"Pralines, Madame?": Emancipation, Free Enterprise, and the Praline Seller
Gallier Historic House 1132 Royal Street, New Orleans, Louisiana 70116
The exodus of African Americans from Louisiana's sugar plantations during the Civil War brought the praline to New Orleans. Pralines were a working-class food, powering Black laborers. With foraged pecans and cheap sugar often purchased through a thriving black market, Black women in New Orleans used their cooking skills to earn income and, in a few cases, fame. The growing popularity of the confection among tourists turned the praline, by the twentieth century, into a souvenir symbolic of the South.
Historian Dr. Anthony J. Stanonis, author of Creating the Big Easy: New Orleans and the Emergence of Modern Tourism, 1918–1945, and others, will discuss the history of the iconic sweet in a lecture at the Gallier Historic House. 6 pm. $20. hgghh.org.
