Educating the Sons of Sugar

Jefferson College and the Creole Planter Class of South Louisiana
Erscheinungsjahr 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8173-5951-5
Verlag: The University of Alabama Press

Buch, Englisch, 312 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 153 mm x 228 mm, Gewicht: 492 g

A study of Louisiana French Creole sugar planters' role in higher education and a detailed history of the only college ever constructed to serve the sugar elite.

The education of individual planter classes—cotton, tobacco, sugar—is rarely treated in works of southern history. Of the existing literature, higher education is typically relegated to a footnote, providing only brief glimpses into a complex instructional regime responsive to wealthy planters. R. Eric Platt's Educating the Sons of Sugar allows for a greater focus on the mindset of French Creole sugar planters and provides a comprehensive record and analysis of a private college supported by planter wealth.
 
Jefferson College was founded in St. James Parish in 1831, surrounded by slave-holding plantations and their cash crop, sugar cane. Creole planters (regionally known as the ""ancienne population"") designed the college to impart a ""genteel"" liberal arts education through instruction, architecture, and geographic location. Jefferson College played host to social class rivalries (Creole, Anglo-American, and French immigrant), mirrored the revival of Catholicism in a region typified by secular mores, was subject to the ""Americanization"" of south Louisiana higher education, and reflected the ancienne population's decline as Louisiana's ruling population.
 
Resulting from loss of funds, the college closed in 1848. It opened and closed three more times under varying administrations (French immigrant, private sugar planter, and Catholic/Marist) before its final closure in 1927 due to educational competition, curricular intransigence, and the 1927 Mississippi River flood. In 1931, the campus was purchased by the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and reopened as a silent religious retreat. It continues to function to this day as the Manresa House of Retreats. While in existence, Jefferson College was a social thermometer for the white French Creole sugar planter ethos that instilled the ""sons of sugar"" with a cultural heritage resonant of a region typified by the management of plantations, slavery, and the production of sugar.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Pädagogik Geschichte der Pädagogik, Richtungen in der Pädagogik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: A Creole College in St. James Parish
- 1. Aristocracy, Education, and the Ancienne Population
- 2. The Rise and Fall of Jefferson College
- 3. The Forgotten Louis Dufau
- 4. Return of the Sugar Barons
- 5. Marists and Americanization
- Conclusion: Class and College
- Epilogue: Manresa, the Fifth Life of Jefferson College
- Appendix A: Institutional Presidents at the Jefferson College Site
- Appendix B: Acts to Incorporate and Support Jefferson College
- Appendix C: Sale of Jefferson College to Louis Dufau
- Appendix D: Property Deed: Valcour Aime to the Jefferson College Board of Directors
- Appendix E: Acts of Transfer: The Jefferson College Board of Directors and Valcour Aime to the Society of Mary
- Appendix F: An Act to Incorporate the Society of ""The Fathers of the Society of Mary""
- Appendix G: Sale of St. Mary's Jefferson College to the Society of Jesus
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index

Über Autor(innen)

R. Eric Platt is an associate professor of higher and adult education at the University of Memphis. He is the author of Sacrifice and Survival: Identity, Mission, and Jesuit Higher Education in the American South.