They Execrate Us, But They Are Still Paying Rent on Our Legacy

Diary of Pepper Saint Clair
New Orleans, Louisiana

The morning before I flee north, at a café whose name I shall not disclose because they charge extra for chicory


I always find myself in a bit of a quandary when I discover that the ground I am standing on was purchased by someone they claimed had no standing.

Here I am, sipping a café au lait that tastes of roasted ambition and colonial regret, when I strike up a conversation with a gentleman of a certain vintage who sweeps the floors of this very establishment. He notices my tignon — tied now in the proper Creole knot, thank you very much — and asks if I know whose legacy I am drinking.

I confess I did not. I assumed, like any sensible person, that I was merely consuming overpriced caffeine. But no. He tells me of Rose Nicaud. An enslaved woman who became the first coffee vendor in this entire city — Black or white, mind you — selling her chicory blend from a portable stand right here in the French Quarter. She worked weekends, saved her earnings under the coartación system, and purchased her own freedom. Then her family's freedom. 

Then opened a kiosk in the French Market that predates every tourist trap currently overcharging for beignets.
I was, as you can imagine, gobsmacked. Here I had been, strolling through this quarter thinking myself a visitor, when in fact I was walking through a ledger of Black women's real estate.

[She sets down her cup. The saucer clinks with finality.]

And then the floor-sweeper — who, I am beginning to suspect, has been sent by Providence itself to humiliate my education — keeps talking.

He speaks of Cecile Bonille. A free woman of color whose estate was valued at $31,443. In an era when most people measured wealth in chickens and good intentions, she measured hers in property. Actual land. Actual buildings. Actual deeds.

He speaks of Rosette Rochon — another free woman of color who owned not one cottage but several, including a grand two-story galleried townhouse with a French-style garden that would make Versailles feel insecure. She did not rent. She did not lease. She owned. While white men were busy writing laws about where she could sit, she was busy deciding which parlor furniture would best complement her crown molding.

And then — then — he tells me of Catherine Henry. Marie Laveau's own grandmother. Who purchased the lot on St. Ann Street in 1798 and built a cottage described at the time as "the most beautiful house in the back of the French Quarter." Not a beautiful house. The most beautiful. Built by a Black woman. Owned by a Black woman. Passed down through generations of Black women, while the so-called elite were still figuring out how to properly starch their collars.

[She leans back. The cat-eye frames catch the morning light.]

Let us examine the arithmetic, shall we?

They execrated us. They called us property. They wrote laws stating that we could not own, could not earn, could not build, could not be. And yet. The very French Quarter they parade through today — the very cobblestones they photograph for their Instagrams, the very market they call "historic," the very buildings they have the audacity to label "heritage" — was bought, sold, caffeinated, and maintained by Black women.

Rose Nicaud did not just sell coffee. She sold the first cup of morning consciousness in a city that would later pretend she never existed. The French Market — their precious "oldest public market in America" — was essentially a mall built on Black women's enterprise. Les vendeuses sold pralines, calas, beer, and dignity by the pound. Some of them bought their own freedom. Some bought their children's freedom. Some — and here is where the story turns truly delicious — even purchased enslaved laborers to build their businesses, because they understood the game better than the men who wrote the rules.

They execrated us, but they built their quarter on our coffee.

They execrated us, but they walked streets paved with our praline profits.
They execrated us, but they slept in houses whose mortgages were held by women they claimed could not hold a pen.

[She picks up her cup again, studies it with new reverence.]

I look around this café now and I see ghosts. Not the sad, moaning kind that rattle chains in Gothic novels. I see Rose Nicaud, counting her coins after a long day of vending. I see Cecile Bonille, reviewing property deeds by candlelight.

I see Catherine Henry, standing on her St. Ann Street lot in 1798, deciding exactly where the garden would go, while white men in wigs were still arguing about whether she was fully human.

They did not wait for permission. They did not wait for emancipation. They did not wait for the elite to stop execrating them long enough to notice their excellence. They simply purchased. They built. They owned. They passed it down.

And the modern world? The modern world has the audacity to put up a hotel near this quarter and advertise it as "New Orleans' only Black woman-owned hotel" — as if this were a novelty. As if Rose Nicaud had not already claimed this territory before the hotel's great-great-grandfather was even a twinkle in his plantation owner's eye.

[She finishes her coffee. Sets the cup down with precision.]

I must pack now. My train north departs shortly, and I have already missed one eyebrow appointment due to historical revelation. But I leave this city with my head covered in defiance, my pockets full of receipts, and my heart swollen with the knowledge that the French Quarter was never truly French.

It was Creole. It was coffee. It was calas and contracts and crown molding purchased by women who understood that ownership is the only language the elite truly fears.

They execrate us, but they are still paying rent on our legacy.

Isn't that just the most tragic little arrangement?
— P.S.C.

P.S. — This entry was written while drinking Rose's Blend, a chicory coffee roast inspired by the first woman to wake this city up. Available in the shop for those who prefer their caffeine with a side of property rights.