Le Meschacébé ([Lucy] La.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,973 issues from 1854 to 1922, published in Reserve, Louisiana, digitised for Chronicling America.
Le Meschacébé was founded in Lucy, Louisiana, in 1853 by Hippolyte-Prudent de Bautte (1821-1861). A native of Normandy and the son of a former officer of the Imperial Guard, de Bautte wrote for the Parisian newspaper Le Corsaire in the mid 1840s and was imprisoned for publishing incendiary pro-republican articles. After his release, he emigrated to Louisiana. By January 1848, de Bautte was writing for La Revue Louisianaise under the pseudonym Prudent d’Artlys, a name he retained as editor of Le Meschacébé. After working as a journalist in New Orleans, he moved in 1853 to Lucy, a small town along the Mississippi River in St. John the Baptist Parish. In the 19th century, this area was known for its large sugar plantations.
Taking its name from an early French spelling of the word “Mississippi,” Le Meschacébé was originally devoted almost entirely to legal notices, announcements of public sales, and ads for local businesses. Minutes of the parish police jury (similar to county councils in other states) were published in French and English. The first page carried serialized novels, often pirated from French journals but occasionally written by Louisiana authors. Some of the stories were set in Louisiana and dealt with subjects of contemporary importance such as race relations and immigration (see, for example, “Une fille de couleur” and “La femme d’un Know-Nothing”). Although the paper reported on topics of international significance such as the Crimean War and William…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Reserve, Louisiana, United States
- Collection
- Chronicling America
- Licence or status
- None stated by the archive
- Rights
- The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety.
- Credit
- Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities
- Who can read it
- Teens profiles and older (placed by Invisible Network from what the archive says; archives give no ratings)
- Archive
- Library of Congress