T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History Collection

ABSTRACT

INTERVIEWEE: Leonard Martin

COLLECTION: 4700.0281

IDENTIFICATION: [ 1908 - ] Lifetime resident of Four Corners; great-grandson of slave; sugarcane farmer

INTERVIEWER: Adrienne LaCour, graduate student in landscape architecture, LSU

PROJECT: Four Corners Community Center landscape design project

DATE: 10 February 1993

FOCUS DATES: 1915-1950

ABSTRACT:

Tape 391

Account of great-grandfather's purchase as slave; childhood education; father's career as first black schoolteacher in area; work in sugarcane; his teenage years; discussion of Alice LeBaude, merchant and dance-hall operator; discussion of buggy, jumper and surrey; white maternal great-grandfather married Indian; hospitality of white uncles; account of his long and successful marriage; work in Texas during slow time on sugarcane farm; life in same house with his father; drugs in Four Corners; desire to return to the old times at Four Corners; memories of All Saints Day; religious affiliation

TAPE: 391

TOTAL PLAYING TIME: 90 min.

INDEX: 4 pages

RESTRICTIONS: None