New book showcases legacy of pioneering Black organization

15th March 2021   ·   0 Comments

By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer

Demarcated by a tall, chain link fence with several vines entwined across it, 1422-26 Ursulines Ave. in the historic Treme neighborhood today serves as the playground for the Homer A. Plessy Community School.

The school, named after the courageous plaintiff in the key 1896 segregation case of Plessy v. Ferguson, stands as a hallmark of the historical importance of the court case and its role as key in the fight for civil rights. But Decades before the landmark court case, on the 1400 block of Ursuline Avenue, there stood a building that was home to an organization that for decades played a vital role in the fight for racial equality, social justice and community uplift – Economy Hall, the longtime home of the Societe d’Economie et d’Assistance Mutuelle, one of the largest, most active and influential African-American benevolent organizations in New Orleans.

Beginning in the 1830s and running until the Economy Hall building was sold to a church in 1945, the Economie gathered together the elite people of color in the city – such as artisans, tradesmen, business owners and other middle-class residents – who used their numbers and influence not only to rally the Black Community in the battle for civil rights, but to also provide educational opportunities, community activities and a social safety net for the “colored” population of New Orleans.

The story of Economy Hall, or the Economie, now has a written history – a book recently published by the Historic New Orleans Collection and written by Fatima Shaik, who based the comprehensive volume, “Economy Hall: The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhood,” on the organization’s ledgers from the 1830s into the mid-20th century.

Shaik said the new book will hopefully make known and spread awareness of how important Economie was for African Americans for well more than a hundred years. She said the benevolent society was omnipresent in the community.

“Anything that was important to Black New Orleans had a connection to Economy Hall,” Shaik told The Louisiana Weekly. “The early members built houses in the early downtown faubourgs and French Quarter and serviced these communities with their shops. The next generation was involved in voting rights and Reconstruction government. The hall hosted opera and musicals and then jazz, which we know from the Jazz and Heritage Festival. In between there were marches that began at Economy Hall and many societies that used it for their meeting place.”

She added that Economie also fundraised thousands of dollars over the years to benefit the poor and sick, bolster free schools and donate to a variety of institutions, such as the Lafon homes; the Ear, Eye, Nose and Throat Hospital; and Corpus Christi School.”

Also of tremendous importance to society were the tireless efforts undertaken by Economy Hall to advocate for voting rights for people of color. Beginning in the mid-19th century with marches for suffrage and the formation of pro-Union regiments during the Civil War, Economie’s other socio-political endeavors included joining the post-war Reconstruction government, generating petitions for Black enfranchisement, and educating the local community, Black and white, of the role people of color desired and deserved to play in the country’s democracy.

Although Economie began largely as a fraternity of Creoles and free people of color from the middle-class elite of the city, the organization eventually grew to include all races and classes. The membership of Economie featured Italians, Cubans, Mexicans, Jews and Chinese – other ethnicities that continually faced oppression from the city’s white power structure.

Shaik said such a history of inclusion, advocacy and social betterment still resonates in the modern-day people and organizations that serve as spiritual descendants of Economy Hall.

“The activism in Economy Hall can inform today’s movements to form coalitions with others, to maintain a few values that they will never give up, and to be patient,” she said.

The new book was made possible by a couple of fortuitous twists of fate. The first came in the 1950s, when Shaik’s father rescued Economie’s ledgers from a trash pile in the back of a dump truck and stashed them in a closet at his home.

The second development occurred roughly four decades later, when Fatima Shaik discovered the dusty, long-forgotten ledgers at her family’s home and decided to pour through them.

What Shaik found in the massive 24 ledger books that comprised the history of Economie from 1836-1935 was a goldmine of comprehensive records – financial documents, meeting minutes, journals and other archives – that had been partially and crucially assembled and written by Ludger Boguille, the society’s longtime secretary.

“When I began to read the journals in the late 1990s,” Shaik said, “I realized that this society was the most prosperous, influential Black organization in the South before the Civil War, and probably afterwards.” (While her father and other ancestors were not members of the society, her father’s friend as well as some of her friends were descendants of Economie members.)

Shaik decided to start a book project based on Boguilles’ ledgers and supplemented by her modern-day scouring of academic journals and books, land and notarial records, and census reports. Shaik said that because much of the ledger’s minutes were written in French and at times very ornamental script, it took her five years to decipher and evaluate the records.

Shaik said her comprehensive search for the details of the history of Economie, including the ledgers as well as other historical archives, showed the vast amounts of sources available to research and chronicle local African-American life.

“Once I began looking for context, I realized that there are resources for discovering Black history all around us,” she said. “Just by taking a name, a researcher can go to the Conveyance Office and look up transactions, the Notorial Archives and get the details of this transaction, not to mention cross-referencing the name in all sorts of government records in the New Orleans Public Library and Ancestry.com. They contain treasure troves for anyone who wants to do the work. The challenge is the time to do the work and have a life. But I think you’ll find the same struggle with most writers.”

The resulting narrative in the book is framed by the life, career and community involvement of Boguille, the son of a Haitian immigrant, tradesman and free man of color in 1820s New Orleans. Boguille and his family were part of the thriving free colored population from which Economie and other benevolent organizations sprouted.

Ludger went on to acquire a rich education and writing ability and become an educator and operator of a private academy. Boguille joined Economie and became the organization’s secretary in 1857, a post he would hold until the mid-1870s.

As the new book chronicles, Boguille’s life and longtime membership in Economy Hall mirrored the development, growth and struggles of the African-American community and other oppressed, downtrodden populations in New Orleans.

During his life, Boguille achieved numerous honors and accomplishments. In 1865, he spoke at the first Louisiana State Colored Convention; served as a commissioner of voter registration; ran for and won public office as the city’s 2nd District alderman; and founded and operated a school for freedmen. Boguille’s important role was signified by his status as grand marshall for the celebration of Emancipation in Congo Square.

Much of Economy Hall’s existence and involvement in socio-political advocacy was threatened by and fraught with often violent attempts by the governing white power structure to discourage and suppress the civil rights efforts of the 19th century. In 1866, shortly after the war but before the adoption of the state’s new, progressive Reconstruction constitution, a raid by police and armed white thugs at a constitutional convention guided by Economie led to a massacre of innocent Blacks that Boguille himself barely escaped.

Then, in 1900, Economy Hall members were forced to retreat into the society’s building when another white mob committed another racially motivated massacre and riot.

After that, Economie functioned largely as a fundraising and charity organization, as well as host for the city’s burgeoning jazz scene and other cultural creations of 20th-century Black society.

Boguille’s health began deteriorating in the mid-1870s, and he eventually passed away in 1892. (In 1930, his grandson was elected assistant secretary of Economy Hall.)

Tragically and sadly poignantly, Boguille’s own health struggles and death corresponded with the dismantling of Black civil rights and the re-segregation of Louisiana society; Reconstruction ended in 1877 when federal troops left the state, triggering a two-decade erosion of freedoms that culminated with Homer Plessy’s loss in Plessy v. Ferguson.

Economy Hall’s physical structures on Ursulines Avenue also gradually decayed as the 20th century progressed, and following its sale in 1945, hurricane damage forced the demolition of the building complex that for decades housed one of Black New Orleans’ most vital, progressive and beneficial forces. But Shaik hopes her efforts will help inspire current generations of historians, educators, activists and social advocates by revealing the saga of one organization that led the way.

“If you look at Economy Hall, you’ll see a blueprint for maintaining a viable community,” Shaik said. “Their goal was to help one another, teach one another, and hold out a protective hand to suffering humanity. They were able to do that while being situated on one block on Ursulines Street for more than 100 years. Support your institutions. Make sure they contain an educational component. Bring someone else along if you become successful.”

This article originally published in the March 8, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.