Louis Charles Roudanez

Portrait of Roudanez (from The Historic New Orleans Collection)

Louis Charles Roudanez (1823-1890) was an American physician and newspaper publisher. He cofounded L'Union (1862-1864), one of the first Black newspapers in the US South and the first bilingual (French-English) newspaper run by African Americans in the United States. After it folded, he cofounded La Tribune de la Nouvelle-Orleans (The New Orleans Tribune) (1864-1870), the nation's first daily Black newspaper, which was also bilingual.

Roudanez, who was a Creole of color, founded the paper with his older brother, Jean Baptiste Roudanez. They hired Paul Trevigne to serve as editor, a role he continued with the second paper. Also a free man of color, he helped Roudanez promote the causes of Republican Unionism and abolition of slavery.