Lily Brooks

Venerable Mother Henriette DeLille (1813-1862) was a New Orleanian Creole and fourth-generation free woman of color. In 1836, she founded the Sisters of the Holy Family, an order of Black Roman Catholic nuns which still exists today. Her cause for canonization was opened by the Catholic Church in 1988, and if completed, would make DeLille the first New Orleanian and first American-born Black person to reach the level of Sainthood.

Defying legal and societal barriers of antebellum Louisiana, Henriette DeLille and the Sisters of the Holy Family pursued a collective mission to educate enslaved and free Black children and care for the elderly, sick, homeless and orphaned. She was also an outspoken critic of the plaçage system, a widespread practice which embodied the racial hierarchy of 19th-century New Orleans. Plaçage placed women of color in long-term sexual relationships with white men who had yet to establish enough wealth to marry women of European-American descent. Despite this work, and like many free Creole people of color of her time, DeLille maintained ownership of an enslaved woman named Betsy, who she freed only in her final will. I am fascinated by DeLille’s complicated, little-known history of both bravery and complicity. In her image, I find a reminder that the oppressive forces that shaped her world are still at work today. Her hands, eyes and mouth become a mandate to remember my own responsibility and privilege. These cyanotypes were made by appropriating sections of the only known portrait of DeLille, a carte-de-visite made by A. Constant (date unknown).