Université Sainte-Anne, African Nova Scotian Affairs and the Office of Acadian Affairs and Francophonie have the pleasure to invite you to the free public conference: “By Any Means Necessary: The Murder of Constant Melançon, Acadian Planter of Louisiana, by Toussaint, His Slave and Childhood Friend”.
By Clint Bruce, Assistant Professor Chair of the Research Chair in Acadian and Transnational Studies at the Université Sainte-Anne
This conference takes a look at the relationship between Acadians and Africans in Louisiana through a tragic incident that occurred in 1858: The killing of sugar planter Constant Melançon by his slave and childhood friend Toussaint. Though the primary narrative focuses on the Acadian’s collective suffering at the hands of the British, the historical reality grows more complicated. In pre-Civil War Louisiana, many Acadians become slaveholders after the Deportation in the Deep South. The story of the Melançon family reveals not only this facet of the Acadians, but also the lives and practices of resistance developed by African-descended Creoles held in bondage on the "Acadian Coast," part of the sugar belt along the Mississippi River. This talk examines the significance of Toussaint’s act of resistance in the context with the national controversy over slavery, which would soon lead to the U.S. Civil War.
