Although Ernest Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying is categorized as a work of fiction – it is set in the fictional town of Bayonne and the characters’ names are made-up – the tangible details of Dr. Gaines’ description of Black life in a segregated town in Louisiana feel strikingly real. Cheylon, the head archivist of the Ernest J. Gaines’ Center at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, who guided us through the center and Dr. Gaines’ house, discussed the role of fiction in Dr. Gaines’ writing. The veil of fiction allows us to refer to real people and places, while maintaining a distance that allows us to analyze the behavior of people and the sociopolitical structures they operate within without directly naming them. Visiting the locations that the novel is set in, and that Dr. Gaines grew up in, I hoped to keep in mind this thin veil of fiction.
The town of Bayonne is the fictional representation of the town of New Roads. Dr. Gaines describes the segregation within the town geographically being divided with the white people’s church, movie theater, and elementary school being located ‘uptown,’ and the same institutions for Black people being located in the ‘back of the town.’ Driving into New Roads, we pass rows of pretty houses facing the false-river. This was ‘uptown’. Andrew also drove us into the back of the town; the further away we got from the river-bank, the greater the economic disparity in the houses. While there are no explicit signs that mark spaces as ‘white-only,’ this economic disparity maps onto the segregation of Black communities through processes like redlining. Moreover, the plantations that made the parish wealthy still exist; they are now mechanized commercial farms, but the economic structures that made the white population of the town money are still intact.
We visited the New Roads courthouse. This was where Jefferson, a young Black teenager, falsely accused of murdering the owner of a liquor store, was sentenced to death by electrocution in A Lesson Before Dying. Jefferson was based on Willie Francis, who was sentenced to death at the age of 16, accused for the murder of a pharmacy store owner, who, Cheylon said, molested him. Unlike Jefferson, Willie faced electrocution twice, because the first attempt failed. The cruelty and injustice of these experiences occupied the back of my mind during our cheerful encounter with the parish’s Sheriff René Thibodeaux, and as Tammy, the Deputy Sheriff guided us through the empty halls of the new courtroom. The cruelty and injustice were brought to the forefront as we took the caged elevator up to the old prison cells.
During our visit to the courthouse and old prison-cells, I had a copy of the text pulled out to compare Dr. Gaines’ description of the setting to what I was seeing. There were certainly some differences. The book says that “a statue of a Confederate soldier” stood outside the courthouse door. Instead, outside the New Roads courthouse, we see the statue of General Lejeune, a member of the marine corps and World-War-1 hero, and a newly erected statue of the former Louisiana Chief of Justice, Catherine Kimball – the first woman to be elected from her district. While there was no confederate statue, its intended effect in the novel – to symbolize the courthouse’s intimidation and white-supremacy, was felt.
The cell was roughly six by ten, with a metal bunk covered by a thin mattress and a woolen army blanket; a toilet without seat or toilet paper; a washbowl, brownish from residue and grime; a small metal shelf upon which was a pan, a tin cup, and a tablespoon. A single light bulb hung over the center of the cell
The depiction of the inside of the cell, in contrast with the outside of the courthouse, vividly described what I was seeing as I walked through the dark corridors of the old jail-cells. The stairs, “made of steel;” the “heavy steel door;” the grime on the open toilet seat and washbowl; the single lightbulb; I could imagine Grant Wiggins (the school-teacher protagonist of A Lesson Before Dying) walking through the corridors to visit Jefferson.
I could feel the multitude of lives that had left their traces on the walls; the presence of the incarcerated Black men, like Jefferson and Willie Francis, despite their physical absence. All that was left were scattered piles of prison-records. The cells were repurposed as storage. Interview transcripts, records of judicial proceedings, old tape-recordings, and evidence for crimes lay scattered on the floors of the cells. A jumbled archive of all the people who once occupied the cells.
Opposite the door was a barred window, which looked out onto a sycamore tree behind the courthouse. I could see the sunlight on the upper leaves.
This was a key detail in A Lesson Before Dying that was missing from my experience surveying the prison cells. Unlike the novel, the barred windows that I saw were coupled with a sheet of opaque glass. I could not see any trees outside these windows; rather, I could not see anything through them. Although it seems to be a fictitious detail, the image of the ‘sycamore tree’ is of great importance in the novel; Gaines keeps coming back to it.
The sycamore tree reminds me of Miss Jane Pittman’s oak that we visited. The tremendous tree, according to Cheylon, is an important figure in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman because it has seen history, and carries the memories of the community into the future. The sycamore tree in A Lesson Before Dying has witnessed all the lives that have passed in the prison cells, peering at them through the gaps in the barred window.
The plantation cemetery, where my ancestors had been buried for the past century. The cemetery had lots of trees in it, pecans and oaks, and it was weedy too, and since there were so few gravestone
Dr. Gaines is buried with the rest of his family in a green, shaded patch of land amidst the sugar fields. Although there are a set of marked gravestones now, Cheylon talked about the number of unmarked graves in this area, many of which had been plowed over and converted into more sugar fields. I was reminded once again of the importance of the trees in Dr. Gaines’ writing, and the memories they possessed. The ‘big house’ and the quarters that Dr. Gaines’ aunt used to live in are visible in the distance from the cemetery. Cheylon told us that the property is still owned by the same family that owned it when Dr. Gaines was born. Dr. Gaines and his wife, Dianne, had to fight to hold onto this land, preserving the memories of both the marked and unmarked Black lives that had been buried here.
The Gaines house too is an impressive project of preservation and reclamation. It is built on land that used to be the property of white slave-owners. Behind the house is a large sugar-bowl that, on plantations, was involved in the dangerous process of boiling sugar-cane. It marks the injury and pain of the enslaved people and tenant laborers who used to work on the plantation, but it has been repurposed as the centerpiece of the house’s yard. At one point, it was even the home to Koi fish.
Further behind the house is a small church building, that is modeled after the type of church that Dr. Gaines studied in, and Grant taught in. In the book, this building is marred by poor ventilation and a lack of schooling resources. It is a constant reminder of the “vicious circle” of inequity faced by Black people growing up in the town.
At the same time, it is a site of learning. Cheylon told us that, when Dr. Gaines was still alive, he used this building to teach students creative writing and literature. The reclaiming of these sites of oppression make them a beacon of potential. At the same time, they remind me of the continuing systems of exploitation. The big house still stands, neighboring Dr. Gaines’ home, but it is decaying and on the verge of falling apart.
“I could not imagine this place, this house, existing without the two of them here.”
(Note: the “two of them” are Aunt Emma and Tante Lou who used to work in Henri Pichot’s house)