Two texts bookend the major phase of literary activity by Creoles of color in New Orleans, the first book of poetry by US citizens of African descent, Les cenelles (1845) and Nos Hommes et Notres Histoires (1911). The first – a collection of poems – evokes sexual and romantic relationships between people of different races, a notion that runs radically counter to the racial politics of the rest of the US South. The second emerged as polemic as the Jim Crow Era gained full ascendance and marginalized nonwhite people in ways that ran counter to long-standing cultural patterns in New Orleans regarding the elite Creoles of color.