by Edward Ball
White supremacy is not a marginal ideology. It is the early build of the country. It is a foundation on which the social edifice rises, bedrock of institutions. White supremacy also lies on the floor of our minds. Whiteness is not a deformation of thought, but a kind of thought itself.
Our Klansman’s story is not just a family story, it belongs to many. It is particular, but it carries with it a genealogy of race identity, of whiteness. It is a story of whiteness that is born into one life and grows, branching out into a tree that shelters others.
I have no first-person testimony for this tale—no letters or diaries, speeches or interviews. There are court records, however. There is thick circumstantial evidence. There are newspaper accounts, victim testimony, wills, property records, sacramental records, interviews with black families struck by Klan violence, supremacist manifestos, and traces of white oral tradition. I use evidence to draw out the life of the man with the pretty name. It is not necessary to invent anything to tell the story of our Klansman. Invention is where fantasy wrinkles the real, where what we would like to have occurred deflects what actually happened. However, invention is not the same as conjecture, which is a light that gives roundness to sketches of facts. To suppose an event occurs or a feeling moves people is permitted as a narrative device, as long as you keep the lamp of inference visible in the hand. Sometimes it is a help to speculate, if you make clear when you do so.
This is a piece of microhistory. The idea of microhistory is that the life of an ordinary person contains the kernel of a million; an individual carries the culture in microcosm. And I have to say this. The story that follows is not that a writer discovers a shameful family secret and turns to the public to confess it. The story here is that whiteness and its tribal nature are normal, everywhere, and seem as permanent as the sunrise.
PART I
THE KU-KLUX ACT
1
The middle of the week is good for an attack, for the surprise. It is March 4, 1873, in the city of New Orleans, a Tuesday night. About 9:00 p.m., a man called Polycarp Constant Lecorgne emerges from his house by the levee of the Mississippi River. He is a forty-one-year-old carpenter. Constant Lecorgne and his wife, Gabrielle Duchemin, live in a neighborhood called Bouligny. They have six children, and Gabrielle is pregnant with another. Gabrielle and the children remain in the house when Constant leaves for the night. He carries a gun, probably a revolver. The U.S. Army confiscated most of the long guns years ago.
The newspapers tell much of the story. The Catholic Messenger. The New Orleans Republican. The Times, the Picayune. Newspapers tell a crisp story, and court records say more.
At home, the family of Constant Lecorgne speaks French, their first language. French is a tongue of preference, as it is for about one-quarter of the city, black as well as white. French is the language of Creoles, English the language of most business and politics. The family’s house by the levee of the river is a rental. Constant and Gabrielle once lived in a house they owned, but ten years ago they lost it, along with all their money. They can no longer afford to buy. Constant is a ship carpenter who works on the barges and steamers, the passenger boats and freighters that ply the Mississippi. The house is close to his work, a stone’s throw from the water.
Constant has brothers and sisters, five of them. All have families, all live nearby. People named Lecorgne are scattered through Bouligny. The neighborhood of Bouligny lies three miles upstream on the Mississippi from the old center of New Orleans. It is a square mile of clapboard houses and workshops on the shoulder of the river, a place the Lecorgnes regard as theirs. Before they start to move away from Bouligny, which eventually occurs during the 1940s, the family lives in this part of New Orleans for one hundred years.
The Lecorgne who carries a gun leaves the rented house on Valmont Street and makes his way east some blocks through Bouligny. Constant meets others. A cousin by marriage named Ernest Livaudais, who is a musician, good on trumpet. He was the bugler in his company during the Civil War, which ended some years ago. Tonight, Livaudais does not carry a horn, but a gun. Constant and Ernest Livaudais continue downriver and join another man, Joseph Guillotte. The carpenter and the bugler defer to Guillotte. He is the leader of tonight’s action, a raid on Precinct 7, stationhouse of the Metropolitan Police.
Guillotte, Livaudais, and Lecorgne: these three are the French fingers of the gang. They speak French to one another, and to other Creoles. They speak English to the people they call les Américains, “the Americans.” Creoles are French-speaking natives of Louisiana, white or black. The English-speaking are les Américains, people who came to the city after the United States bought Louisiana, in the early 1800s. The Americans have grown to three-quarters of the population since then, and they dominate the Creoles. Constant and the others dislike being dominated, but it is their portion.
They rendezvous with more men, about thirty. Half of them Americans, half of them Creoles, all of them white.
The gang moves in the direction of Lawrence Square, an acre of green at the middle of Bouligny. At its edge is police precinct 7, a two-story garrison. Court papers say the men have “guns, muskets, pistols, swords, bayonets, and other warlike instruments.” Their muskets are single-load rifles they managed to hide when the U.S. Army, the goddamn Yankees, ordered every house in New Orleans to surrender its weapons, after the war. Lawrence Square looks handsome. A big church called St. Stephen overlooks the square, as do a town hall and food markets. The main street, Napoleon Avenue, runs past St. Stephen, and streetcars on railroad tracks rumble past every half hour.
Constant Lecorgne and his comrades come to Berlin Street, on the southeast corner of the square, and there they find their target.
Tonight, probably, the gang does not wear hoods. Chances are that no one wears a Ku-klux robe. Costumes like hoods and robes are good for the parishes, the rural parts outside New Orleans. The parishes are what people in Louisiana call their counties. It is there, in the black villages, that a man must take steps to disguise himself. To bring rough justice to the doors of les nègres, “the blacks,” a man needs camouflage. But tonight is not a night ride with clubs and ropes and whips. Tonight, a hood would get in the way. This is the first strike of an insurrection, and the costume of the Ku-klux, and the usual tools, do not fit the job.
Almost everybody in the gang is a soldier. A few years back, everyone fought in the other insurrection, the one to make up the Confederate States of America. The Confederate States was the slave nation that died on the birthing table during the Civil War. The white South calls the fight the “war between the states,” or the “lost cause.” It ended in 1865, eight years ago. The black South and the Northern states call it “the rebellion.” Eventually everyone will agree to call it the Civil War.
The men are veterans, they know tactics. Constant Lecorgne was a second lieutenant in the Eighteenth Louisiana Infantry during the war. Joseph Guillotte, leader of tonight’s assault, went with the Twenty-Second Infantry. Ernest Livaudais fought with the Thirtieth Louisiana Regiment, along with another man in the raid, Kendrick Chandler.
The newspapers call them “Ku-kluxers.” The men think of themselves as guerrillas or vigilantes—they are vigilant in bringing order to a disrupted world. Last year the same men went with the so-called Louisiana Legion. And before that, the gang belonged to a group called the Knights of the White Camellia. The guerrillas put on and take off names like their costumes.
In this raid, the gang calls itself the “McEnery Militia.” They are in the fight for a man named John McEnery, a politician. John McEnery ran for governor last fall, and whites say he should have won, had the other side not stolen the election. The McEnery Militia says it is taking back power from the coloreds and the carpetbaggers. They are taking it back from the U.S. Army. The army is the occupier, the carpetbaggers are the thieves, and les nègres are the lackeys of both. The McEnery Militia wants change. They want to return things to the way they were. If they take the target, the garrison, t
he rest will come.
Joseph Guillotte gives the sign, and the men surround the police station. It is a wooden building, two stories, four rooms down, four up. Five patrolmen in the Metropolitan Police are on duty downstairs. Also downstairs is a Western Union telegraph office, with an operator on shift. Upstairs is closed and dark.
The cops inside are the “Metropolitans.” They are few, but they are armed, and the stakes are life and death. If Constant is shot, he leaves his wife, Gabrielle, and six children, or seven, if the baby lives. A mile from the precinct are Gabrielle and the kids—Numa, Louis, Estelle, Georges, St. Mark, and Corinne. The oldest is fifteen, the youngest nearly two. They want their father to live. On the other hand, if Constant is shot, it would be seen by most whites as a hero’s death.
Guillotte shouts and they are on it. Constant runs with others around the building. The men shoot up the doors and windows. This is the right fight, and they are in it for everyone. Constant is like the blade on a knife. He is in the door, a gun pointing at heads. I imagine the shouting in French, the cursing in English. Bâtards coquins! “Get the hell out!” The police are not ready for them, the Metropolitans surrender. Two of the cops are Creoles of color, French-speaking and black. They get extra attention, some roughing up, the butt of a gun on the head. But no one, yet, is shot. The police are chased into the street and made to run, leaving Precinct 7 in the hands of the Ku-klux. The gang keeps hostage the telegraph operator, a man named Patrick Sheeley, so they can use him to communicate with their friends and enemies.
Now it is ours. We are taking the city back. The Ku-klux are patriots. We are soldiers for the white tribe. That is what my ancestor seems to have believed.
Men are posted at doors and windows. They talk and wait. Everyone knows there will be a counterattack from the army. It is only a matter of time.
Precinct 7 stands in a line of shops and cafés, butchers and grocers, on Magazine Street. Tracks of a trolley run past the door. It is late, 11:00 p.m., and few stragglers walk by. There is nothing open but a barrelhouse, pouring beer. But there has been talk of a raid for weeks, and the street knows what is happening. Some shouts of encouragement to the raiders from whites, some curses and muttering from blacks. Some blacks disappear when they see an armed white gang. Some get out of sight but look back. Here are those bastards, again.
Down the street on Lawrence Square stands St. Stephen Church, all but finished, in a construction site. The big, new sanctuary has been going up for years, a replacement of the old building. It is nearly done, opening in a month. St. Stephen is the mother church for Constant Lecorgne and his family. Everybody goes on Sundays—the Lecorgne brothers and sisters, all of their children, and all of the cousins and in-laws. They all baptize their babies at the church font and bless their dead at the altar.
From the window of the precinct, gun in hand, Constant can see the rear of the new church. It is twice as big as the previous one, with a high, two-hundred-foot spire. He can see the new stained glass. He and Gabrielle have christened their children at St. Stephen, and buried the ones who did not survive. No one strays far from the church, no matter what comes. The raid happens in sight of the place. It means God must be witness.
Around midnight, a visitor arrives with an entourage. He is a man named Frederick Ogden—Colonel Ogden, to his men. Ogden is a leader of the white insurgency. Les Américains have Fred Ogden as their leader. The Creoles have their own, French leader. He is out of sight, out of town, for the time being. But tonight, Constant is a soldier in Fred Ogden’s militia.
Ogden reminds the men that the taking of the precinct is just the first of two strikes. If the station holds, the rest of New Orleans falls, tomorrow. The city will surrender after the second raid, the one downtown. A raid that Ogden will lead on the main armory, in the garrison known as the Cabildo. Fred Ogden won local fame during the Civil War, when he rose to colonel and led a regiment of eight hundred rebels.
Everyone shakes Fred Ogden’s hand, everyone gets his hand on a shoulder. Fred Ogden is a businessman by day, a militiaman by night. During the day, he sells equipment for the cotton business. He has good manners, he is well spoken. Constant is a woodworker. His speech is rough, his voice sometimes raised. The businessman with the fine habits, the craftsman with the rougher manners—they are partners in the same cause. They speak in English, Constant’s second language, Ogden’s first. Constant and other white Creoles flicker between French and English.
Fred Ogden repeats the plan. Tomorrow, we have three hundred, and the Cabildo is ours.
The Cabildo has the armory for the Metropolitan Police. It is old and beautiful. When the city was capital of the colony of Louisiana, it went up as the courthouse. The Cabildo lies three miles away, a trolley ride downtown, in the section the Americans call the French Quarter. The French know it as the Vieux Carré—the Old Quarter. Since the end of the War Between the States, the Cabildo has been a symbol of the occupation. Not the colonial occupation, or a foreign invasion. The domestic occupation, the invasion of the U.S. Army, the Yankee army.
Ogden talks to the men, Constant listens. The colonel does not want them to die. These are the necessary blows in the fight for the rights of whites. When the counterattack comes, it is time for glory, not death. This is the kind of talk Ogden shares to raise the morale of his men. You are the leading fist in the coup. You are the knife that tests the flesh. If the precinct holds, tomorrow comes the fight that releases us all from the nigger tyranny.
The raiders make the Western Union man send word to the newspapers. Telegraph lines carry the story to the North: the Ku-klux has taken a stand. A few hours later, The New York Times runs an item—“A Riot in New Orleans.” It looks like a rebellion, the paper says, but do not be alarmed. “No hysterics are necessary about another civil war,” says the paper.
Fred Ogden leaves. His visit exhilarates. The men are drunk with responsibility. Now comes a wait—twenty-four hours, maybe. If the governor of Louisiana tells the Metropolitans to take back the precinct, or if the army comes from its barracks, then they have a fight. A guard is posted, and rotations are worked out. Guns are cocked at the windows. A few more fighters come in during the night, reinforcements who join the raid. It is 2:00 a.m … 3:00 … 4:00. But no attack comes. No Metropolitans, no army.
* * *
I have some papers of the Lecorgnes, and among them I find what appears to be his photograph. Constant Lecorgne was a workingman, and he took instructions when he posed for a camera. The description of the Lecorgne men from these days, in military records, is that they have a “florid complexion.” They are pale white, flushed with blossoms of red. Dark hair, whitening early, and blue eyes.
Polycarp Constant Lecorgne lives in New Orleans all his life, 1832—86.
Constant Lecorgne stands about five feet, eight inches, a man with delicate, birdlike hands. He has perfect fingernails. Narrow shoulders, and slight, maybe 150 pounds. He has a sturdy mustache, and long wavy hair, which he wears in a romantic flip. An oval face and thin lips, his features like lines, as though painted in strokes. The face is interrupted by a clenched jaw and a sharp chin.
The Lecorgnes have an underbite. I also have an underbite, it comes from them.
The mouth is turned down, the brow furrowed. Constant scowls. His scowl leaves lines like slashes on his forehead.
On March 5, at 9:00 p.m., the night after the attack on the precinct, Colonel Fred Ogden and his three hundred men mass downtown, on the street called Chartres. With clubs and guns and knives, the mob swarms toward the Cabildo, the arms depot. In the air is the rebel yell, the yodeling whoop the attackers used as soldiers in the Civil War.
This time, the Metropolitans are prepared. The chief of police, Sidney Badger, has sent word to the federal commander in New Orleans, James Longstreet, whose army troops fire over the heads of the mob. Longstreet has two small cannons that he fills with powder but not shot. As Ogden and the mob advance, Longstreet opens fire with his blank artillery. The K
u-klux scatters. They return with rifle and pistol fire, hiding in doorways. The cannons blast again, to the sound of crashing windows. One man falls dead. Ogden gives orders to pull back, and the big gang drains into the side streets. The raid on the Cabildo fails.
There is a Creole expression, which I feel sure Constant knows—Crachez dans l’air, il vous en tombera sur le nez, “When you spit in the air, it falls back on your nose.”
Three miles uptown, at the precinct in Bouligny, Constant and his gang wait. They are the thin line of the white uprising, the one that still holds. At 2:00 a.m. on March 6, the counterattack comes. The Metropolitan Police surround the building, shoot into windows. Constant, according to his testimony at court, retreats to the shelter of a staircase. He has a house full of children sleeping at home, and he does not care to die.
The Metropolitans come in through the doors. Constant is caught next to the telegraph office. He sees his cousin, Ernest Livaudais. He has known Ernest for years, heard him play music, gone to church with him. One of the Metropolitans shoots Livaudais in the arm. A comrade named Kendrick Chandler has a rifle. Chandler puts the shoulder stock on the floor, barrel aimed at the ceiling, preparing to surrender. Someone in the police squad shoots, a bullet ricochets off the muzzle of Chandler’s gun, goes into his chest—or so says the inquest. Chandler falls. Constant stands six feet from the man. Chandler dies the next day.
