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Chapter One
April 1867
Twenty-eight-year-old Valinda Lacy greeted her fifteen students with a smile as they filed into her classroom. Due to New Orleans’s post-war chaos, she was teaching out of an old barn a few miles from the docks and warehouses on the Mississippi River.
Offering smiles and words of greeting in return, some of the students took seats on the rough-hewn bench at the back of the room, while the rest made themselves comfortable on the clean-swept dirt floor. Her pupils varied in both age and gender but had one thing in common. They were former slaves, freed by the South’s surrender. Now they wanted to learn to read and write in hopes of bettering their futures.
“Did you get a chance to practice writing your names?” Val asked from behind the small listing table that served as her desk at the front of the room.
Many nodded affirmatively. Since the school opened a month ago, most had learned to recognize and pronounce the letters of the alphabet and write their names. She was now guiding them in the basics of reading simple one-syllable words likecat,hand,andfish. The excitement they expressed upon mastering the tasks put tears of pride in their eyes and joy in her heart.
However, like most of the schools dedicated to the recently freed, there weren’t enough books, slates, or other supplies necessary for a well-stocked classroom, but Val made do with what she had.
She was passing out her five precious copies of the McGuffey primer when two White men appeared in the doorway. Everyone in the classroom froze. Val dragged her attention away from the long guns they were carrying, drew in a deep breath to tamp down her uneasiness, and met their hard eyes. Many schools serving the freedmen were being burned to the ground by supremacists, their teachers murdered. She didn’t want to be next.
“May I help you?”
“You the teacher?” one asked contemptuously. Both were of medium height, unshaven and dressed in clothes that hadn’t been new in quite some time.
“I am. Welcome to our classroom. We usually begin our day here at nine, so please try and be prompt. If you’ll leave your guns outside, we’ll kindly make room for you to sit and join us. Can you read?”
A flush rose up their necks.
“There’s no need to be embarrassed. We’re all here to learn. I teach children two days a week also, so if you have little ones, they are more than welcome to join us, too.”
One of the men opened his mouth to speak, but she didn’t let him. “I’ll need your names so I can add you to the rolls. The Sisters of the Holy Family sponsor this school. Did you hear about us through them?” She waited, saw bewilderment pass between them, and added, “Never mind. How you heard about the school doesn’t really matter. But I do need your names.”
She walked back to her desk and picked up a pencil and a piece of paper. “I’m always pleased to welcome new learners. Being able to read and write proficiently can impact your future in many positive ways, but I’m sure you know that. Otherwise you wouldn’t have come.”
They stared as if she were a talking horse.
“Please, have a seat.” She gestured, smiling falsely. “We don’t have enough books but we’re accustomed to sharing here.”
The men glanced around at the angrily set faces of the men and women in the room and stammered. “Uhm. We need to go.”
And they left in haste.
In the silence that followed, Val dropped into her chair and let the fear and tension drain away. When she looked up, her students were smiling, and she smiled, too. Forty-two-year-old Eb Slayton called out, “Miss, you had them so confused they didn’t know General Sherman from their mamas.”
And everyone burst into laughter. Val laughed, too, but inside knew they’d been lucky the two had been so easily baffled. She hoped that luck continued.
Two hours later, Val dismissed her class. Many of the students drifted away to return to jobs and families, but others like seventeen-year-old Dina Watson lingered.
“What’s it like living up North, ma’am?”
Val placed the five McGuffey readers into the small strongbox for safekeeping and glanced to the young woman. “The weather’s certainly cooler,” she replied. For a Northern-born woman, being in the New Orleans heat was akin to walking into a foundry furnace. She was right now roasting in her attire of proper long-sleeved, high-necked blouse, flowing skirt, and hose.
“You’ll get used to it,” the smiling Dina promised. “Are our people there free?”
Val nodded. “In New York where I’m from, since 1827. Almost fifty years.” Seeing Dina’s surprise, she added, “But it isn’t true freedom. We’re still unable to vote or own property in many places. Social mixing is frowned upon, so we have our own schools, churches, and businesses. Some communities even have their own newspapers.”
“Your parents free, too?”
“Yes. My grandmother Rose ran when she was about fourteen.”
“From where?”
“Virginia. She first went to Philadelphia, then to New York and opened a seamstress shop. My father’s parents escaped from Charleston when he was an infant.” And unlike Rose, her father was embarrassed by his slave birth and spent his life claiming he’d been born free.
