Mary Ann John

By Antonia Parry

Name of interviewee: Mary Ann John

Age at emancipation: 10

’Race’: Black

Year of interview: 1940

Place of interview: Mary’s house in McDonoghville, New Orleans  

State of interview: Louisiana

Place of enslavement: Opelousas, St Landry Parish, Louisiana  

Address of interviewee: Back highway, McDonoghville

‘Occupation’: Doesn’t specify but does mention undertaking some field work

‘Occupation’ of mother: Field work, but later domestic work

‘Occupation’ of father: Does not mention his work

Size of slaveholding unit: Presumably large (more than 20) as she doesn’t specify but mentions that her enslaver had a lot of enslaved people

Name of enslaver: Refers to him as Mr Lizi, who is potentially John L. Olivier  

Name of plantation/farm: Potentially Frozard Plantation House  

Crop produced on slaveholding unit: Cotton, corn and potatoes  

Name of interviewer: Flossie McElwee  

Race of interviewer: Presumably white  

Is this included in Rawick’s supplement series?: No  

Is there evidence of editing: No  

Mary Ann John recalls being freed on 14th February 1865 at the age of 10 from the plantation that she had spent her childhood on. Presumably, John was born into slavery but it is unclear whether the siblings she mentions – two sisters and a brother – all had the same experience. Her father’s name was Alfred and her mother’s Maria but a lack of census records for the entire family means that we are unable to find out what their lives were like following emancipation. Indeed, John herself confesses that she does not know what became of her siblings after slavery ended.

An issue that tends to arise when working with the WPA testimonies is the long amount of time that has passed between the interviewee’s time under enslavement and the interview, with John admitting herself that she had forgotten some details of what life under slavery was like. One instance in which the information John provides is problematic arose upon researching her enslaver. She talks of being on a plantation in Opelousas owned by a Mr Lizi, who she mentions was a Creole – a term used to describe an American of European decent. It is easy to assume that her enslaver was among those of French descent who largely inhabited much of southern Louisiana. However, further research into this name did not prove fruitful and it was only upon looking into the individual plantations in Opelousas that I found a potential match. One document that I found most useful was a Property Register Form that records a John L. Olivier as being the owner of Frozard Plantation House, which is described as a large Creole house and plantation. As the description matches that provided by John in her interview, it can be assumed that perhaps the interviewer misheard the enslaver’s name, that John’s memory may not be clear or that her enslaver went by his middle name.

Although John admits that she doesn’t remember much about day-to-day life on the plantation, she does recall some important details. That the crop grown on the large plantation was cotton and vegetables undoubtedly made it common among those in antebellum St Landry Parish, where the geographical location and size made it an ideal place to produce such material.[i] I found The 1850 Seventh Census of the United States valuable in highlighting how St Landry Parish became known for its large production quantities due to the large number of enslaved people working on the area’s plantations. This fits John’s narrative of her enslaver owning a lot of enslaved people and implies that he was from a wealthy background if he could maintain such a large plantation.

The main bulk of John’s interview, however, details the horror of life as an enslaved person. The interview is unique for someone who was a child when they were enslaved, as many such people, when recounting their experience, tend to view slavery as a paternalistic institution.[ii] Despite not having to do much work due to her age, John was never given the opportunity to be educated or to be introduced to religion. Most shocking is her retelling of the sexual violence that took place on the plantation: John’s account has been frequently used by historians for information about the sexual violence and forced breeding that took place on some slave plantations.[iii] She talks of the ‘big ole husky man’ on the plantation that the women would be forced through violence to go to in order to get pregnant. The women – John’s mother included – would then work compulsory long, hard hours in the fields before being made to give up their children once they were born so that they could be sold by their enslaver.[iv] The mournful tone of the passages that describes these ‘trying days’ and John’s gratefulness for not being old enough to be subjected to such depravity suggests that her mother’s experience continued to haunt her at the time of her interview. Unfortunately, census records for John’s mother, her children that she gave birth to on the plantation and the man by whom she got pregnant are not available. This means that we are unable to know who the father of John’s siblings are, what happened to them all and the rape’s effect on the relationship of John’s parents.

Many WPA interviews make reference to ghostly spirits and the supposed voodoo queen Mary Laveau, who played a huge role in shaping the culture of New Orleans. Despite this, John states that she doesn’t remember anything supernatural occurring during her childhood, which may because she was so young during her time of enslavement. It must be considered, however, that John may have been unwilling to speak on the topic due to the fact that black-American oral folklore tends to address larger racial issues that she may feel hesitant expressing to her white interviewer.[v]      

The interview itself was conducted by Flossie McElwee. My attempts to locate McElwee in census records have proved unsuccessful and although the Louisiana Writers’ Project she worked for had an African-American division, we can assume she was probably white.[vi] There are no obvious signs of editing in John’s interview and comparisons with other interviews conducted by McElwee shows that she was meticulous in recording the address and name of every formerly enslaved person she talked to. However, the fact that the interview is written in stereotypical black-American dialect and includes racial slurs suggests that McElwee may have projected her own racist beliefs onto John’s narrative. The inclusion of John’s referral to McElwee as ma’am when most formerly enslaved people being interviewed did not find it necessary to include this address further highlights how the interview may have been manipulated.[vii] Despite this, I would contend that editing went no further than this and that the content of the interview itself has captured what John recounted verbatim.   

Following slavery, there is a gap of twenty years in which we have no information about what John’s life was like following emancipation. However, we know that she later travelled to McDonoghville in New Orleans and that she had been settled there for fifty years before she was interviewed. There are no census records of John here and I also found nothing in regards to her husband either. However, research into John’s decision to move here has proved very interesting. McDonoghville was named after the philanthropist John McDonogh, who would offer his enslaved people manumission and organise their return to Africa. Archive records of letters written between McDonogh and those he had enslaved show that he maintained a good relationship with them and had prepared them for a life beyond slavery. Although he died long before John came to McDonoghville, the legacy left behind by McDonogh no doubt gave the neighbourhood a reputation as a welcoming place for the formerly enslaved.   

Bibliography:

Primary Sources:

·     Documents for Frozard Plantation House, last accessed (15/03/2021)

https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/39634291-6749-405a-a63f-0cc9cf90a174

·     1850 Seventh Census of the US for St Landry Parish, last accessed (15/03/2021)

https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1853/dec/1850a.html

·     Letters between John McDonough and the Formerly Enslaved, last accessed (15/03/2021)

https://louisianadigitallibrary.org/islandora/object/fpoc-p16313coll51%3A62162

·     Statue Commemorating John McDonough, last accessed (15/03/2021)

https://www.loc.gov/item/2011632994/

Secondary Sources:

·     Blassingame, John W, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972)

·     Gorn, Elliott. J, ‘Black Spirits: The Ghostlore of Afro-American Slaves’, American Quarterly 36:4 (1984), 549-565

·     Hampton, Ellen, ‘”Lawdy! I was sho’ happy when I was a slave!”: Manipulating editing in the WPA former-slave narratives from Mississippi’, L’Ordinaire des Amériques 215:1 (2013), 1-28

·     Levin, Cherry Lynne, ‘Wedding belles and enslaved brides: Louisiana plantation weddings in fact, fiction and folklore’, LSU Doctoral Dissertations (2012), 1-370

·     Nordmann, Chris, ‘A Commitment to Leisure: The Agricultural Economy of St. Landry Parish, La., 1850’, Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 26:3 (1985), 301-312  

·     Smithers, Gregory D., Slave Breeding: Sex, Violence, and Memory in African American History (Florida: University Press of Florida, 2012)

·     Wartberg, Lynn Cowles, ‘”They was Things Past the Tellin’”: A Reconsideration of Sexuality and Memory in the Ex-Slave Narratives of the Federal Writers’ Project’, University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations (2012), 1-35 

Online Sources:

·     Part of the Louisiana WPA Interviews that have not yet been published

[i] Chris Nordmann, ‘A Commitment to Leisure: The Agricultural Economy of St. Landry Parish, La., 1850’, Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 26:3 (1985), 301-302

[ii] John W Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 226

[iii] Cherry Lynne Levin, ‘Wedding belles and enslaved brides: Louisiana plantation weddings in fact, fiction and folklore’, LSU Doctoral Dissertations (2012), 31

[iv] Gregory D. Smithers, Slave Breeding: Sex, Violence, and Memory in African American History (Florida: University Press of Florida, 2012), 2

[v] Elliott. J Gorn, ‘Black Spirits: The Ghostlore of Afro-American Slaves’, American Quarterly 36:4 (1984), 54

[vi]Lynn Cowles Wartberg, ‘”They was Things Past the Tellin’”: A Reconsideration of Sexuality and Memory in the Ex-Slave Narratives of the Federal Writers’ Project’, University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations (2012), 1

[vii] Ellen Hampton, ‘”Lawdy! I was sho’ happy when I was a slave!”: Manipulating editing in the WPA former-slave narratives from Mississippi’, L’Ordinaire des Amériques 215:1 (2013), 5