Victor-Eugene McCarty

McCarty was a civil rights activist who held a seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives and was one of the first of several prominent free black composers.

[2][3] McCarty did not publish as widely as many of his fellow Creole composers of the era, but he was well known for performing and organizing other musicians, and playing a role in Reconstruction-era politics.

McCarty tried to enroll in the prestigious Imperial Conservatory of Paris for music but he was beyond the age requirement; luckily he used his wealthy status and political connections to attend the institution.

He was forcibly removed on the evening of January 19, 1869, from a performance of The Barber of Seville at the New Orleans French Opera House along with Eugene Staes, a Confederate veteran of Shiloh turned Radical Republican.

[8] A Creole of color of Haitian descent named Louis Placide Canonge took over the French Opera House from the 1872-1873 and 1873-1874 seasons.

[9] McCarty helped launch a boycott that shuttered the opera house for its racially exclusive seating policies in 1875 which led to its closure.

[10][11][12][13] McCarty lost his job as a clerk in the Second Municipal Police Court after the Republicans left New Orleans sometime around 1877 for his safety and three years later he was listed as a teacher in West Baton Rouge living in a rented room.