Date: Monday, July 15, 2002 1:43 PM
From: Marion I. Ferreira
Subject: Creole Heritage Festival, Montebello California
The Creole Family History Convention was a well attended event on Saturday, July 13, 2002. The family history displays were very well displayed for all to see -genealogy of generations as far back as 1768 were displayed along with pictures of ancestors not as far back as 1768 but some from at least the mid 1800’s. My family display and pictures were in those categories. I also displayed a large poster giving the history of Mother Delille, born as a Free Person of Color or a Native Born French Creole in 1812 of a Creole family of wealth – the daughter of Jean Baptiste Lille Sarpy and Marie Josephe Dias. A blown up display of her history written by Sr. Deteige and Charles Nolan in “No Cross, No Crown”, with highlights of her Creole status from her birth to her founding of the Order of the Sisters of the Holy Family in which only Free People of Color (meaning Creoles of Color but not stated) of wealth and good character were allowed to join the Order. An article about the Decuir family who had always lived as caucasian found out that one of their grandparents was a slave – family of Simeon Decuir and that they were in fact Creoles of Color.
I sat in on the seminar held by Dr. Charles Nolan, the author for the biography of Mother Henriette Delille on the last 15 minutes of the session. I had gone there for one purpose and that was to confront Dr. Nolan about the fact that Mother Delille was being portrayed as a Native Born African American instead of the Native Born French Creole American that she was and that he as the author of her biography should have control over how she was being identified. He told me that it hadn’t been substantiated and documented that she in fact was the daughter of Jean Baptiste Lille Sarpy and that there were no records to verify that fact although he collaberated with Sr. Deteige in the writing of “No Cross, No Crown”. But however, the record of her maternal parents and grandparents showed that she was from African heritage. I pointed out that her grandparents were Dubreuil and Dias, which meant to me that besides the African they were French and Spanish. What happened to those ethnicities? Did the Great African blood wash all away those ethnicities which made her a Creole? I think I heard something like she has been adopted by the African-American community along with a lot of other double-speak. So I asked when someone is adopted by a family or a community then that changes their ethnic identity? So in fact if she had been adopted by a Spanish community then she would have been Native Born Spanish American? Or by an Asian community, she would have been a Native Born Asian American? Native Born to me means the ethnicities that a person is born with an not who they are adopted by. I told Mr. Nolan that I and every Creole with any intelligence are not going to stand by and do nothing about this outrageous misidentification of Mother Henriette Delille. So if she had been adopted by a Caucasian community would she have been a Native Born Caucasian American? That this Master-Slave mentality has to stop and I will do all in my power to see that it does. After the meeting, Michelle Olinger came over to my table and told me that it wasn’t Dr. Nolan’s doings but that of the Sisters of the Holy Family and that Dr. Nolan intends to write about Mother Delille as the Free Person of Color that she was. However, it doesn’t seem that he will be writing her as a Creole of Color which is what she was when she was born by all meanings of the term – a person of European and African descent natively born in the Louisiana territory – a term originated because of the multiracial background – adopted as far back as 1590 and written in Garcilosa de la Vega’s history on the Spanish West Indies. It would seem that the Sisters of the Holly Family are using Mother Delille’s history and misidentifying her ethnic background in order that she would be more representative of the present-day racial make up of the Order, which in no wise is representative of her original Order from 1842 to 1865, when it was only after Emancipation Proclamation that noviciates of the Black race were permitted to join. And then also if she was not the daughter of Jean Baptiste Lille Sarpy, then why all of the records being given of her brother Jean Delille and his descendants as her relatives? I am still going on with my Petition of Protest to this whole setup since it would seem that this misidentification of Mother Delille’s ethnic background still persists. If she will be written up as a Free Person of Color by Nolan and the Sisters persist on publishing her as a Native Born African American by newspapers, TV articles, in the Tidings, in speeches and in all of the Catholic Churches acorss the country and perhaps in all of the foreign countries, then she will go down in history as a Native Born African American because that is what gets the attention of people and definitely will drown out the one or two books that will be written about her..