Adrienne LaCour Four Corners Oral History Series

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Foster home care--Louisiana

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Birth customs--Louisiana

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Cooking, Creole

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The interview records Hines' memories of childhood as the daughter of a sharecropper; sugarcane growing; the recollections of her great-grandparents' enslavement; difficulties of her early life after her mother's death and the abandonment of the family by her father; work with foster children; birth customs, and traditional foods.

Elnora Robinson Colbert oral history interview

Traditional medicine--Louisiana

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African Americans--Louisiana--Saint Mary Parish--Social life and customs

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Emma Dell Peters oral history interview

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Birth customs--Louisiana

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Colbert describes working in cane fields as a child; customs of family gatherings, the burial of the umbilical cords of newborns, and cutting hair on Good Friday; the challenges of plantation life; christening and baptism traditions; and natural remedies for illnesses.

Plantation life--Louisiana

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African Americans--Louisiana--Saint Mary Parish--Social life and customs

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African Americans--Music

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Spirituals (Songs)

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Slavery--Louisiana--Saint Mary Parish

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Peters give an account of her great-grandparents' purchases as slaves, and discuss slaves' religion, the treatment of slaves, and female slaves who bore children for their white masters. The interview records spirituals that Peters learned from her grandparents, and her accounts of illnesses, funeral customs, early jobs she held, poverty in her youth, discipline and life in her large family, traditions of Sunday prayer, and crops grown by her parents.; Peters discusses the impact of Civil Rights legislation. Remarks of her father, Willie Jackson, are included.

Irma Polidore Lewis oral history interview

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African American agricultural laborers--Louisiana--Saint Mary Parish

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African Americans--Louisiana--Saint Mary Parish--Social life and customs

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Traditional medicine--Louisiana

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Cooking, Cajun

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In the interview, Lewis recalls her childhood as the daughter of unwed parents; being trained in carpentry by her uncle; work as a child on a sugarcane farm; plumbing and other self-provisioning skills; traditional foods and folk medicines; her inability to attend college; and her involvement in the Four Corners Community Center.

Joseph M. Davis oral history interview

African American agricultural laborers--Louisiana--Saint Mary Parish

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African Americans--Louisiana--Saint Mary Parish--Social life and customs

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Sugarcane--Diseases and pests--Control--Louisiana

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Trucking--Louisiana

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In the interview, Davis describes working as a child; memories of buildings in Four Corners; his college career; involvement in his family trucking business, and challenges of breaking into the white dominated trucking industry; federal programs for minorities; his political involvement; family values; and his work ethic.; Davis discusses the history of South Coast Plantation including early operations and purchase by Goldsby, then Prudential, and his parents' employment on the plantation; plantation life in the 1950s and 1960s; use of a pesticide called "Proud" on Sugarcane, and skepticism about organic treatment of sugarcane; the price of sugarcane; and his expectations for the community of Four Corners.

Leonard Martin oral history interview

African Americans--Louisiana--Saint Mary Parish--Social life and customs

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Slave trade--Louisiana

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Carriages and carts--Louisiana

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The interview records Martin's account of the sale of his great-grandfather as a slave. Martin describes his education; his father's career as the first black schoolteacher in the area; work in sugarcane farming; a dance-hall operator, Alice LeBaude; forms of transportation, including buggy, jumper, and surrey; the marriage of his white maternal grandmother to a Native American; the hospitality of his white uncles; and his own long marriage.; Martin discusses his work in Texas during slow times on the sugarcane farm, life in residence with his father, the use of drugs in Four Corners, All Saints Day, and his religion.

Louis Comeaux oral history interview

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Sugar--Manufacture and refining--Louisiana

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Cooking, Cajun

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Agricultural laborers--Louisiana

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The interview records recollections of Comeaux's childhood as the son of a cane farmer. He recalls his work in an Avery Island salt mine; farming as a sharecropper; the routine of sugarcane planting and harvest; cane syrup production; farm labor; early transportation; traditional Cajun foods including couche-couche and cracklins; the boucherie; and social conditions in Four Corners.

Moses Hines and Charlotte Hines Alfred oral history interview

African Americans--Louisiana--Saint Mary Parish--Social life and customs

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Traditional medicine--Louisiana

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Hines and Alfred describe their grandparents' work in sugarcane growing; the management of the 20 acre farm owned in common by the Hines family; and natural remedies for colds, flu, colic, teething, and rheumatism.

Noland Lockett oral history interview

African Americans--Louisiana--Saint Mary Parish--Social life and culture

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Korean War, 1950-1953--Participation, African American

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Gambling--Louisiana

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Logging--Louisiana

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Lockett discusses the logging industry at Four Corners; the origin and history of the Lockett clan; local sugar growing and the history, extent, and sale of South Coast Plantation; service by African Americans in the Korean War; debt peonage and the plantation store system; exodus from Four Corners area farms; race relations; his seminary experience; and plans for a private school in the area.; Lockett recalls childhood memories of Mardi Gras; gambling and his father; three-card Kotch; recreation during childhood; the work ethic of his youth; self-provisioning of families; and social conditions of his community.

Shirley McLean oral history interview

French language--Louisiana

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African Americans--Louisiana--Saint Mary Parish--Social life and customs

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McLean relates her childhood memories of life on a sugarcane farm, work and recreation on the farm, sugarcane harvesting, local schooling, relations with African Americans, and French language usage.

Shirley and Reed Landry oral history interview

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Sugarcane--Cultivation and harvesting--Louisiana

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Sugarcane--Varieties

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In the interview, Shirley Landry recalls early life on a farm near Jeanerette, La.; Four Corners in the 1930s-1950s; the local general store and dance hall; relations with African-Americans; and Sunday traditions.; Reed Landry describes technological changes in sugarcane farming; modern planting and harvesting routines; and modern varieties of sugarcane planted in Louisiana.

Willie Jackson oral history interview

Plantation life--Louisiana

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African Americans--Louisiana--Saint Mary Parish--Social life and customs

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African Americans--Music

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Sugarcane--Cultivation and harvesting--Louisiana

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Slavery--Louisiana--Saint Mary Parish

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Gambling--Louisiana

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Cajun French dialect

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Work songs--Louisiana

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