LimmudFest Nola 2023

Peter Wolf will share the fascinating life story of his great-great grandfather, Leon Godchaux who emigrated alone from Alsace-Lorraine to New Orleans in 1837 as a penniless, illiterate, Jewish thirteen-year-old. By the end of his intrigue-filled career, Leon Godchaux was the owner of fourteen plantations, the most productive and scientifically advanced sugar producer, and the largest taxpayer in the state –  the acknowledged  “Sugar King of Louisiana.” He refused to enter the sugar business until slavery ended, and his economic rise was enabled by two Black men. Unsympathetic to the Lost Cause, caught up in the Civil War, and negotiating through Reconstruction and Jim Crow, he was also able to build a retail, wholesale. and manufacturing clothing empire and gained a new nickname, the "Duke of Clothing.”