises” of New Orleans and Charleston, South Carolina throughout the 1800s, tracing the development of America’s “binary racial system.” Prior to the Civil War, Brook tells of a three-part system of race — with free, biracial people sharing some of the same rights and privileges of citizenship as their white peers.
“In the period between annexation and the Civil War, roughly three-quarters of the lots in the Treme and Marigny neighborhoods were owned at some point by a free person of color,” Brook writes, noting, “Decades after annexation, New Orleans was essentially two cities, side by side but culturally distinct, using different languages and abiding by different racial codes.” [TheAdvocate.com]
| DANIEL BROOK is a journalist & author of A History of Future Cities on building modern modernities. Watch him talk about his book below, and learn more about booking Bob for your next event today. |
