Thomy Lafon

Thomy Lafon was born free on December 28, 1810, in New Orleans, into the city's Francophone community of free people of color. His mother, Modeste Foucher, was a free woman of color born in Louisiana to an enslaved mother; his father, Pierre Larralde Lafon, a Frenchman, deserted the family while Thomy was still a boy. Raised in modest circumstances, the young Lafon began by selling cakes and small goods to laborers, opened a little store, and for a time taught school.

From these humble beginnings he built one of the great fortunes of nineteenth-century Black America. By 1842 he was listed in the New Orleans City Directory as a merchant on Rampart Street, and he grew into a shrewd money-lender and real estate broker, acquiring substantial property across the city. By 1870 his estate was estimated at roughly a quarter of a million dollars, making him among the wealthiest African Americans in the nation.

A quiet and devout man who never married, Lafon turned his wealth toward justice and mercy. An opponent of slavery, he gave to the antislavery cause and to institutions serving both Black and white citizens — the Institution Catholique, homes for orphans and the aged, Charity Hospital, Straight University, and the Sisters of the Holy Family among them. His name endures in the Lafon Nursing Facility and in schools that carried his name.

Lafon died in New Orleans on December 22, 1893. In an era of hardening discrimination, the Louisiana State Legislature voted to honor him, and a bust was commissioned for the Louisiana State Museum — an honor accorded to no Black American before him. May his generosity, given without seeking praise, remain a light to those who come after.