
          Plantation Portraits: Women of the Louisiana Cane Fields
          By Laudin, TikaTika Laudin
          Vol. 6, No. 6, 1984, pp. 4-6
          
          
            HELEN CASSIMERE
          
          
            Jeanerette, formerly Kilgro and Hope Plantations.
          
          I plant cane, cut grass, cut cane, hoe cane, pull grass out of
cane, fertilize cane, spray cane, pull dirt to the cane for harvest
for the following year. And I load cane onto the tractor and drive it
out of the field. Anything the man can do, I do it.
          I love the part where you just go 'round the rows, nobody lookin'
over your shoulder, out in the wide open fields, fresh air, doing your
own work and seeing that it done right. After harvest is over, I enjoy
looking forward to next year when it's time to plant again.
          I been working in the cane since I was sixteen years old. I'm
forty-three now. I lived on Kilgro Plantation 'til '59. It was way
back in the country, out in the woods. Only thing I didn't like, it
was hard to get backwards and forwards to the nearest town. It was
five miles away and we had to walk. (We didn't have phones to call a
taxi or anything.) Finally we made enough money that we could move to
town.
          My daddy likeded the cane work 'cause that's all he knew. My mother
likeded it 'cause it's all she knew. They had twelve kids. When we got
old enough, we persuaded them to better their situation in town.
          Now I work at Hope plantation. They are very nice people to work
for. Don't give us any trouble. During grinding, that's harvest time,
they come to each person home, pick up their dinner, bring it out to
the field.
          I take work at 5:30 until 5:30 or six at night. Time pass by so
fast. Seem like you hardly started and when you look up, the man on
the headland be blinkin' his light twice to let you know the tractors
can stop.
          I love field work. I really do. I rather field work than any other
kind of work. It's sloppy. It's out in the weather. But I don't mind
getting dirty. I just love it. It's all I know. It's my way of
workin'. I worked on other jobs--housekeeping, a cafe job, factory
work. But the field is it.
          I drive the tractor with three other ladies during spraying time,
or by myself at other times. Cutting grass, cutting the headlands,
it's just me and the tractor. Drivin' a tractor's like driving a car
or anything else with four wheels. Once you learn, it come
natural. 'Course its dangerous sometime. Sometime you give it too much
gas, it'll rear up on two wheels. It's a matter of knowing when to
give it gas, when to slow up, how to turn wide with the trailer part
hauling two wagons.
          When I first started, people, mostly mens, would say, that woman
trying to take over a man's world. When they first started putting
women on tractors, most mens was dead set against it. But farmers
would rather have women because they're more confident, have more
responsibility, handle equipment more carefully. I think womens are
more dependable. When it's cold and rainy and sloppy, mens would go
back to bed, where a woman will get up and prepare herself and say,
Lord, I got to work.
          And I think womens really love having money. They really greedy,
you know. Like to see big, writing on her paycheck. She'll try if
there's any way in her power not to miss a day. She don't 

want nobody
to get a day ahead of her on the payroll.
          I rather be workin' any day than to be at home or any other
place. Even on vacation.
          It's from small. It's how my grandfather and greatgrandfather
was. They used to say, nothin' like workin'. They used to take us in
the fields in a buggy drawn by mules, and we'd dig potatoes, break
corn--that's how we learned to work in the field. Papu say, we see
which one gone be the best worker. He say to me, you'll love the field
work. And I did.
          Specially when I'm by myself in the tractor, I think about how he'd
talk.
          I just like workin' in the clay, in the dirt. It's a beautiful
thing to me. They brought me up that way. To me, I feel like a free
spirit. It doesn't make me feel tied down. Just free. Out in the open,
in the fresh air. Just going along, doing my work.
          I look back and see, here's what these hands did, what I done all
by myself.
          
            LOUISE BUTLER
          
          
            Jeanerette, formerly
Yokely Plantation.
          
          Now tell me this. Why they don't try to help an old person like me
who been scrappin' cane all my life on a farm?
          I lost my husband before Christmas last year. I get a little social
security check, $347.80 a month, a widow's check, that's all. At that
amount, payin' my house note, utility bills, insurance bills, doctor
bills, where my grocery money comin' out? I don't get food stamps. I
still got his medical bills to pay. I went back to Yokely plantation
where I used to live, over there in Franklin. I asked the bossman,
would he allow me to plant cane enough to pay my bills. Bossman, he
say, No, I done got too old.

          I guess he figured at my age I'd not be that healthy. I guess he
didn't want me to go out there and fall out, and they'd have to pay
for me. 'Cause the sun been real hot. It hurted me when he told me,
'cause I felt like, we stayed on his farm thirty some years. But the
bossman don't want me hangin' 'round there.
          I been workin' in the cane fields since I was twelve years old. I
cut standing up cane. After they started cutting with machines, I'd
scrap cane. Now you leave the shucks on and they burn it. Them days,
say this table leg is the cane, you cut high top, low bottom. That
make clean cane. You had to cut the butt part down in the ground. No
stubbles. Bossman would walk on your row to see if he found
stubble. Might would fire you if you didn't cut like he want it.
          We used to windrow cane. That mean, you cut the cane, throw it in
the middle of the row, . cover it with dirt. When they get ready to
plant in the summer, they'd pull that windrowed cane out of the
ground. The mule would pull it up and then we'd plant it.
          June, July, we'd hoe cane, get the grass out of it. That was before
they got all the tractors and sprays. They had more work for people
and they get a better crop. They had one cane called 290, it was real
good. And they had another big ole cane, big around as this glass, and
striped like a candy cane.
          Now they plant with a cane machine. It pile cane in one spot on the
row. So you got to tow that cane and put it in the skip, the part of
the ground that was skipped.
          I used to plant cane from a wagon, that was fun. I could kick up my
heels on the wagon. You did three rows at a time, one person on each
row. You put three stalks of cane to each plant. You put it flat in
the ground, and it has an eye at every joint. Like my finger, jointed
here. All the way along, the canes got an eye. The plant grows out
that eye.
          Now what two mens used to do, they got one man. when I started,
they was workin' mules.
          That's why I don't see why they don't help old people, 'cause they
done worked and they have come from a long way.
          Bein' on the farm was alright to me. I had me a gun-shoot house, a
little long house just straight as a gun shoot. Only had two bedrooms
and a kitchen, nothin' else. I mean nothin' else. No living room,
bathroom. And I raised six children in that house, and three more
before. It was a struggle, but we made it.
          I liked it there. That's why I went bouncin' back to get some
work.
          
            Plantation Portraits is the name of an
exhibit and a booklet which presents voices and photographs of black
culture in plantation Louisiana. Conceived by Lorna Bourg of the
Southern Mutual Help Association of Jeanerette, Louisiana,
Plantation Portraits offers glimpses into the lives of
seventeen women who work in the sugar cane industry of southern
Louisiana. Interviewer Judith A. Gaines and photographer Tika Laudin
gathered the stories and images which make up Plantation
Portraits.
            Residential, working plantations still survive in Louisiana's sugar
cane belt. The Southern Mutual Help Association is devoted to
improving the li2.~e.s and conditions of cane workers and their
families. Plantation Portraits suggests the strength,
the oppression, the exuberance and the anger of plantation
residents.
            Below, Southern_Changes offers two excerpts from
Plantation Portraits. The complete booklet is available
for five dollars from the Southern Mutual Help Association, P. O. Box
850, Jeanerette, Louisiana 70544.
          
        
