Twenty-seven percent of the New Orleans’ population by 1900 was reported as “colored races.” This figure represented 77,714 persons of African ancestry and a few hundred Chinese. The Picayune claimed (boasted would not be the right word) that New Orleans had “the largest negro population of any city in the world… outside Africa.” In fact, however, the federal census reported both Baltimore and Washington, D.C., as having slightly more black residents than the Crescent City, although several thousand blacks were probably missed by the census enumerators in each of these cities, especially New Orleans. The notion was common among the poorer black New Orleanians that if their family size were fully reported it would mean “increased taxation of some kind.” The Board of Health believed the city contained no less than 90,000 black people. The actual figure was probably close to 85,000.

There were wide differences in life styles and attitudes among the “colored” population of New Orleans. The “Creoles of color,” mostly descendants of the ten thousand free Negroes of the city’s antebellum era, ranked high on the economic ladder; most held skilled jobs or were in business or the professions. A few were quite wealthy. Nearly all the “Creoles of color” were of visibly mixed ancestry; many spoke French as a first language, and some could pass for white. Socially, they had little or nothing to do with the generally darker descendants of slaves. Their marked separation from the majority of the New Orleans black community was no transitory thing. It is still evident today.

[http://books.google.com/books?id=ijJpC3EbuoIC&printsec=frontcover&client=firefox-a&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0]