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“You got somebody you sweet on back home?”
Val thought about her intended with a deeply felt fondness. “Yes, his name is Coleman Bennett. We’ve known each other since we were children.”
“Is he in New Orleans with you?”
“No, he and his business partner are in France seeking financial support for their newspaper.” They’d be back in the States soon. She missed him and could’ve used his support in her battle with her father over her desire to travel to New Orleans to teach. In the end, she was allowed to go until Cole’s return. Her time in the city would undoubtedly be shorter than she wanted, but in dealing with her father, she’d learned to take victory where she could.
“The French built New Orleans.”
Pleased with Dina’s knowledge of that fact, she said, “Yes, they did.” In addition to the Spanish, and an influx of Haitians who’d fled the island after the revolution there.
Eb Slayton stuck his head in the door. “You ready to go, ma’am? I don’t want to be late for work.” He often gave Val a ride back to the Quarter after class ended.
“Yes. Dina, be careful going home. I’ll see you on Thursday.”
“I will.”
School was held on Mondays and Thursdays. Val devoted the other days of the week to teaching freedmen children at the convent of the Sisters of the Holy Family, one of the few orders in the nation run by nuns of color. Val picked up her worn brown leather satchel and took one last look around at the neatly swept, makeshift classroom. She was proud to have such a space and even prouder of her eager and focused students. Closing the door, she secured it with the padlock and joined Eb on the seat of his rickety wagon.
Even though it would take his old mule, Willie, some time to get them to the Quarter, she preferred that to being at the mercy of the city’s segregated streetcar system. Men and women of the race could only ride cars bearing black stars on the side. Whether intentional or not, there were never enough vehicles to be had, they didn’t keep a consistent schedule, and because Whites could ride them, too, gangs of toughs often filled them to purposely make them overcrowded and to harass Black women going back and forth to work.
“I liked the way you handled the Cranston brothers,” Eb said to her as they got underway.
“Those men with the guns? You know them?”
He nodded. “Pete and Wesley Cranston. Before Freedom, their daddy was the overseer on a big sugar plantation west of here. Mean as a snake. He died during the war, and now his boys go around causing trouble trying to be like him.”
“Are they truly dangerous?”
“They can be, but mostly pick on women and old people. Heard they roughed up some of the teachers and missionaries to the point a few went back North. I’m pretty sure seeing the men in the classroom made them think twice about whatever they’d planned to do. I know they didn’t expect you to stand up to them the way you did.”
“My grandmother always told me that no matter how scared you are, never show it.”
“You did her proud. Watching you run circles around them made my day.”
She appreciated the praise. “Do you think they’ll return?”
He shrugged. “There’s no telling. After you dismissed the class, some of the men and I talked about it outside. We’ll be bringing our guns with us from now on. Freedom says we can protect ourselves and we mean to.”
She didn’t care for violence but if it meant she and her students stayed safe, protesting the men’s plan made little sense.
With the issue settled for now, she asked, “Has the Freedmen’s Bureau found your daughter a position?”
He shook his head. “They keep telling her she has nothing official that says she knows how to teach.”
Val sighed. The Freedmen’s Bureau had been established to assist the three and a half million formerly enslaved men, women, and children freed by the South’s surrender. Created over the objections of many in Congress and hampered by sometimes conflicting rules and regulations that varied from state to state, it was a bureaucratic nightmare that ofttimes hindered freedom as much as it assisted. Eb’s daughter, Melinda, had been enslaved by the family of a wealthy college president whose three daughters secretly taught her to read. Having met Melinda last week, Val found her personable and intelligent, and thought her skills would be a blessing in a classroom. “Let her know if she hasn’t found a position soon, she’s welcome to help me here.”
His face brightened. “I sure will.”
Still trying to get the Bureau to pay her the stipend she was owed, Val had no idea how she’d compensate his daughter, but would cross that bridge when she came to it.
Eb then asked, “Do you think you can help my brother put a plea in the newspapers? He’s trying to find his wife.”
“Of course. Have him stop by the school when he can, and we’ll talk it over.”
“Thank you. Since Freedom, he’s been walking plantations in the area looking for her, but so far nobody knows where she is.”
“Does he have children?”
