AMC VC Meta: The Book is Her Friend
In Rolin Jones' original script for the pilot, which is set several years earlier than the pilot:
Grace de Pointe du Lac is part of a Phyllis Wheatley Club which means she was probably very educated and activist.
Would someone like Grace have attempted to help with Claudia's education as a ward of Louis' in any universe? Or would class have gotten in the way, even if Louis being a vampire didn't?
This places Grace in the middle of all of these very activist educated gens de couleurs, and implies she's not a just a dilletante only concerned about wedding preparations and family dinners.
The founder of the New Orleans club, Sylvanie Francoz Williams was the principal of Thomy Lafon from 1897-1921.
The philantropist who funded Thomy Lafon funded a bunch of other creole schools that served mixed race people, such as Straight University and The Institute Catholique. The Institute Catholique alum page reads like a who's who of Creoles. Paul Trevigne taught there for 40 years and founded the newspapers l'Union and New Orleans Tribune.
SYLVANIE FRANCOZ WILLIAMS/PHYLLIS WHEATLEY CLUB/AMC IWTV TIMELINES
1895- 1st Phyllis Wheatley Club founded in Nashville TN.
1895/1896- Sylvanie Francoz Williams founds the New Orleans branch of the Phyllis Wheatley Club at her home in 1438 Euterpe Street, New Orleans
July 1896 Francoz is the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACW) when it was founded. The organization campaigns for women's suffrage and against Jim Crow laws, and lynching.
October 31, 1896- The New Orleans branch of the Phyllis Wheatley Club founds the "P W Sanitarium and Training Hospital for Nurses within the building of New Orleans University Medical College, It was the only training hospital for black doctors and nurses at the time.
In the same location it grew to have a Flint Medical College of New Orleans University in addition to the nurses' program in 1900.
The College graduated 116 doctors and 48 pharmacists before it was closed in 1911.
Flint-Goodridge Hospital at the same location(?) (1896-1985) was the only hospital in New Orleans that served nonindigent black patients during segregation.
Nurses outside of Flint Goodridge in 1932
(Fall) 1899 - Papa du Lac dies in the original Rolin Jones script.
June 27, 1900 A mob burns the Thomy Lafon school down during the Robert Charles Riots (June 24-27, 1900). The New Orleans Public School Board halted all public education for African Americans past the fifth grade. No access to public high schools until 1917.
1901- The New Orleans Phyllis Wheatley Club opens a kindergarten and daycare for working mothers.
March 19-25 1903 National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in NOLA. Francoz excluded under pressure from segregrationist Lost Cause feminists like Kate Gordon, who later split because they opposed a federal amendment guaranteeing the right to vote. National suffragists such as Susan B. Anthony and Dorothy Dix speak to the Phyllis Club instead.
Lost Cause Feminism; Part of the speech Francoz Williams gave at the Phyllis Wheatley Club.
1903- Claudia's year of birth according to the script for "The Thing Lay Still."
Fall 1904- Louis' story starts in the OG Rolin Jones script.
Fall 1905- Papa Du Lac dies in the script for the pilot episode.
1906- The second Thomy Lafon school is built on Locust street.
Fall 1910- Louis' story starts in the pilot episode
1913/1914- When Claudia would've reached the fifth grade and likely would've stopped her public education.
1915- Williams led a campaign that funded the first public playground for African American children in New Orleans
1917- The Storyville Riots in the show timeline result in widespread fires and Claudia's death and turning as a vampire. Claudia is 14.
Francoz was the first principal of the Thomy Lafon school in 1897; was principal until 1921. She was a vice-president of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACW) when it was founded in July. 1896.
SPARK IN THE DARK; READING BY CANDLELIGHT
Honestly the more I dig into meta; the more it is actually factually FOUL for Lestat to taunt Claudia about going to college and graduating summa cum laude. Or just taunting Louis about being into books.
This is a character who had a full vampire crash-out at Louis' family's dinner table about being dragged from the monastery and his education by his brothers and father who beat him.
You think he might have some empathy over the similarities in those situations but he doesn't demonstrate any in the show.
Claudia wrote several books worth of diaries, while this fuckface -- is triggered by his memories of Gabrielle?
The schools in New Orleans were underfunded if at all, and burnt down. Claudia, born 1903, and an orphan who lived with her auntie in an overcrowded boarding house, would've stopped her public school education, in 1913 or 1914 -aka the 5th grade.
Claudia is self educating as a vampire maybe from Louis' extensive book collection and also while she's train hopping from town to town. There is no evidence either of them are actually tutoring her or arranging for any kind of informal human education at any point, let alone informal vampire education when she returns to New Orleans. She's not just looking for vampire lore and learning languages. At one point, she's better at speaking languages than Louis. Louis probably had tutors-- Claudia doesn't.
No wonder Claudia makes that jibe about learning chess only well enough to help "Massa" pass the time. She's a grown woman mentally at this point, and it's not like she's being prepared to fit into a cover story as a well bred society human girl with decorative hobbies (with the bit of piano playing, the chess and the little easel she gets from Lestat -- grudgingly). She isn't even really learning spoken French from either Louis or Lestat, two bonafide Francophones.
Thankfully in this adaptation they don't have Lestat writing a book -- because this man writing a book would be too much. And I'm trying to imagine Daniel Molloy being Lestat's ghost writer.
Unfortunately for Claudia, punished for being literate, black and female, who self educates, doesn't stop in the United States. It follows her to Europe.
I'm not sure any of the theatre des vampires are learning anything new as vampires let alone reading or writing anything; Armand scoffs at "vampires with hobbies" as if having a hobby or learning something new wouldn't replace intercoven drama as a hobby. The coven absolutely depends on her to inject new life, vitality and interest into the coven even as they resent and punish her for it and keep claiming she's defective.
As a result of the vampire laws they claim she's violated, if you squint at the lynch mob trial overtones, you can say she's put to death for demonstrating continuing literacy. The only "designated writer" aka "playwright in residence" (of sorts) in the coven is Sam Barclay, who is supposed to adapt older plays, and writes the entirely new last one based on her diaries. I fucking swear, if Claudia is poltergeist instead of just the ghost of Louis's guilt she should make Sam Barclay's existence a misery. Maybe even Daniel Molloy because does he even have a book without her diaries?
blackamericanhistory.org, hnoc.org, vop.omeka.net, Carnival of Fury Robert Charles and the New Orleans race riot of 1900(archive.org), wgpfoundation.org
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