"[5] Creoles of color helped produce the historic cultural pattern of unique literature, art, music, architecture, and cuisine that is seen in New Orleans.

[7] After the American Civil War, and Reconstruction, the city's black elite fought against informal segregation practices and Jim Crow laws.

For a time, there were customs regulating relationships between white men and young women of African or mixed ancestry, whose mothers would negotiate the terms.

[17] Social markers of creole identity have included being of Catholic faith, being a speaker of French and/or another French-derived language, having a strong work ethic, and being a fan of literature.

[18] Many Creoles of color were free-born, and their descendants often enjoyed many of the same privileges that whites did, including (but not limited to) property ownership, formal education, and service in the militia.

[22] The first wave of creole migration out of Louisiana occurred between 1840 and 1890 with the majority of migrants fleeing to ethnic-dominant outskirts of larger U.S. cities and abroad where race was more fluid.

[25] After the United States made the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and acquired the large territory west of the Mississippi, the Creoles of color in New Orleans volunteered their services and pledged their loyalty to their new country.

[27] In a February 20, 1804, letter, Secretary of War Henry Dearborn wrote to Claiborne saying, "…it would be prudent not to increase the Corps, but to diminish, if it could be done without giving offense…"[28] A decade later, the militia of color that remained volunteered to take up arms when the British began landing troops on American soil outside of New Orleans in December 1814.

Their son, Creole author and educator Alexander Dimitry, was the first person of color to represent the United States as Ambassador to Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

They disfranchised the majority of blacks, especially by creating barriers to voter registration through devices such as poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, etc., stripping African Americans, including Creoles of color, of political power.

Creoles of color were among the African Americans who were limited when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, deciding that "separate but equal" accommodations were constitutional.

[36] In 1850 it was determined that 80% of all gens de couleur libres were literate; a figure significantly higher than the white population of Louisiana at the time.

[36] During the antebellum period, well-educated francophone gens de couleur libres contributed extensively to literary collections, such as Les Cenelles.

[36] One example of such texts is the short story "Le Mulatre (The Mulatto)" by Victor Séjour, a Creole of color who lived and worked in Paris for most of his adult life.

[23] Even during the ban on racial commentary during the antebellum period, pieces written by these creoles reformulated existing French themes to subtly critique race relations in Louisiana.