Author Night at Hubbell Library: Peter M. Wolf

The Sugar King: Leon Godchaux

This biography catalogs the life of Leon Godchaux, who arrived in New Orleans in 1837 a penniless, illiterate, Jewish thirteen-year-old, and went on to become known as the "Sugar King of Louisiana."

A penniless, illiterate, Jewish thirteen-year-old from France crosses the Atlantic alone. Landing in raucous and polyglot New Orleans in 1837, the third largest city in America, he starts out as a peddler of notions to plantations along the Mississippi. He remains unable to read or to write in English or in French his entire life. Nevertheless, by the end of his intrigue-filled life, Leon Godchaux is known as the "Sugar King of Louisiana," the owner of fourteen plantations, the largest sugar producer in the region and the top taxpayer in the state. He refuses to enter the sugar business until the end of slavery. Unsympathetic to the Lost Cause, caught up in the Civil War, and negotiating Reconstruction and Jim Crow, Godchaux simultaneously builds an esteemed New Orleans clothing empire.

Godchaux relies on the accomplishments of two Black men. Joachim Tassin, a slave whose birth status both men conceal, is entwined with Leon Godchaux in his clothing business, and Norbert Rillieux is a free man of color whose overlooked ingenious invention enables Godchaux to build his sugar empire.

Peter M. Wolf is an award winning author. His memoir, My New Orleans Gone Away, attracted feature reviews in The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post before it reached the New York Times e-book Best Seller list. His recent biography, The Sugar King: Leon Godchaux, A New Orleans Legend, His Creole Slave, and His Jewish Roots was praised by distinguished historians such as Walter Isaacson, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Nicholas B. Lemann. Wolf was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, Yale (BA), Tulane (MA), and New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts (PhD). His academic and research awards include a Fulbright Fellowship to Paris and several intervals as a Visiting Artist/Scholar at the American Academy in Rome. Wolf serves on the advisory board of the Tulane University School of Architecture, and as a trustee of the Louisiana Landmarks Society.

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