Fifty or sixty years ago, this church was filled with people on Sunday.
Their singing and praying could be heard all the way up to the
plantation quarters and clear back to the cane fields.
The people of the quarters have always told stories, keeping the past
alive. But one man has taken those memories, those stories, and put them
into books. Fifty years ago, when he lived here, he was a boy called EJ.
Today, he is known as Ernest J. Gaines, author.
Gaines moved away from the plantation as a boy, settling in California.
But his memories went with him. They are the ties that bind him to this
place.
"You had to be there then to be able to don't see it and don't hear it
now. But I was here then, and I don't see it now, and that's why I did
it. I did it for them back there, buried under them trees. I did it
'cause that tractor is getting closer and closer to that graveyard, and
I was scared if I didn't do it, one day that tractor was gonna come in
there and plow up them graves, getting rid of all the proof that we ever
was."
As far back as anyone can remember, the fourth Sunday of the month has
been the day of "the Sacrament" at Mount Zion Baptist Church.
The little wooden building sits just off Highway One in Pointe Coupee
Parish, Louisiana.
Living in cabins built by their slave ancestors, the people of River
Lake worked and sweated in the fields for little pay. But they cared
for each other fiercely, even as they struggled to survive. Now the
church and the few remaining houses are slowly crumbling. When they are
gone, there will be nothing left of this place. Nothing but memories.
His best loved work is a novel called The Autobiography of Miss Jane
Pittman. Readers all over the world find wisom, humor and truth in the
story of one-hundred-and-ten-year-old Jane Pittman, who journeys from
slavery to the civil-rights movement. But Miss Jane is only one of many
characters created by Ernest Gaines in his novels and short stories. His
work is rooted in a particular place -- the Louisiana countryside where
he grew up.
The people here were poor and barely educated, but within the confines
of the quarters they made a world. Their voices were not heard beyond
this little patch of land. But Ernest Gaines has given them a voice,
both the living and the dead. In his books, he has told their stories.