"Pralines, Madame?": Emancipation, Free Enterprise, and the Praline Seller

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.