ACC Commemorates Captain André Cailloux & Launches New Campaign for Freedom

By C.C. Campbell-Rock

Church bells rang across New Orleans on Monday, July 29. The city commemorated the 161st anniversary of Union Captain Andre Cailloux. He was a brave freedom fighter and freedman who led an assault against the Confederacy in 1863. He gave his life to free enslaved New Orleanians.

Celebrants gathered at the former St. Rose De Lima Church. It is now home to The Andre’ Cailloux Center for Performing Arts & Cultural Justice (ACC). Lauren Turner Hines, co-founding executive director of the ACC, issued a call to action. She urged everyone to join the fight for freedoms eroded by dictatorial officials.

Honoring a Hero

Members of the National Association of Black Military Women—NOLA Chapter attended the ceremony. They are freedom fighters in their own right. The event included a documentary screening of Cailloux’s life and a voter registration drive.

The National Association of Black Military Women (NABMW) consists of women veterans or current members of the U.S. Armed Forces. “In some ways, we are still fighting for freedom,” Hines told Think504.com. Through his courage, “Captain Callioux shows us who we are, extreme fighters for freedom and equality.”

Hines highlighted liberties under attack: the freedom to vote, economic freedom, body autonomy, freedom to learn, and freedom of expression. Today, the fight for freedom is more than a buzzword. Abortion and book bans, immigration bans, gerrymandered voting districts, attacks on voting rights, forced births, and attacks on the free press are real. Their supporters threaten to kill democracy in America.

Campaign for Freedom

In view of the fight for freedom on all fronts, the ACC is launching a monthly “Freedom Now and Forever” campaign. The events will focus on turning out the vote. Vice President Kamala Harris’s use of Beyonce’s 2016 “Freedom” song as her campaign theme is a call to action. It signals that freedom is on the ballot in 2024.

Harris’s selection of the song signaled her respect for the artist and emphasized the need to continue fighting for freedoms. Some wish to return to a time when freedom was reserved for a select few. “We won’t go back,” rally-goers chanted at Harris, knowing that the fight for freedom is never-ending.

Historical Context

Some of our ancestors were kidnapped and brought to North America, chained and bound, against their will. Over four centuries, some Black Americans bought their freedom and escaped enslavement with just the clothes on their backs. Others fought in the American Civil War, both freedmen and the enslaved, to end slavery. They were determined to be free.

The song “Oh, Freedom,” a negro spiritual, was sung back then and continues to be sung during civil rights and protest marches. “Oh, freedom. Oh, freedom. Yes Oh, freedom over me. And before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave and go home to my Lord and be free.”

It’s a bitter irony that Patrick Henry, a founding father, said, “Give me liberty or give me death,” urging fellow Virginians in 1775 to fight for freedom against the British during the American Revolution. Henry became the first and sixth governor of Virginia. At the time of his death in 1799, Henry held 67 enslaved people.

Ongoing Struggles

The mindset of Henry and others who traded in buying and selling humans and believed Black people were less than human still exists. Many Americans willfully support Donald J. Trump Sr. They would rather vote for a convicted felon, thief, cheat, and fraud before casting a vote to benefit themselves and other Americans.

Many unsung Black heroes died for freedom before, during, and after the American Civil War. Captain Andre Cailloux was among the first to die battling the Louisiana Confederacy. On Monday, the bells tolled for Cailloux, a freedman and “man of means” who sacrificed his life so others could be free.

Remembering Cailloux

André Cailloux was born into slavery on a plantation owned by Joseph Duvernay near Pointe a la Hache in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, according to The Louisiana Weekly. He was emancipated at age 21 and became a cigarmaker. By 1860, he owned a shop in Faubourg Marigny. Cailloux was 36 when the war began.

With the arrival of Union General Benjamin Butler in Louisiana in 1862, Cailloux joined the Union’s First Louisiana Native Guard. He played a prominent role in the Siege of Port Hudson in East Baton Rouge. Captain Cailloux’s Company E was 100 men strong, including enslaved and freed Black men. They carried the banner for the 1st Regiment.

Desdunes’ Account

Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes was a civil rights activist, poet, historian, journalist, customs officer, African-American historian, Civil War veteran, and New Orleanian. Desdunes described Cailloux’s courage under fire based on the eyewitness account from his younger brother, Aristide, who served under Cailloux:

“The eyes of the world were indeed on this American Spartacus. The hero of ancient Rome displayed no braver heroism than did this officer who ran forward to his death with a smile on his lips and crying, ‘Let us go forward, O comrades!’ Six times, he threw himself against the murderous batteries of Port Hudson. In each assault, he repeated his urgent call, ‘Let us go forward for one more time!’ Finally, falling under the mortal blow, he gave his last order to his attending officer, ‘Bacchus, take charge!’ If anyone should say the knightly Bayard did better or more, according to history, he lies.”

Final Honor

Historians note that Confederate sharpshooters shot at Union troops trying to retrieve African-American casualties. Cailloux’s body, along with other members of the 1st Louisiana Native Guard who fell with him, was left on the battlefield until the surrender of Port Hudson on July 9, 1863. Cailloux received a hero’s funeral in the city with a large procession and thousands of attendees on July 29, 1863.

The New York Times wrote that Cailloux “had sealed with his blood the inspiration he received from Mr. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.” According to the newspaper, his sacrifice convinced witnesses that “the struggle must go on until there is not legally a slave under the folds of the American flag.”

So revered and respected was Captain Cailloux that Harper’s Magazine, a nationally distributed publication, included a drawing of Cailloux’s funeral procession on its pages.

“Cailloux had deep and strong ties to the community. The more than a mile-long funeral procession followed the streets surrounding Bayou Road. New Orleans had never seen anything like it: immense crowds of Black residents thronging Esplanade Avenue, including members of thirty-some mutual aid societies,” Bayou Road Business Association reports.

“Art and culture have a role in pushing us forward,” Hines explains. “It’s a huge disservice to his legacy that we don’t know more about Captain Cailloux. But in 2024, we at ACC are embracing his idea and launching a campaign to do that,” Hines adds.