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Marie Couvent: An ex-slave and philanthropist who also owned slaves [1]

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Date: 2024-05-20  

Credit: Paper Monuments, artwork by Lydia Stein

Marie Couvent was a person of contradictions.

She was enslaved as a child. And, she enslaved Black people. She could not read or write. And, she donated property for a school for Black orphans.

Couvent was born in Africa about 1757. She was shipped to Saint Domingue in the 1760s, and fled to New Orleans during the Saint Domingue Revolution. It is unknown how she earned her freedom, but as a free woman of color she bought land.

“Like many free people of color in New Orleans, Couvent spoke French and attended Catholic mass,” states 64 Parishes. “She also owned at least 23 slaves during her lifetime.”

She continued to purchase land and property with her husband Bernard Couvent until he died on May 22,1829. Couvent lived until June 29, 1837. In her will, she wrote:

“I bequeath and order that my land at the corner of Grands Hommes and Union streets (now Dauphine and Touro) be dedicated and used in perpetuity for the establishment of a free school for the colored orphans of Faubourg Marigny.”

A group of Black Creoles faced opposition from white city leaders but succeeded in opening the Institution Catholique des Orphelins Indigents, or the Catholic School for Indigent Orphans in 1848. According to New Orleans Historical, it was the first community school dedicated to educating Black children in the Deep South.

Over the years, the school’s ownership and name changed, but was not named for Couvent, according to 64 Parishes. A new Faubourg Marigny public school was named in her honor in 1940, but was renamed in the 1990s because Couvent owned slaves.

“Despite controversy surrounding the memory of Marie Couvent,” Elizabeth Clark Neidenbach writes on 64 Parishes, “this former slave’s vision has provided generations of African American children in New Orleans with access to an education that was often denied them.”

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[1] Url: https://veritenews.org/2024/05/20/bitd-marie-couvent-slavery-saint-domingue/

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