International Women’s Day and Rose Nicaud
International Women’s Day may have come and gone, but we’re always eager to learn about the history of entrepreneurial women who have shaped our great city. Given the time change this weekend, we’re focusing on the caffeinated contributions of Rose Nicaud, a free woman of color who introduced New Orleans to one of our favorite traditions--cafe au lait coffee stands!
According to Mary Gehman and Nancy Ries’s Women and New Orleans: A History, Rose Nicaud was a former slave who had bought her freedom and was residing in the French Quarter of New Orleans by the mid 1800’s. Noticing the regular wave of parishoners attending Mass at St. Louis Cathedral and shoppers walking to and from the market for groceries, Rose realized she could set up a portable coffee stand and sell cups of cafe noir or cafe au lait to passersby. Before long dozens of standalone coffee stands managed by free women of color dotted the French Quarter, and Rose even secured a space for her coffee stand in the Halle des Legumes section of the French Market where her patrons could now sit and enjoy their brew.
“By the Civil War hundreds of jobs and professions in New Orleans were represented by women,” writes Gehman & Ries. And because the French code of Louisiana afforded free women of color the ability “to own property and transact business the same as their white counterparts,” the resourcefulness of these entrepreneurial women allowed them to be financially independent at a time when people of color were facing increased racial discrimination prior to and following the Civil War.
So if you’re still dragging from the shift to Daylight Savings, raise your coffee mug to Rose Nicaud and her New Orleans coffee stand tradition which always makes our time transition a little bit easier.
