I'm reading a book about the rise of Teddy Roosevelt. Not because I'm interested in him specifically. I just enjoy reading these types of books from time to time.
I forget the exact year this incident happened, but it would have been late 1800's.
Roosevelt is in Chicago and iirc he was involved in discussions for who would be the next Republican nomination for Governor.
Fairly late in the discussions, Roosevelt suggests nominating a black man. Why? Because he's black, obviously.
It got me thinking, who was the first DEI hire in the United States? I'm sure this wasn't the first. (although the black guy didn't get the nomination in this case)
The culture of Freedmen, Mulattos, and Quadroons in pre-civil war South(specifically, New Orleans, as that was the only real metropolitan area in the South pre-Civil War) is arguably insane, and something that's rarely touched upon.
Probably because they really don't want to answer the question of 'Wait, you had a stratum of French college educated Blacks that ran businesses and newspapers? What happened to them?'
There were more metropolitan areas than New Orleans. Pensacola and Savannah, maybe Charleston. But they were all similar in that there was a class of educated blacks that typically owned slaves. Also, don't look too closely at the demographics of major slaveowners, because uncomfortable truths...
What happened to them?
Same thing that happened to every part of the South post-Civil War.
Which, to put very shortly, can be summed in two words; 'Economic Devastation'. Everything bad that could have happened, did happen - from the cotton market crashing due to the Suez Canal, to post-civil war reparations, no Marshal Plan equivalent, boil weevil infestation(which basically wiped out cotton), and topping it all off with the Oklahoma Dust bowl(and the Depression, which wasn't exactly felt but it happened all the same).
Yet, if you look at the northern states during this time period, this period of history is referred to as the Gilded Age, and later the Progressive Age. Funny, that.