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Chapter Two
Seated at his desk in the city’s smallest Freedmen’s Bureau office, Drake LeVeq, former captain with the Louisiana Native Guard, inwardly debated what to do with his anger tied to knowing the freedmen still in line would not be helped today. Mothers searching for stolen children would endure another night of fear and worry; men needing approved work contracts faced being snatched off the street by unscrupulous planters and forced to work for free, or worse, arrested for not being employed. And Drake would go home frustrated because he hadn’t been able to do more to assist them.
The reason they wouldn’t be helped was the man now approaching Drake’s desk, the office’s new supervisor, a snippy, thin-faced lieutenant from Boston named Josiah Merritt. “We’re not going to get to the rest of them today,” he told Drake. “I have a meeting to attend, so send them away.”
Under previous commanders, the office usually stayed open until dusk. Since Merritt’s arrival three months ago, the formerly four-person staff had been pared down to just Drake, and the doors often closed early, sometimes, like today, before three in the afternoon.
“You’re in charge. You send them away,” Drake countered.
Merritt drew back, his whiskered face reddening. “May I remind you that I’m in command.”
“And I’ll remind you that I’m a volunteer not under your command.”
Drake knew that many Bureau offices were supervised by good men like the two officers he’d previously worked under, while others may as well be supremacists for their lack of commitment to the freedmen’s plight. Merritt was among the latter. Drake longed to walk away from the inept commander but refused to leave the freedmen without a true advocate unless it became absolutely necessary.
Merritt, not getting the outcome he wanted, stormed off. His announcement that the office was closing was met with protests. Many of the men and women had been in line since dawn. Drake’s lips thinned but there was nothing he could do.
Once the office was empty, Merritt, on his way out, said, “Make sure the door is locked, LeVeq.”
Angrily eyeing his departure, Drake sighed, then spent a few moments straightening the small mountain of files on his desk holding reports on work contracts, schools, emergency requests for food, and everything else the Bureau handled on behalf of the newly freed and the thousands of poor Whites displaced by the war.
Lincoln began the operation in 1865 as the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. Because a disgruntled Congress refused to appropriate a budget for the Bureau, the funds came from the War Department, which was also charged with implementation. Led by Union General Oliver O. Howard, the Bureau was initially set up for one year, but its mandate had been grudgingly extended. Rules, regulations, and enforcement varied by state, sometimes by offices, resulting in chaos, ineptitude, and graft.
Southerners were clamoring for dissolution of the offices, so Drake wasn’t sure how much longer the service would survive, or what the freedmen would do once it was gone. At its inception, there had been wrongheaded regulations demanding Blacks have passes from former masters in order to travel. In Virginia and elsewhere, some offices had forbidden rural Blacks from entering the cities to look for employment, then sent troops to round them up and force them to return to their masters. That the Army was more supportive of the old system than the new had been quite apparent. But, in spite of the shortcomings, the freedmen continued to support the Bureau, because it was all they had.
After locking up, he left. His sister-in-law, Sable, would be returning from Biloxi shortly, and he’d volunteered to meet her boat at the docks. Her husband, his oldest brother, Raimond, was in an all-day meeting with the local Republicans to hash out solutions to combat the violence being spread by White supremacist groups like the Knights of the White Camellia, the Seymour Knights, and the Crescent City Democratic Club. A big family dinner to welcome Sable home was being held at the Christophe, the hotel managed by their brother Archer.
The day was hot as always, and the traffic in the street thick as the air with all manner of vehicles pulled by everything from horses to mules to slow-moving dairy cows. With another sigh, Drake joined the masses of freedmen, soldiers, Northern carpetbaggers, and city natives on the crowded walks going about their day.
After receiving permission from the nuns to forgo teaching the children for the day, Valinda spent all morning and into the afternoon standing in line at the city’s largest Freedmen’s Bureau office and finally received a scrip for payment. Relieved, she walked down the street to wait for the appropriate streetcar to take her to the docks. Yesterday, one of her students employed there told her of a small unclaimed crate of slates and chalk being held at the shipping office. The clerk in charge, having given up on finding the owner, kindly offered them to the student for his classroom, so she was going to claim them.
But first she had to get there.
Withering in the late afternoon heat while streetcars with empty seats passed by her and others due to their race left her and everyone else waiting fuming. It took over an hour for a black-star car to finally arrive and it was so overcrowded there was barely room to squeeze inside. At the end of the line, she got off, temper still high over the insulting treatment, and walked to the docks.
True to his word, the clerk gave her the slates with no fuss. Pleased with his generosity and her anger soothed, she made the short hike back to the barn she’d claimed as a classroom to leave the crate there. The six slates and sacks of chalk were as valuable as gold. Admittedly, a small pang of guilt plagued her, seeing as how they rightfully belonged to someone else, but the clerk said they’d been there over a month and were destined for the burn barrel.
Approaching the barn, she was brought up short. The padlock was gone, and the warped wooden door stood wide open. Glancing around but seeing no one about she entered cautiously. Inside, the once cleanly swept floor was now lined with thin, dirty pallets, and littered with empty spirits bottles, candle stubs, and discarded rubbers. There was even a pair of faded blue Union army trousers someone had left behind. Her jaw dropped. Yesterday, this had been her classroom. Now, it was apparently being used for nefarious carousing. As she tried to imagine who might be responsible, the smell of smoke reached her nose. Alarmed, she looked around. Once confident nothing was burning inside, she set the crate on the floor and hurried back outside to find a small fire burning under the nearby trees. In it were the five readers she’d been using with her students, and her heart jumped into her throat.
“No!” She began stomping the flames with her worn brogans. She kicked dirt and ashes, hoping to smother it. Seeing a long thick branch on the ground nearby, she grabbed it up and tried to move the readers out of the flames. The books were all she had, and if she didn’t save them, she didn’t know what she’d do. But the pages were old and brittle, and even in the humid New Orleans air, the flames licked greedily. Heartbroken, she stopped fighting and watched helplessly as the wind caught the charred, red-edged pages and carried them away.
“Problems, little lady?”
Still holding the charred, red-tipped branch, she turned to see three men dressed in dirty Union blue uniforms approaching. Two were men of color, the other White with blond hair. As they came abreast of her, the mocking gleam in their eyes set off an inner warning, but her anger over the destruction took precedence. “Someone burned my schoolbooks!”
The tallest man, who was thin and brown-skinned, showed two missing front teeth when he replied, “Now, who would do such a despicable thing?”
His grinning companions offered exaggerated shrugs.
“Guess this means school is dismissed,” offered the shorter, heavier, gray-eyed man of color at his side.
The tall one with the missing teeth slowly looked her up and down. “Where you from, girl? You don’t sound like you’re from round here.”
They were behind the barn in a cove of tall trees. Valinda knew she needed to get back into the open where she could be better seen from the road. “Excuse me. I need to go.” She moved to walk past them, but the skinny blond man latched onto her arm.
“He asked you a question.”
She eyed his dirty hand, then his smirking gaze. “Let go!” she snapped, jerking her arm, but he held on.
