It is impossible to imagine New Orleans, and by extension American history, without the vibrant and singular Creole culture. In the face of an oppressive white society, members of the Socit dEconomie et dAssistance Mutuelle built a community and held it together through the era of slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow terrorism.Economy Hall: The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhoodfollows Ludger Boguille, his family, and friends through landmark eventsfrom the Haitian Revolution to the birth of jazzthat shaped New Orleans and the United States.

The story begins with the authors father rescuing a centurys worth of handwritten journals, in French, from a trash haulers pickup truck. From the journals pages emerged one of the most important multiethnic, intellectual communities in the US South: educators, world-traveling merchants, soldiers, tradesmen, and poets. Although Louisiana law classified them as men of color, Negroes, and Blacks, the Economie brothers rejected racism and colorism to fight for suffrage and education rights for all.

A descendant of the Economies community, author Fatima Shaik has constructed a meticulously detailed nonfiction narrative that reads like an epic novel.