Another Fade to Black and Fade to White Story
A Belgian carpenter named Hipolite Martinet and a free Creole woman of French and West African heritage named Marie Louise Benoit produced a family together in St. Martinville, Louisiana. One of the children named Louis A. Martinet was born on December 28, 1849 around Christmas time. Committed to literate children, Hipolite and Marie educated the young Louis at schools for freedmen in New Orleans after the Civil War.
In 1868, a momentous event occurred in New Orleans which would have meaning for the adult life and career of Louis Martinet. Straight University uptown on Canal Street between Tonti and Rocheblave Street opened up for business. The American Missionary Association (AMA) founded Straight as part of its efforts throughout the South to educate black people formerly enslaved. The initial endowment came from Seymour Straight, a wealthy cheese manufacturer from Hudson, Ohio. Straight was legally incorporated as of June 25, 1869.
Like many pioneer black lawyers, Martinet felt the call to public service. And there was a strong demand for leaders of black people. The voters elected Martinet in 1872 to represent Saint Martin’s Parish in the Louisiana House of Representatives. He would serve through April 1875 when he lost his seat due to the Wheeler Compromise, a grand resolution of the disputes related to the 1874 election.
In the same year, Martinet chose the practice of law as a career. He entered the new Straight University Law School in the fall of 1874. Louisiana, like many states at the time, allowed law students to take the bar exam after the end of the first year in law school. Martinet passed the exam and was admitted to the Louisiana bar in December 1875.
In 1876, Martinet became the first black graduate of Straight Law School. He was the first black graduate of distinction from the law school. Martinet paid for his law studies by working part-time as a French tutor and teacher.
These were changing times for Martinet. He sensed that les bons moments of Reconstruction were coming to an end. On August 6, 1877, he applied in writing for a full-time teaching position at Straight University as a professor of Latin and French. Meanwhile, he also served as one of the directors of the public schools for New Orleans. Martinet waited and waited for a response. He naturally assumed his qualifications would wow over the dean and faculty. Black lawyers were few and far between in New Orleans. In fact, there were only two other black lawyers in the city at the same: Louis A. Bell and Thomas Morris Chester.
The days ticked by. Still no response from the faculty at Straight.
On August 20, 1877, Martinet exercised agency. He wrote Straight. He laconically observed, no response. “I leave tomorrow for the country.”
The power maneuver did not work. Martinet returned from the country to New Orleans and practiced law.
In May 1878, Martinet vacated his Board of Director position on the City Board of School Directors. Martinet’s departure from the school board was short-lived as he was reappointed to the Board of Directors on February 1879.
The 1880s
As the new decade of the 1880s rolled in, Martinet extended his influence beyond practicing law and service on the City School Board. He moved into the field of journalism, for example. He edited the New Orleans Progress. Appointment as Special Post Office Agent followed in 1881. The follow year, Martinet received another federal post as he was made Special Deputy Surveyor for the Port of New Orleans.
In 1882, Martinet began to build a home and a family. He married Miss Leonora V. Miller. They would have two children together, although one died as an infant.
With a new wife and children came new horizons in the practice of law as well. On June 2, 1885, Martinet was admitted to practice in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
In 1888, Martinet opened up a notary practice which brought in additional income. He would maintain his practice until 1917.
The 1890s
Martinet began to publish the Daily Crusader, another newspaper aimed at the black population. Many of his articles and news stories chronicled daily discrimination against blacks in New Orleans, particularly passage in 1890 of the Louisiana separate car law by race. Martinet publicly and repeatedly denounced the Jim Crow law in his paper. He became the voice of the anti Jim Crow movement.
History records that Louis A. Martinet was the first black lawyer to use the term “test case.” He did so as he planned out a litigation strategy to attack Jim Crow segregation in the courts. The more Martinet wrote about local race segregation, the more he settled upon a long-range plan to prevent race segregation in public accommodations. In the early 1890s, he declared “we’ll make a case, a test case, and bring it before federal governments of the invasion of right [of] a person to travel through the states unmolested.”
A test plaintiff, Homer A. Plessy, was chosen by the Citizens Committee. Plessy violated the segregation law, was duly arrested, and convicted under state law. It is interesting that Martinet’s friendship with a white New York lawyer, Albion W. Tourgee, influenced the appellate litigation in Plessy v. Ferguson. Tourgee was chosen to represent Plessy before the U.S. Supreme Court for several reasons. First, Tourgee and Martinet were friends. Race did not come between them. Second, many black lawyers practiced “almost exclusively in the police courts.” So, no blacks were considered for the appeal work. Only experienced appellate lawyers were considered to represent Plessy which I consider to have been a wise, dispassionate judgment call by Martinet. Even though the Plessy case was lost before the Supreme Court, Tourgee was a wise choice by Martinet and his Citizens Committee.
Martinet left his proud and dutiful mark in American history by conceiving the test case of Plessy v. Ferguson. As legal historian J. Clay Smith put it, “It was Martinet who mobilized the community efforts, shaped the case, selected the lawyers, and edited a key document in the appeal.” https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plessy_v._Ferguson
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May 5, 1896
On May 5, 1896, Louis A. Martinet was standing on the corner of Orleans and Rampart Streets in downtown New Orleans. Martinet presumably gave no thought to the drunk man who “came waltzing along. Without a word of warning, he drew a revolver and placed it in Martinet’s stomach and was about to pull the trigger…” A number of bystanders came to Martinez’s aid and overpowered the drunkard.
Come to find out, the drunk man, Matthew J. Ryan, had once been a sober and enterprising bookkeeper. He had his act together. A relative in Ireland left Ryan a good-sized fortune. The money corrupted Ryan’s life. He began to drink and, after a while, had run through all of his inherited fortune. He was stone cold broke and, in his drunken state, was seconds from killing a stranger on the street. Ryan was arrested, charged with assault with intent to kill, and held on $1,000 bond.
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-times-picayune-ryans-rash-act-a-d/73440124/
And for those readers who are conspiracy theorists, consider the timing of events. Could it be that the timing of the oral argument in Plessy (April 13, 1896), the random assassination attempt on Martinet’s life (May 5, 1896), and the decision in Plessy (May 18, 1896) were not coincidences? I leave it for you to decide.
Conclusion: Louis A. Martinet passed away on June 7, 1917. Martinet left a lasting legacy in New Orleans. Named after Martinet, the Louis A. Martinet Legal Society was organized in 1984 with the mission of electing more Black judges in New Orleans. There is an irony that black lawyers remember and honor the name Martinet.
Due to their physical appearance and the harsh social conditions around the turn of the century, many of Louis A. Martinet’s relatives left St. Martinville, Louisiana between 1900 - 1920 for California. No one knew them in the Golden State. They could easily create a new identity. The cousins, nieces and nephews began to claim descent from French and Belgian parents which was true, in part.
By the year 1930, 90% of Martinet family members were passing for white in California and throughout the globe. A white family became black became white again. Thus is one story out of millions in America.
Louis A. Martinet (1849 - 1917)
A white family became black became white again. Thus is one story out of millions in America.
Love it.
I look forward to the photos. I always like seeing photos, and historical ones are particularly interesting. Have you ever looked at ones that have been colorized? What I notice is how much more relatable the people in them look. They feel much closer in time.
This is probably too complicated, but I was reading your book last night, and of course, your essays here on black history. What do you think is going on lately that we’ve taken such a hard turn when it comes to black culture. Suddenly, we have to tread lightly when it comes to anything having to do with black lives. I’ve never felt so uncertain about our relationship to one another.
I remember meeting a good friend for lunch (I think I’ve mentioned this before), and she was upset at the idea that just being white made her a racist. She was in some women’s group, and one of them suggested everyone read “White Fragility.” Then there’s the demand for DEI in businesses and schools. There seem to be endless examples of how blacks need to be treated, and even white people are calling other white people racists. To be honest, this entire movement feels “racist” to me. What do you think has happened or is happening?
I apologize for going a bit off topic, but all of the positive things you are teaching us about black lives, seem to have never existed. Why is everyone so unhappy when things are better than ever before?