The Free People of Color of New Orleans: An Introduction
Mary Gehman is an historian, researcher, writer and publisher. Her book Women and New Orleans (Margaret Media, Inc. 1988) led her to study the origins of hundreds of free women of color who owned property in New Orleans in the late 1700s, and led to the writing of the book The Free People of Color of New Orleans. She has also written about free blacks from Louisiana who emigrated to Mexico in the years prior to the Civil War and the consequent Creole community of their descendants today in Mexico. Since flooding out in Hurricane Katrina in N.O. she has relocated upriver to Donaldsonville, Louisiana. Lloyd Dennis, who researched and provided the photos for The Free People of Color of New Orleans, is a native of the city and a professional photographer who while working on the book learned some new and positive things about his own background.