Sadie Schoeffler Whitehurst speaks with Erica Fox about the work of the cultural and history center, Maison Creole de Freetown in Lafayette, Louisiana.

---

TRANSCRIPT:

---

Sadie Schoeffler Whitehurst: Hi, this is Sadie Schoeffler Whitehurst, and I'm here today with:

Erica Fox: Erica Melancon Fox, I'm the executive director of Maison Creole de Freetown in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Sadie Schoeffler Whitehurst: Thank you, Erica. Can you give us some background information on how the Maison Freetown Community Center came to be?

Erica Fox: Mason Creole de Freetown was a vision of mine for probably close to 12 years now, but it just recently manifested within the last year and a half. I always saw a need for a Cultural Center and representation, especially for African Americans, in Lafayette. It was birthed out of a vision for seeing an African American Heritage Center in Lafayette.

Sadie Schoeffler Whitehurst: I know the location of Maison Freetown de Creole is very significant. Could you tell us a little bit about why the location is important and what it means for the community surrounding it?

Erica Fox: Well, first of all, having had family that grew up in the area, I'd learned about Freetown through my family members, and was always enamored by the stories that they told of community. As I started to research more about Freetown, because it was something I had to learn as well, I learned that this was just an impactful community of African Americans and has been so for over 100 years. So, it seems like a great starting place to tell the story of black people in Lafayette.

Sadie Schoeffler Whitehurst: What about the role that the Freetown neighborhood played in the civil rights movement and a sense of community?

Erica Fox: So, the organization that we established, True Friends Society of Lafayette, is actually the grandchild, if you will, of an actual existing benevolence social group called True Friends Society that was established in the late 1800s in Freetown. This group was very important to other newly emancipated African Americans because they helped, one, in the uprisings and thwarting massacres, they helped keep people safe. They were true friends to each other. So, during a time when there was an ugly time in our history of the city, they helped to keep their African American brethren safe. They also provided insurance policies and burial policies for people of color. They did fish fries if someone was late on rent or needed help with making payments for bills. So, this organization was always there for each other and we continue that legacy one by reestablishing the organization, naming ourselves that and maintaining the Center.

Sadie Schoeffler Whitehurst: That sounds like it’s going to be very important for the legacy of Lafayette, and Louisiana, or the country as a whole.

Erica Fox: Absolutely. We have right now through the Equal Justice Initiative and Move the Mindset, which is a civil rights organization here in Lafayette, two displays. They are soil remembrance reminders of some places where African Americans were actually lynched in Lafayette Parish on display. That was one of the missions of True Friends Society, was to try to keep those occurrences from happening, but unfortunately, they still did in this area. So, we do have a display right now that is just a remembrance of that time so that we don't repeat those situations.

Sadie Schoeffler Whitehurst: What other sorts of things are happening in Maison Freetown de Creole that promote the initiative of the Center?

Erica Fox: Well, we just got off Mardi Gras, or Mardi Gras just ended, and the historical Mardi Gras association was first established here. For the last 65 years it’s been in existence. And so, we currently have some of the Mardi Gras Black Mascara regalia here. So, people that attend can see the craftsmanship of Mardi Gras costuming here in the Center. It also ties back to the history that the Mardi Gras Black Association actually started here in Freetown as well.

Sadie Schoeffler Whitehurst: What are some things we can learn about through your Center about the Maison Freetown site and the Freetown neighborhood as a whole?

Erica Fox: The neighborhood as a whole, I'd love for more people, especially our youth, to learn and know that this was a place where African Americans pretty much picked themselves up by the bootstraps, so a lot of entrepreneurialism was established here. Businesses were flourishing at certain times in the history of Freetown, and we kind of lost some of that. Like, some of those places are either no longer here or abandoned. One of our missions is to, one, put up plaques where we can show and designate those spaces and use them as educational tools so that people can learn about the impact that African Americans contributed not just to Freetown but to Lafayette as a whole. So, this space currently has a gift shop, which is also a Co-op made up of indigenous black people of color. It's a BIPOC store of handmade artisans, which also ties back to the history of entrepreneurship in the community. It's providing an opportunity for black small businesses, and then again, we want to celebrate those spaces throughout the community and the neighborhood that people may not know about- those hidden histories. We've had everything from a dance hall, places on the negro motorist registry, we’ve had barbershops and grocery stores, and just places of celebration. I feel like people need to know. I know for some it may just seem like another grocery store, but when you are part of a community that everything was taken away from you – you weren't allowed to read, you weren't allowed to write, you weren't allowed to vote, you weren't allowed to have a business – those firsts mean a lot to this community. So, it’s important that we celebrate those, what may seem like small wins to some. It's major in the African American community.

Sadie Schoeffler Whitehurst: So, you're doing a lot to share the history we have recorded already and showcase the continuation of the history today. But you're also involved in a couple of initiatives to add to the historical record, the archeological record, to provide more documentation of what Freetown was in the past and how it evolved to what it is today. What are some of the projects that have been going on to document that history?

Erica Fox: So, one that we're working on right now is documenting the language. I feel like that's one that's threatened, if you will. For me, our family's first language was French. And in the African American community, many of those working with the farms and the tenant farmers, they came from that background where they first spoke French before English. I think it’s important to tell that story and to hopefully keep it from dying. So, language is a project we're working on. We have Creole French tables being held here in the Center so that the elders that do continue to speak that old language if you will, can teach it to those interested in learning, and maybe brush up on some that may have heard it like myself in, you know, my family for years and years, but our grandparents didn't pass it on to us. It was their code, if you will, to speak with each other. But yeah, now I'm having an opportunity to learn and reconnect with my history through the language.

Another project we're working on is taking back the literary importance. So, we have a bookstore that we're going to establish so that we can highlight some authors, black authors, and poets that are writing and providing us a safe space for books that highlight African American culture, and that again is important because we are at a time when African American history and culture is being threatened. Especially in our libraries and public spaces, some of those books are being removed that have some type of basis that show cultural pride. We want to provide a safe space where people can still have access to those books, even if they're being taken out of school or library spaces. So, it's important to showcase a more diverse holistic view of the people that make up this community. Another project we are working on is our sound lab. We're building out a recording space where we are taking oral histories, first-person oral narratives, from community members. We started with those that are 80+, because we want to gather the stories of these culture bearers and these people that you know may not always be with us first. It's more critical to get the stories of the elders who lived here, experienced grandparents who you know, may have been some of those entrepreneurs we talked about, or remember different places in the neighborhood that may no longer still be standing. So, we're proud of our initiative to collect those oral stories in African American tradition. That's pretty much how we learned about things because you couldn't read or write, so oral stories were critical to our culture. So, we want to continue to gather those stories, and we've noticed there is a gap in some of those stories being documented. So, we definitely want our museum and our online presence to be that repository for those missing stories.

Sadie Schoeffler Whitehurst: Why is it so important that the Community have such a huge role in documenting the oral history of this neighborhood?

Erica Fox: It's important for us to tell our own stories. Even when there is minimal documentation, it's always said from a lens outside of our community. It's just important for us to be able to tell our experiences that we've lived that aren't biased. Sometimes, when other people tell someone else's story, a lot gets lost. It's important to get these stories from the people that actually lived it. Going back to some of the places where some of the history of African Americans' may have been referenced, we weren't always seen as valuable. You'll see t