The Hands That Picked the Cotton: A Black Woman's Labor as Acts of Liberation in Segregated Shreveport 1944 -1957

The Hands That Picked the Cotton: A Black Woman's Labor as Acts of Liberation in Segregated Shreveport 1944 -1957

Jolivette Anderson-Douoning, Edmundite African American Fellow in Saint Michael’s History Department and Ph.D. Candidate in the Purdue University American Studies Program will present a Public Lecture on part of her Dissertation Research about the chapter titled ‘The Work (Labor) House’ on Tuesday, October 25, from 6:30 to 7:45 p.m. in the McCarthy Arts Center.

Join the event via livestream here: https://smcvt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_EZH-MX8zQaSRcu_i17C90w

Mrs. Goldleana, a Black woman -living in the segregated Hollywood Neighborhood- documented her everyday activities in a ledger Anderson-Douoning uses as the primary source that gives us historical insight into the Labor opportunities available to Black workers in North Louisiana. Mrs. Goldleana’s lived experiences are inextricably connected to the Cotton and Timber Industries in Caddo Parish and believed to be interconnected with labor organizing work done by ‘everyday people’ in Shreveport.

Mrs. Goldleana’s Labor (work) is deciphered, understood, and presented as the way Mrs. Goldleana (and others) chose to liberate themselves from the ‘second-class citizenship’ status assigned to Black people during Jim Crow Segregation, a time in United States history when Black people were required by Louisiana State Law to live in ‘All Black’ or ‘Colored Only’ neighborhood spaces.

This lecture presentation will focus on a period after World War II leading into the Civil Rights activity of the 1960s in Shreveport, Louisiana with connections to Civil Rights organizing being done in other areas of the Deep South, USA.