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

Hermann-Grima + Gallier Historic Houses, managed by The Woman’s Exchange, preserves two 19th-century French Quarter homes and, through their architecture, collections, and history, inspires discourse about our collective past and its relevance to our present and future. Visitors, students, and researchers explore such diverse topics as the lives of the houses’ owners and enslaved people, free people of color, open-hearth cooking, mourning rituals, and the entrepreneurial pursuits of women.

Hermann-Grima + Gallier Historic Houses (HGGHH)

Join historian Dr. Anthony Stanonis to learn about the origins of the New Orleans praline.

Gallier House Shop

About this Event: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.About this Speaker:Dr. Anthony J. Stanonis is a native New Orleanian. He received a BA in History from Loyola University New Orleans and his MA and PhD in History from Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Creating the Big Easy: New Orleans and the Emergence of Modern Tourism, 1918-1945 (2006), Faith in Bikinis: Politics and Leisure in the Coastal South since the Civil War (2014), and New Orleans Pralines: Plantation Sugar, Louisiana Pecans, and the Marketing of Southern Nostalgia (2024).This lecture is made possible with support from the New Orleans Recreation and Culture Fund.

Muddy connections: levees, drainage and environmental justice in Louisiana

June 15-19 Courtyard Camp at Hermann-Grima House

Hermann-Grima House

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

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

More events from Hermann-Grima + Gallier Historic Houses (HGGHH)

Discover more events from Hermann-Grima + Gallier Historic Houses (HGGHH), from Community to other experiences you might love.

Muddy connections: levees, drainage and environmental justice in Louisiana

June 15-19 Courtyard Camp at Hermann-Grima House

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