Jerome Ledoux interview recording, 1994 July 14

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Felix Armfield	Today is July 14th, 1994. I'm Felix Armfield, the interviewer, and I'm about to interview Father Ledoux at Saint Augustine's Church.	0:06
Speaker 1	We call it St. Augusta.	0:17
Felix Armfield	Oh— Father Ledoux, would you just state your name for the record, please?	0:20
Jerome Ledoux	My name is Jerome Gaston Ledoux. I'm named after my mother's twin brother.	0:24
Felix Armfield	Mother's twin brother?	0:31
Jerome Ledoux	Yes.	0:34
Felix Armfield	Now, how long have you lived here in New Orleans?	0:34
Jerome Ledoux	I've lived here in New Orleans, this latter time, I came here July 13th, 1990, so it's four years, but I lived here previously from August 24th, 1967, which was— '69, I'm sorry, 1969, one week after the great Hurricane Camille on the Gulf Coast. In fact, that delayed my coming by one week. August 24th, 1969, I began teaching at Xavier University. I was also the first African American chaplain there for two years, and I taught at Xavier until 1980. Then, I stayed on at New Orleans one more year before I went to Prairie View Texas. So, I was here, I guess, 12 years in my first stay. This stay, four years with other stops in between.	0:38
Felix Armfield	Now, where are you [indistinct 00:01:41]?	1:40
Jerome Ledoux	I'm from Lake Charles, Louisiana, which is only 30 miles from the Texas border, and it's more or less on a line west of here along I-10, Interstate 10. It's about 210 miles from here.	1:41
Felix Armfield	Now, that's where you were born and raised?	1:55
Jerome Ledoux	Well, I was born and reared there until I was 13 years old. And, when I was 13, of course, high school age, I came to Bay St. Louis on the other side of New Orleans. Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, one hour from here, northeast of here. The Divine Word Missionaries had a seminary there, high school seminary. And, I had gotten into touch with some of their priests and brothers. And, my cousin had gone on 13 years ahead of me. Our mothers were sisters, that's Bishop Harold Perry, the first African-American Catholic bishop of this century, by the way. He had gone on to Bay St. Louis 13 years ahead of me. My older brother, Lewis Verland had gone four years ahead of me, so I decided to go try it. And, the rest is some kind of history.	1:58
Felix Armfield	What are some of your earliest recollections of having grown up near Bay City, St. Louis?	2:59
Jerome Ledoux	Bay St. Louis.	3:06
Felix Armfield	Bay St. Louis.	3:06
Jerome Ledoux	Bay St. Louis.	3:06
Felix Armfield	Bay St. Louis, Mississippi,	3:08
Jerome Ledoux	Mississippi.	3:11
Felix Armfield	What are some of your earliest recollections? When were you born, by the way?	3:13
Jerome Ledoux	When? I was born on February the 26th, 1930. So, one year after the big crash.	3:18
Felix Armfield	Yeah. Yeah. So, you were thrown into this world of Great Depression.	3:25
Jerome Ledoux	But, I did not know the Depression. I was too young. By the time I was able to see what was going on, understand, I guess, I was 5, 6, 7, and I didn't perceive anything of Depression. Of course, that's not saying much, because the way Black folks grew up, especially years ago, they spoke of us as deprived. We did not perceive ourselves as deprived. We thought we had a decent life. In other words, our perception was good. I recall when I grew up, my parents did not have electricity. I can recall my father trimming the lamp, the oil lamp and things like that until— I cannot recall what age I was when we got electricity. I could have been seven, eight, somewhere up in there. Around the time when Joe Louis was coming up. I was eight and 1938, and Joe Louis was coming up and he mesmerized all of us, of course. But, my earliest recollections of Bay St. Louis, you're saying?	3:31
Felix Armfield	Mm-hmm.	4:44
Jerome Ledoux	Life in Bay St. Louis was fascinating because number one, I was a boy. When I went to Bay St. Louis, the place was wild. It was a wilderness. There were pine trees— I would say the average pine tree was maybe two and a half feet in diameter. I recall two pine trees out there, five feet in diameter. I was so sad when they cut those down for lumber. So many of them. That was years later, maybe 10 years after that, but it was a wilderness of pine forests with hickory trees, and of course, I used to climb the hickory trees, and there were other hardwood trees, water oaks, live oaks, and huge swamps. I was a swamp rat together with so many of my little buddies in high school, and we would have sneakers on and swimming trunks, maybe a t-shirt, and we'd go through those swamps, and we would capture water moccasins live, put a stick on the head, and just grab them right behind the head, around the neck, and just hold them.	4:45
Felix Armfield	Water moccasins?	6:00
Jerome Ledoux	Water moccasins, yes. Can you hold on just a moment? Okay.	6:01
Felix Armfield	Back to the swamps.	6:07
Jerome Ledoux	That was our delight. I'm not sure why we're still alive. Yes. I'm not sure why we're still alive today, considering some of the stuff we did. But, we eventually went on snake hunts right on our own property, right around the seminary. We caught king snakes of about four or five different varieties right there. Blue runners or black racers, or whatever you want to call them.	6:09
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:06:38] were dealing with nothing but deadly types of snakes.	6:37
Jerome Ledoux	No, no. Not all of them. Only the water moccasin and the pygmy rattler. Those were the main two. In fact, we never encountered the famous copperhead. That's more in a dry area as you go upstate.	6:42
Felix Armfield	Okay.	6:56
Jerome Ledoux	Copperhead is called a dry land water moccasin. That's a cousin of the water moccasin. But, I never saw a copperhead there, but lots of water moccasins as big as your arm. The biggest we caught was four feet, seven and three-quarter inches with a head about this big. We stunned him a little bit, caught him live. We felt a big rat inside of him, and a bullfrog. He had swallowed both.	6:57
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:07:28]	7:24
Jerome Ledoux	Yes. You could feel them distinctly inside his stomach, and we had him in formaldehyde for years. I think we had that thing around there until, probably, the early to the mid-60s. This happened way back in 1947, '46.	7:28
Felix Armfield	What are your recollections about alligators as a youngster?	7:49
Jerome Ledoux	I didn't give you a complete recollection of Bay St. Louis. I don't know how much you want to—	7:54
Felix Armfield	No, you didn't. [indistinct 00:08:00]	7:58
Jerome Ledoux	That was only the snakes now. Yeah, I mean, it was a wilderness. I often hunted possums, and possums, you can catch with your bare hands. A possum is not a [indistinct 00:08:14].	8:00
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:08:14].	8:11
Jerome Ledoux	Well, because some of the people around there like to eat them. Although, later, I didn't like hunting, because later on, I didn't like killing anything. But, the possum is somewhat slow. You would fake him out, typically, with your left hand to the face, and simply pick him up by the tail. When you pick him up by the tail, he cannot bite you, because he doesn't have the strength to come around. I've had two possums, one in each hand.	8:11
Felix Armfield	Alive?	8:44
Jerome Ledoux	Alive. Right. Another creature you pick up by the tail is the snapping turtle. I've held two of those.	8:46
Felix Armfield	They can be pretty dangerous, can't they?	8:54
Jerome Ledoux	Right. If you make sure that you have the tail, he cannot come around on you. If you pick him up by the tail— I've had one in each hand. You do not want your finger in his jaws. He can take your finger off. Extremely powerful jaw. But, we enjoyed the wilderness. We had the water right there, the Bay of St. Louis, and incidentally, discovered by the same brothers who discovered New Orleans. [indistinct 00:09:26]	8:56
Felix Armfield	Okay.	9:25
Jerome Ledoux	Anyway—	9:27
Felix Armfield	The same ones who discovered New Orleans?	9:29
Jerome Ledoux	New Orleans, and Biloxi, and they came down the coast.	9:31
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:09:34]	9:33
Jerome Ledoux	Iberville, Bienville.	9:33
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:09:38]	9:34
Jerome Ledoux	Yes. Anyway, and they discovered Bay St. Louis before New Orleans. 1699.	9:37
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:09:47]	9:43
Jerome Ledoux	That would've been, I think, 17— Well, it was founded, I think, 1714, and discovered just right behind Bay St. Louis. Probably just before 1700. We swam in the waters. Every year, we began swimming in March. We swam until the waters got chilled not too far ahead of Thanksgiving.	9:46
Felix Armfield	Swam right in there [indistinct 00:10:19]	10:19
Jerome Ledoux	No, no, this is saltwater now, so that's— Although, when you got close to where we were, we went around— We had a summer home, an old, old building, I guess 100 or more years old, which was finally destroyed by Camille in 1969, but out that way, we were toward the mouth of the Jordan River. We do have a Jordan River in this area, not just in the Holy Land. But, wherever you have a confluence of saltwater and freshwater, you end up with brackish water. There's always the possibility back there of a water moccasin, or an alligator. But, alligators, of course, are not dangerous, usually, to people. Crocodiles are. Crocodiles kill anything not big enough to hurt them. Crocodiles, of course, are in the tropics.	10:19
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:11:20]	11:16
Jerome Ledoux	Not big enough to hurt them. You'd have to understand, crocodiles get very big. The Nile Crocodile gets up to 20 feet long. That's a lot of animal.	11:21
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	11:36
Jerome Ledoux	Huge. But, will not mess, for instance, with a rhinoceros. A fully grown rhinoceros can weigh three tons, and—	11:36
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:11:49]	11:47
Jerome Ledoux	Well, that's not the problem. The problem is simple, and I've read this in some of the big game books on Africa. If a crocodile menaces a fully grown hippopotamus, I said rhinoceros. I meant hippopotamus, the river horse.	11:49
Felix Armfield	Okay.	12:05
Jerome Ledoux	The hippopotamus will simply bite him in half. That's how big and powerful they are. Will bite the entire crocodile in half. The hippopotamus is very large, and—	12:05
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:12:22]	12:19
Jerome Ledoux	Very powerful. The crocodiles go after the baby hippopotamus sometimes, and manage to get them, but if the big one is around, he'll simply bite him in half. Warfare's over. The battle's over. Now, but in this section, we have only alligators.	12:22
Felix Armfield	Okay. Any alligator stories to tell?	12:38
Jerome Ledoux	Not personal alligator stories, in that I've encountered them, except I caught one in Bay St. Louis. I caught a four footer myself. In the pond. I don't know how it got in the fish pond there, and this was in later years. This was in the '60s. It was spotted there often, and one day, I just took a rope and I got close to him, and I teased him into opening his jaws and lassoed his jaw and pulled him out. A four footer.	12:43
Felix Armfield	Must not have been too big.	13:12
Jerome Ledoux	A four footer. Of course, they can inflict a terrible bite, but they're not all that powerful compared to a 12 foot alligator, which can weigh 500 pounds, and when they get really fat enough, I've heard up to close to 1,000 pounds.	13:14
Felix Armfield	Really?	13:30
Jerome Ledoux	Well, you can't tussle with an animal like that. They're extremely dangerous, but again, the alligator does not normally attack human beings. Let me put that in focus. Here in New Orleans, in City Park— I don't know whether you've been there, we have lagoons that's out of the foot of Esplanade, City Park. There are lagoons all over City Park, and they're there for a number of reasons. People paddle in them. In part, they are traps for the golfers and so forth. By actual head count, the game rangers in City Park have counted 400 alligators right here in City Park. In the immediate environs of New Orleans, 50,000 alligators, in the immediate environs.	13:31
Felix Armfield	I haven't seen one at all. [indistinct 00:14:25] Louisiana was I was going to get to see a real, live alligator. [indistinct 00:14:33]	14:22
Jerome Ledoux	Well, of course, if you go the zoo, you will, or if you go to the aquarium. If you go on one of the bayou boat trips, you'd almost have to see one. But, the thing about seeing alligators is, remember, alligators do not put themselves on display. If you know what you're looking for, you'll look in the water and you'll see maybe two little bumps. That may be the nose, or two bigger bumps a little wider spread may be the eyes. Under there, may be a three to 500 foot alligator. I mean, pound.	14:32
Felix Armfield	Okay.	15:13
Jerome Ledoux	[indistinct 00:15:13] slip of the lip there.	15:13
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	15:14
Jerome Ledoux	300 to 500 pound alligator. But, if you don't know what you're looking for, you just see, "Oh, there's a bump in the water."	15:15
Felix Armfield	Mm-hmm.	15:21
Jerome Ledoux	Now, sometimes, they're completely out of the water, especially where they're comfortable, where they've got used to people, they will lounge in the sun.	15:23
Felix Armfield	This is that rough and ready terrain [indistinct 00:15:40] Bay City?	15:36
Jerome Ledoux	Bay St. Louis.	15:43
Felix Armfield	Bay St. Louis. [indistinct 00:15:46] city part.	15:43
Jerome Ledoux	Yeah, keep in mind, it was discovered by Frenchmen who were deeply Christian, and that's why, here in New Orleans, you have the cathedral of St. Louis.	15:47
Felix Armfield	Okay.	15:58
Jerome Ledoux	That is the Bay of St. Louis.	15:59
Felix Armfield	Okay.	16:01
Jerome Ledoux	Bay of St. Louis, just Bay St. Louis.	16:02
Felix Armfield	How segregated was—	16:03
Jerome Ledoux	Bay St. Louis.	16:03
Felix Armfield	— Bay St. Louis?	16:07
Jerome Ledoux	Bay St. Louis epitomizes something you must've heard, although you may be too young to have heard this. But, apparently, you're widely read, so you may have read it somewhere. I first heard this probably 50 years ago, to put it in focus. Well, not quite. 40 to 45 years ago. I first heard this. In the south, we're talking about segregation, discrimination days, in the south, you could get as close as you wanted. The races could get as close as you wanted. But, the Black person could not go up. In the north, you could go as high as you wanted, but you could not get close.	16:10
Felix Armfield	I like that.	17:02
Jerome Ledoux	That describes segregation almost to a T in north and south. The more you think about it, you say, "Doggone it, that's right." To answer your question, how segregated was it? It depends on what you're talking about. Until, I guess, maybe, until 1964, when the Civil Rights Bill was signed, and when integration became a goal, a tool, there—	17:04
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:17:39]	17:38
Jerome Ledoux	Right. There was more integration in so many places in the south than you could ever imagine, including places like Vicksburg, which was totally integrated. I mean, living patterns. You had White, Black, White. You had neighborhoods totally integrated, and Bay St. Louis, not totally, but so very integrated in the living patterns. You had Whites living almost anywhere, Blacks living almost any place, except, of course, there were some exclusive places, naturally. Money always talks. Along the beach, you had the big houses. Well, who had money to buy big houses? Who had the [indistinct 00:18:24] to get there? You had to know someone just to dicker, to get a contract to buy it. In fact, in order to buy our summer home on the beach, which was prime territory, not far from Casino Magic, by the way. From there, you can see the top of Casino Magic. A White person bought it for us. Of course, nobody knew that he was an agent for Black people.	17:39
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:18:55]	18:51
Jerome Ledoux	Of course, that's a long time ago.	18:56
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	18:57
Jerome Ledoux	That happened, I guess, somewhere around the mid-30s.	18:58
Felix Armfield	Okay.	19:01
Jerome Ledoux	Somewhere in the '30s.	19:02
Felix Armfield	Some would clearly see this as an act of segregation, or results of segregation. A White man had to purchase your home in your city.	19:03
Jerome Ledoux	Right. Using that type of device, that subterfuge. Of course, that's nothing new to you. That's the old story of slavery and old slavery times, segregation times. We have made do with what we had to, and we have always used whatever strategy we had to, whether it was Uncle Tom, or [indistinct 00:19:40], whatever, we got by.	19:16
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:19:44]	19:42
Jerome Ledoux	Yes, whatever we had to use, we got by with, and we survived beautifully. The living pattern, I recall that at the seminary, we had so many Italian families living so very close, right around the perimeter, they had their little praline shops. You've heard of the famous pralines?	19:43
Felix Armfield	Yes. We probably would say pralines.	20:04
Jerome Ledoux	Well, up there, you'd say pralines, and then down here, you'd get a wicked eye looking at you and saying, "Hmm, certainly not from here."	20:09
Felix Armfield	Mm-hmm.	20:18
Jerome Ledoux	Folks come down here, talk about pralines and pecans.	20:19
Felix Armfield	Exactly.	20:22
Jerome Ledoux	Well, pralines and pecans.	20:22
Felix Armfield	Wow.	20:24
Jerome Ledoux	Yes. But, the little praline shops were all along old Highway 90, which ran past the seminary. It was called Ulman Avenue, U-L-M-A-N. Ulman Avenue. The praline shops were just—	20:27
Felix Armfield	U-L-M—	20:43
Jerome Ledoux	— A-N. That remained there until the notorious hurricane of 1947, because Ulman crossed the bay right past the old Hotel Reed, and there was a wooden highway bridge, which was totally destroyed in the hurricane of 1947, which was somewhat of a minor hurricane to, let's say, Camille. It had top winds close to 100 miles an hour, but it was destructive. Once that was knocked out, then they built a new highway bridge out of concrete, which no hurricane could really touch. It was built hurricane-proof. They also built a new stretch of 90 coming in north of that point, and on the other side of the seminary, and that's a two mile bridge, and now there's—	20:44
Felix Armfield	Now, which seminary were you talking about [indistinct 00:21:43]	21:40
Jerome Ledoux	The Divine Word Seminary, and by the way, the original name, St. Augustine Seminary, and I don't know whether you are acquainted with the name Augustine, its origin.	21:44
Felix Armfield	No.	21:58
Jerome Ledoux	Or, the origin of the person? A North African. Augustine was born in Hippo. Hippo North Africa. Augustine was a profligate youth until he was about 30 years old. At the age of 30, he was baptized a Christian, and turned his life completely around. In fact, one of the all time conversion books is The Confessions of St. Augustine. Fascinating. The man has— Pardon?	21:58
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:22:33]	22:32
Jerome Ledoux	Oh, look. You would eat it up. I mean, it's worthwhile reading. Augustine has quotes, which are quoted today by people everywhere, and you can just hear something. For instance, he says, "Our hearts are restless, Oh, God, and they will never find rest until they rest in You." Just amazing, and then he says, "Too late have I known you, beautiful so ancient, yet so new."	22:33
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:23:06] I'll have to get that right away.	23:06
Jerome Ledoux	Oh, it's just great stuff.	23:07
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:23:11] confessions.	23:07
Jerome Ledoux	The Confessions of St. Augustine. His poor mother, Monica, and you think of modern day mothers when you think about it, prayed for his conversion for 18 years, and it finally happens.	23:11
Felix Armfield	Sounds like [indistinct 00:23:26]	23:22
Jerome Ledoux	Oh, I mean, how many mommas of today— Yeah. But, a North African, and well, you're going to ask questions later about this church, aren't you?	23:25
Felix Armfield	Yes.	23:39
Jerome Ledoux	We won't mix it up, because Augustine's all mixed up in this church too, but let me not get into that.	23:40
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	23:46
Jerome Ledoux	St. Augustine Seminary, and St. Augustine Seminary, named after a North African. Augustine became— Well, he was ordained. He became a bishop. Became one of the greatest saints in the church. I mean, a holy man. Really holy man. Not only that, Augustine is considered one of the great minds of all time. Philosophy and theology. When he begins a treatise or anything, it's Augustine. He begins a treatise on creation. He says, for instance, "There was a time when there was no time." Just marvelous.	23:47
Felix Armfield	Yeah. There was a time when there was no time.	24:40
Jerome Ledoux	In other words, before the creation of the angels, and of course, human beings, well, and the universe.	24:41
Felix Armfield	Yeah. [indistinct 00:24:49]	24:47
Jerome Ledoux	Just marvelous stuff.	24:49
Felix Armfield	Yeah. Yeah.	24:51
Jerome Ledoux	The Divine Word Missionaries have a deep, deep— In fact, I need to find something on that for you, if I can only think of— I should have something on hand, but I have to search. In this country, you may know— I'm sure you know about the different churches. There was the White church and the Black church, period. No matter which denomination you talked about, there was the White church and the Black church. In some cases, the break was total. I think the break was maybe a bit more total among people like the Southern Baptists, because they were sort of a rabid difference.	24:54
Jerome Ledoux	The break was not total among some denominations, notably Catholic, in that you didn't have a split like Southern Catholics, like Southern Baptists. You had Catholic churches with special places for slaves, and with special places for free Blacks. After the abolition of slavery, with special places just for Blacks. We'll get into that later here when we discuss St. Augustine Church. Very obvious. In fact, about three cycles have taken place, but because of this, although you had Catholic churches, which were so-called White churches, quote, with special seats, kneelers for Blacks. You had no Black clergy, which was typical across the board. I don't care which religion you were talking about, and the real Johnny-Come-Latelies would be people like the Mormons.	25:44
Felix Armfield	Mm-hmm.	26:56
Jerome Ledoux	The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which just let Black ministers aboard, just let Blacks aboard, period, within the last, what? 15 years or so? Blacks could not even be Mormons.	26:57
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	27:12
Jerome Ledoux	Let alone ministers.	27:13
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:27:18] noticeable.	27:17
Jerome Ledoux	Oh, I mean, the proverbial fly in a bowl of milk. That's about it.	27:19
Felix Armfield	Exactly.	27:25
Jerome Ledoux	But, what you had in the Catholic church was, we had a foot in the door, but no clergy. No nuns. Because of this, you had people like the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a Black order of nuns, Sisters of the Holy Family, a Black order of nuns.	27:26
Felix Armfield	Heard of them.	27:50
Jerome Ledoux	By the way, and we'll get to that later, that order, the Sisters of the Holy Family is now 152 years old, the same age as this church, this church here, St. Augustine, with reason. They were founded in this church, physically, in this church about a month after this church was built. Because, the foundress was baptized over at the cathedral, St. Louis Cathedral, joined this church in 1842, soon as it was built. Within a month, she and two other ladies physically founded this Black order of nuns, but that aside, you had no one, no seminary. Now, listen well. This is not the south. This is the whole country. No diocese up north admitted Black seminarians either. This was not the south. This was segregation, or discrimination, shall we say. Segregation is a legal thing.	27:52
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:28:54]	28:53
Jerome Ledoux	Pardon?	28:54
Felix Armfield	It was the way of Catholicism.	28:58
Jerome Ledoux	It was the way of Christianity. In this case, I'm talking about Catholicism. Keep in mind, all these Christians were acting the same way.	28:59
Felix Armfield	Exactly. I got it.	29:12
Jerome Ledoux	We're just focusing on Catholics now.	29:13
Felix Armfield	Yeah. I understand.	29:15
Jerome Ledoux	But, they were all— I mean, all these so-called Christians were acting the same way.	29:16
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:29:23]	29:20
Jerome Ledoux	They were all acting the same way, very un-Christian.	29:24
Felix Armfield	Mm-hmm.	29:28
Jerome Ledoux	It just came out a little more starkly, I guess, in the Catholic church because of hierarchical arrangements in the clergy. Then, they made it very obvious. Anyway, the German priests—	29:29
Felix Armfield	What time period are we talking about? Are we talking about [indistinct 00:29:57] or are we talking about the early days of Catholicism as you would call—	29:50
Jerome Ledoux	We're talking about all the way up to 1920. Before 1920, there was no place where a Black boy could go and study to be a priest. Does that ring a bell? I mean, does that come home?	30:07
Felix Armfield	Exactly.	30:17
Jerome Ledoux	Until then, that's not that long ago, right? It was 10 years before I was born.	30:18
Felix Armfield	The big question that comes to my mind, when you did, when you were allowed to obtain priesthood, where were you assigned? [indistinct 00:30:41]	30:24
Jerome Ledoux	You're getting ahead of yourself.	30:42
Felix Armfield	Okay.	30:45
Jerome Ledoux	In fact, it seems one reason why many bishops in other parts of the country, including the south, did not want to educate young Black men to be priests was that very reason. What shall we do with them? Who wants them?	30:45
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:31:09]	31:05
Jerome Ledoux	Right. You're ordained, what should we call it? You're ordained window dressing.	31:09
Felix Armfield	Mm-hmm.	31:19
Jerome Ledoux	It's always going to be window dressing. You have no use for this little figurine.	31:19
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:31:23] say to me, a good friend of my grandfather [indistinct 00:31:28] useful as the tits on a boy hog.	31:22
Jerome Ledoux	On a—	31:29
Felix Armfield	On a boy hog.	31:29
Jerome Ledoux	Okay. I gotcha. I gotcha. Grandfather put it in perspective.	31:41
Felix Armfield	Definitely.	31:46
Jerome Ledoux	Okay, now, wait. Okay, now, but you're jumping ahead of the story.	31:47
Felix Armfield	Okay.	31:52
Jerome Ledoux	Although, that was one of the prime reasons why no one educated Black youth. There were many other reasons. Some questionable, highly questionable. Bishop Gunn, G-U-N-N, of Mississippi, who preceded Oliver Gerow, G-E-R-O-W, Bishop—	31:53
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:32:19]	32:16
Jerome Ledoux	Right. Gerow is there through much of the period when were going through our first priests in Bay St. Louis, but Gunn said, "Well, these Black men cannot observe the laws of the church [indistinct 00:32:36] and everything. Let's ordain deacons and let their sons be priests." That kind of a thing. In other words, the disparity between the White man and the Black man. I guess they considered all Black men super-studs, which is still—	32:18
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:32:51]	32:50
Jerome Ledoux	It's still the legend.	32:51
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:32:54]	32:52
Jerome Ledoux	Oh, all the stereotypes. Oh, yeah. It's still there. But, anyway, German missionaries, our order, Divine Word Missionaries, you saw the signature there, the abbreviation SVD, which means [Latin 00:33:15], that's Latin.	32:55
Felix Armfield	You want to spell that out for me?	33:25
Jerome Ledoux	[Latin 00:33:26]. Let me write this down for you in the Latin. The English means Society of the Divine Word. We're often called just Divine Word Missionaries, or SVDs.	33:26
Felix Armfield	Okay. SVD.	33:41
Jerome Ledoux	This order of priests and brothers was founded in 1875, right outside of Germany, in Styl, Holland, S-T-Y-L. Holland, by a German priest, Arnold Janssen, J-A-N-S-S-E-N, who wanted and did found a missionary society, meaning to foreign missions, outside of the country. What happens, I guess, it was the year, must've been 1900 that some priests and brothers from this order came to Chicago and landed just north of Chicago, about 20 miles north of Chicago, founding a seminary there, Techny, T-E-C-H-N-Y. T-E-C-H-N-Y, near, I guess Grandview is not far from there, Winetka, Illinois. Then, from there, they sent missionaries to the deep south, and now you have it. You had missionaries who came to Mississippi, and of all places to found a seminary for Black priests, Greenville, Mississippi in 1920. They found, in a few years, that it was not the best place, so in 1923, they moved to Bay St. Louis, down to the coast. So, I guess that's about 300 miles away.	33:46
Felix Armfield	When did they make the move to Bay St. Louis?	35:35
Jerome Ledoux	1923. Greenville, 1920, Bay St. Louis 1923.	35:42
Felix Armfield	You have a seminary right in your back yard, so to speak.	35:42
Jerome Ledoux	Sure.	35:46
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:35:48]	35:46
Jerome Ledoux	Correct. Well, let's see, one, which would be 60— about 270 miles from where I was in Lake Charles. New Orleans, about 210 miles away, and another 60 miles.	35:48
Felix Armfield	Mm-hmm.	36:03
Jerome Ledoux	Of course, we used to make the trip by railroad in those days with cinders flying in your face. But, anyway, the importance of this was, this was the first seminary to educate young Black men to become brothers and priests in the Catholic church, the first in the country. The first four Black priests were ordained in the year 1934.	36:04
Felix Armfield	Okay.	36:36
Jerome Ledoux	That was 14 years after the seminary was started in Greenville.	36:40
Felix Armfield	Now, you don't find that ironic or anything, do you, that the seminary in a Mississippi/ [indistinct 00:36:55]	36:45
Jerome Ledoux	Totally. Totally ironic.	36:55
Felix Armfield	Why?	36:58
Jerome Ledoux	You would expect— Now, keep in mind, you're educating Black people, and in many places in the south, notably Mississippi at that time, no one wanted Black people to become educated. Especially, this is education at the highest level. This is the only college, university, and grad, everything else. The whole nine yards. As much education as you could get, you got.	37:00
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	37:28
Jerome Ledoux	That's why the slaves— Never wanted the slaves to be educated and so forth. Segregation was at its worst in Mississippi, at its worst. I mean, it was— That was proverbial until recently.	37:31
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:37:49] my question was more or less maybe towards the ironic, but I don't see it as all that ironic, simply because there was such a strong Catholic foothold here in [indistinct 00:38:05]	37:52
Jerome Ledoux	Up around Greenville, Mississippi, very, very few Catholics. Even today, not many. Most of your Catholics in Mississippi are along the coast, about one half. Go up 30 miles, 40 miles, you have half your Catholics in the whole state. Catholics are powerful in this section of the country, but again, you go up to northern Louisiana, very few. It's coastal. But, well, up to central Louisiana, more than in Mississippi, but heavily coastal. Although, in Lafayette, we're going to New Iberia, Lafayette has the highest density of Catholics in the United States. Not the highest number, but the highest density, percentage-wise. But, in Mississippi, no, not many Catholics. Percentage-wise, more along the coast from Bay St. Louis, but not Greenville. Totally ironic. Totally ironic. Really, a bastion of segregation.	38:06
Felix Armfield	Mm-hmm.	39:15
Jerome Ledoux	But, it follows the pattern all the way back to the Old Testament where God chose the seemingly least hospitable circumstances and places, including the Holy Land. Why did God lead the Jews to the Holy Land? It has its nice aspects, but they had to really fight to carve out a living there. They had enemies. They had the land, the environment to fight. I mean, you can wrestle a living from the elements, but you literally wrestle. See? Even the Jewish Nation that God chose such an infinitesimal group of people to carry forth the message of God, what do you call— I'm trying to think of the proper word, and I can't think of it. The repository of the faith, which is what it was, you would think God would choose a powerful nation. He chose a little pea. But, that's the way God operates, so as Paul says, God humiliates the hardy, the arrogant, but gives his grace to the weak. This was another case. God chose a weak vessel to do something great. So, very ironic. But, it worked, as things always work out with God.	39:19
Felix Armfield	Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.	40:59
Jerome Ledoux	The first four priests ordained in 1934, one of them came out of here, St. Augustine Church. Maurice Rousseve, along with Vincent Smith, Francis Wade, Anthony Bourges.	40:59
Felix Armfield	Mm-hmm.	41:21
Jerome Ledoux	By the way, just as you said, there was no place to put them, but in all the United States, only one bishop stuck his neck out. He was in the south, not in the north. His name was Jeanmard, was Jeanmard, in Lafayette. Bishop Jeanmard of Lafayette, but he did not have an ordinary place to put them. They built a church specifically for the four, a Black church, which is still there, Immaculate Heart of Mary on the corner of Surrey and 12th. There's a plaque in the back of the church, which tells you that.	41:23
Felix Armfield	Oh. Now, what year did that happen?	41:57
Jerome Ledoux	That had to have happened when they were ordained.	42:02
Felix Armfield	That was?	42:05
Jerome Ledoux	In 1934.	42:05
Felix Armfield	1934?	42:05
Jerome Ledoux	'34, '35, right up in there.	42:07
Felix Armfield	Or sometime thereafter.	42:09
Jerome Ledoux	Yes, uh-huh.	42:10
Felix Armfield	You still didn't tell me much about your background. What do you recall—	42:18
Jerome Ledoux	As a child?	42:24
Felix Armfield	Yeah. What do you recall of your parents? We'll come back to—	42:25
Jerome Ledoux	I recall everything about my parents. I recall—	42:30
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:42:37]	42:35
Jerome Ledoux	My father, at one time, was a mechanic. I remember he would have an engine all taken apart. He could take it apart and put it back together again. At one time, he did whatever he needed to do, and I can recall, he did work. He would clean up buildings, I recall. When I was little, and that must've been right going out of Depression times, and I recall my mother's twin brother talking about working during the Depression. They worked for 25 cents a day, not an hour, a day.	42:39
Felix Armfield	Mm-hmm.	43:20
Jerome Ledoux	Of course, it bought a lot, but anyway, and I recall my father, later on, selling insurance. My father could've easily been a politician. He loved to talk, and he knew how to deal with people and got along with everybody. Selling insurance was perfect for him. It was like going out to play.	43:21
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay.	43:43
Jerome Ledoux	My mother did what most Black women did at the time. She took in ironing and she would go and babysit, and my mother is battling Alzheimer's. She's still alive. Let's see, today is the— How far are we? This is Thursday. Today is the 14th, of course. Bastille Day. On Saturday, my mother will be 93.	43:45
Felix Armfield	Really?	44:14
Jerome Ledoux	16th, yes.	44:15
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:44:24]	44:15
Jerome Ledoux	Yes. Right. Of course, she— Until, I guess, about six, seven years ago, her mind was okay until that Alzheimer's started beating her down. But, Mother, always a very compassionate person. When she babysat, to her, that was like going on a picnic. She loved babies.	44:28
Felix Armfield	How many of her very own? How many brothers and sisters did you have?	44:51
Jerome Ledoux	Three boys, two girls. I'm smack in the middle. I have an older brother, younger brother, older sister, younger sister. Yes.	44:55
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:45:06]	45:03
Jerome Ledoux	Right. My older brother's a priest also.	45:06
Felix Armfield	What are your recollections of your early education that you obviously received [indistinct 00:45:25]	45:12
Jerome Ledoux	Bay St. Louis.	45:24
Felix Armfield	Mm-hmm.	45:25
Jerome Ledoux	Fascinating. As they say, youth is wasted on the young. But, the older you get, the more you realize that. If I knew then what I know now, I think I would split the whole world in half. I had no idea how much we learned at that time. I had no idea that we were learning things which, man, folks give an arm and a leg to be able to learn now in the same fashion. He we were, little Black boys, we were learning, and I mean, we could get into this stuff, and we were reading this stuff. We learned French. Latin was number one. 14 years of Latin. I mean, that's my second language, I guess.	45:27
Felix Armfield	You're kidding?	46:18
Jerome Ledoux	I can read it, speak it, write it. We learned French. Book French and my French is decent. I just need a little practice, but we learned Greek. We read Greek authors in the original.	46:19
Felix Armfield	Now, and this was a part of your early—	46:38
Jerome Ledoux	This is high school. Of course, we got into Greek later. I guess as we were juniors, we got into Greek. Latin, we got into right away. French—	46:41
Felix Armfield	This is your segregated [indistinct 00:46:55]	46:52

Jerome Ledoux	— way of considering—	0:01
Felix Armfield	Take two [indistinct 00:00:06].	0:05
Jerome Ledoux	Okay. We learned, we call it a liberal education. Now, dog gone, I mean, we had some of the best teachers anywhere. We had priests who knew Latin inside out, French inside out, Greek inside out. And we took the usual stuff, English, we had an English professor who was so stern and so strict. I mean, he would hold us against the wall. If we didn't do our work, he would crucify us. And he forced us. He forced us to read. He forced us to speak decent English. He forced us to write.	0:09
Jerome Ledoux	I still write. Oops, see what I can reach this far. Uh-oh. Here, you better fix this. I was trying to reach something to show you, to illustrate— Oh, this happens to be more on the Sanctimonious side. But I do a weekly column, which goes into three Black weeklies and a number of Catholic weeklies. And I write on every subject, by the way, not just on one or the other. But we got a liberal education second to none and superior to most anywhere in the country. We had the best teachers. And of course, they were giving us their undivided attention. There were not that many of us proportionately. Although my class, my original class, I think had 28 students within.	0:52
Jerome Ledoux	We had all these recollections in Bay, St. Louis of actually, I did not do half of what I should have done academically, still came through beautifully. That's not to boast, because I mean it's not to my credit. It's in spite of me that I came through beautifully, not because of me, but there was so much we could have taken advantage of, so much more. I did not realize the value of what we were learning. I was a grown man, and all of a sudden I realized English is 76% Latin. And I mean, I had all this enormous background and you see these words you never saw before in English and you say, "Oh, it means that. It means this."	1:59
Jerome Ledoux	And that's the background I remember. And I could have learned much more music than I did. I love music. I sing a lot. I play a lot. Even though I messed up, my teacher gave up on me after five lessons. I used to hunt rabbits in the woods, the swamps. As I told you before, I was a swamp rat. But I look back and say, "Oh my goodness, look at all I missed." But I guess it was somehow meant to be that way.	2:48
Felix Armfield	Was the [indistinct 00:03:24] segregation very clearly defined there [indistinct 00:03:28]?	3:22
Jerome Ledoux	All over the south. But you knew your place. I mean, well, you're not old enough to know that from North Carolina. You would've known your place, too, had you been old enough. But you had the desegregated living patterns to begin with. Whites lived anywhere. Blacks lived anywhere. Even now, who was pointing out to me? Who was I? I was just going— Wait, this was— Oh wait, this is in Bay— Of all things, Bay, St. Louis yesterday evening, I took the choir director back home on the way home. I had another passenger with me.	3:28
Jerome Ledoux	Just coincidentally, we're going on Esther Brook Street. And my passenger, who's from New Orleans, Native New Orleanian, said, "Elaine, who live here, Whites, Blacks? And then Elaine, who's a native of Bay, St. Louis, began to tick off, and she said, "White here, White, Black; Black, White; Black, White, just going out." And this is an ordinary neighborhood. And to look around, you'd say, "Well, might be Black, but White's all over the place." The pattern is almost the way it was when I was there. Not quite, but close, hasn't changed much. And a lot of Whites up north have no idea that places like Bay, St. Louis, Vicksburg and other places were totally desegregated living wise 50 years ago and 100 years ago.	4:14
Jerome Ledoux	But anyway, of course, growing up you knew certain things. You drank only at certain fountains. Or as the little White kid said, I mean I'm sure you've heard of weird cases. Little White kid went up to get a drink of water and his mama said, "No, no, no, no, you're not allowed to drink there." I said, [indistinct 00:05:42]. That whole thing got down. Oh, I was wondering.	5:13
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:05:47].	5:45
Jerome Ledoux	I was wondering what was going on there. And the mom was there. "No, come on, you're drinking this fountain," and little kids, this is the White child, "I want some of that Colored water."	5:47
Felix Armfield	Uh-huh, uh-huh.	5:57
Jerome Ledoux	But no, you knew your place. And of course, I don't know whether you've heard this. These are mostly old sayings. You may have heard it. The Black person was a four-dimensional person. You ever hear about that?	5:57
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:06:16].	6:13
Jerome Ledoux	Was a four dimensional person back in days of segregation, because we rode on the front of the train, that's where all the cinders came in your face. You rode in the back of the bus, and you sat in the top of a balcony and down in steerage in the ships.	6:16
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:06:41].	6:37
Jerome Ledoux	The four dimensional man.	6:40
Felix Armfield	That's interesting.	6:42
Jerome Ledoux	It tells the whole story.	6:47
Felix Armfield	Does.	6:49
Jerome Ledoux	And growing up in the south—	6:50
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:06:53].	6:51
Jerome Ledoux	— in front of the train where it, and it was coal burners, and you got cinders, you looked out the window and you got cinders all in your face.	6:53
Felix Armfield	Back of the bus. The top—	7:00
Jerome Ledoux	Of the balcony.	7:05
Felix Armfield	— of the balcony. And [indistinct 00:07:09]—	7:05
Jerome Ledoux	Of a ship down in the hole. Four dimensional man. That tells the whole story. We knew that. Nobody had to tell you, no matter where you went, you knew where to go. If you went, if there was anything similar to a hamburger place, you automatically did not go up front as you go now, as you walk up to a wind, well, the wind, some outside place, little hamburger place. You walked around the side. It was always a side entrance. You did it automatically. You didn't think. If there was a restroom, automatically you looked for a Colored/White automatically. You didn't think of not doing that because you knew better. It was like being going on autopilot.	7:09
Felix Armfield	It was a way of life.	8:02
Jerome Ledoux	It was a way of life, a way of life.	8:03
Felix Armfield	Has the family always been Catholic?	8:05
Jerome Ledoux	My family? My immediate family. But it's a curious situation, I guess throughout this section of the country, quite curious. My immediate family, staunch Catholic always. But very, very close relatives, Baptists, whatever, mostly Baptists. And when I say very close, like first cousin. Let's see, I'm trying to think whether I have any uncles, no. No uncles, but a number of first cousins, Baptists.	8:12
Jerome Ledoux	And we used to go to their church. I remember I must have been, what, eight years old? I could have been nine, eight or nine. I was a little guy. And I remember daddy took us to a function of one of our cousins. It was a program, a Baptist program. And it could have just happened, it could be happening right now for the way I remember some of it; it's that stark in my memory. And I guess that's where I first came to appreciate a lot of the music, because I've always appreciated so many of the songs which I sing today. We sing them right at Mass. In fact, if you're interested, I might be able to dig up one or two tapes you could take with you just to get an idea how we celebrate Mass and the songs we sing.	8:50
Jerome Ledoux	Anyway, I remember they were singing, this choir. This was in an auditorium full scale program. And they were singing (singing). Some were close to being Ruby's. But anyway, that's etched in my memory. And they did a skit. I can't remember the whole skit, but I remember distinct sections of the skit. And I was mesmerized. I was mystified just sitting there listening. And a quartet was doing the skit, a male quartet. And they were dressed up in their black tuxedos and they had their black top hats. And as they were singing, they were going through all this stuff.	9:55
Felix Armfield	Really?	10:48
Jerome Ledoux	And man, I was sitting there singing, listen. And I was stupefied. And I remember one line, I don't remember anything else, but from this skit, I remember one line. This man comes in, they're the four there, and this one is stepping around. And he's telling the story. Evidently of someone, probably a preacher visiting his flock. There's something like that. And he comes in and he reaches up like this. He said, (singing).	10:49
Felix Armfield	Really?	11:24
Jerome Ledoux	And that could have happened two minutes ago the way I remember it. And boy, we enjoyed the heck out of that. And so in answer to your question, even though there's this staunch Catholicism, there's this close association with relatives and close friends who are Baptist and whatnot, and we just went back and forth to suppers, and to programs, and we were just close and still are.	11:33
Felix Armfield	Where did that, it's obvious to you [indistinct 00:12:14].	12:08
Jerome Ledoux	Huh? Obvious is too strong a word. When you're 13 years old, number one— Well, nowadays, especially at 13 year old, they think they know just about everything until they're about 21 and a little beyond. But when you're 13, you don't know anything. My cousin had gone in before me, 13 years ahead of me, Bishop Harold Perry. My brother, four years ahead of me, Verlin, Louis Verlin, we call him him Verlin. So I had seen the priest and the brothers. And you see there was this lore, there was this lore about the Bay. They did not refer to St. Augustine Seminary, except once in a while. They did not speak about Bay, St. Louis, except once in a while. They would refer to the Bay. And there was this whole legend in lore about the Bay. And we found it interesting. And quite a number of guys from Lake Charles went to Bay, St. Louis.	12:17
Jerome Ledoux	And of course, most of them did not become brothers or priests. But the experience was there and it was a cherished experience. But we heard about the Bay. I got to visit it when I was 11 in 1941. Father Leedy was ordained then, and it's one of the Black priests. So I liked it, even though when I went there in September 1943, I cried myself to sleep not long after I got there. I went down to the auditorium, sat on the steps, got so homesick, I'd never been away from home any length of time. Cried myself to sleep. But when I woke up, it was okay. I went wild running around this wild place full of big trees and possums and quail, rabbits, and coons and snakes and everything.	13:25
Felix Armfield	Now—	14:27
Jerome Ledoux	And wait, to finish the answer to your question—	14:32
Felix Armfield	Oh, okay.	14:35
Jerome Ledoux	— you don't really know what you want when you're 13, what you try it out. And then you find out, hey, this is a nice place. We didn't particularly like classes. They were socking it to us in Latin and French and everything. But nice place to play, swim, man. You could swim forever.	14:37
Felix Armfield	Now, this was at Saint?	14:57
Jerome Ledoux	St. Augustine Seminary.	14:58
Felix Armfield	St. Augustine.	14:58
Jerome Ledoux	In Bay, St. Louis. Right.	15:01
Felix Armfield	And what year did you arrive here?	15:03
Jerome Ledoux	In 1943. September 1943.	15:05
Felix Armfield	1943.	15:08
Jerome Ledoux	Right.	15:10
Felix Armfield	Was that a sheltered environment?	15:14
Jerome Ledoux	Yes. Sheltered in the sense that once you went there, it was like a boy's school set aside because the only time you got home was for summer. When I first went there, you did not even go home for Christmas.	15:18
Felix Armfield	Really?	15:36
Jerome Ledoux	No. We stayed there for Christmas. We had our own programs for Christmas. We cleaned and mopped, waxed, shine the whole place. Christmas, and we had our own games we played.	15:36
Felix Armfield	And the family comes and visit?	15:49
Jerome Ledoux	Yes, at certain times. On Sundays, family could come and visit. I think it was— I can't recall specifically. It didn't make too much of a difference in my case because my family wasn't close, that close. But I think it was maybe every Sunday or every first Sunday, whatever it was. But to finish answering your question, you don't know what you want when you're 13, nor when you're 17 when I graduated from high school. But it took 14 years before I was ordained. By that time, you have a pretty good idea about where you want to go. And some things are a little confusing along the way.	15:50
Jerome Ledoux	At certain times, I wondered, "Well, should I be doing something else?" I think everybody does. I was a pretty good baseball pitcher. In fact, I used to average about 13 strikeouts a game. Struck out 20 in one game, pitched and batted cleanup at the same time. Could hit the ball 400 feet. So yeah, could hit it 400 feet. So kid couldn't hit it the way Frank Thomas hit that thing. Oh, good God. I don't know whether you saw that.	16:39
Felix Armfield	No, I didn't.	17:17
Jerome Ledoux	Oh, he hit that ball. Two of his drives went over 500 feet. Even one of Ken Griffey, Jr.'s went over 500 feet. No, I couldn't hit it that far. But I played a mean game of baseball. The pitchers you see on TV, I could duplicate practically all of them. And of course, you're young and you're strong.	17:19
Felix Armfield	In spite of the fact that your world was somewhat sheltered there in St. [indistinct 00:17:57], do you encounter any racism?	17:51
Jerome Ledoux	You mean back then? Well, you had to moving about the city. See, we were sheltered, but we used to walk to—	18:06
Felix Armfield	What about who ran—	18:13
Jerome Ledoux	— to go swimming.	18:14
Felix Armfield	Who ran [indistinct 00:18:19]?	18:19
Jerome Ledoux	Well, there were White priests because at first there were no Black priests. And eventually, Black priests got in, but the White priests who ran it were tainted also. They were tainted with racism. There were very few Whites at that time who were not tainted with racism. In other words, they still, we could tell they still favored White people, even though they were working for us, teaching us. And that became obvious. Not all of them were that way. Three in particular were that way. When they were off campus, they didn't really know us. You heard it.	18:19
Felix Armfield	Didn't know you [indistinct 00:19:06]?	19:05
Jerome Ledoux	No, didn't really know us. And I had heard about that for years. And then I found out the hard way. I remember greeting one, getting on a Greyhound bus one time. And the most he did was, he had shades on, the most he did was roll his eyes above the shades and look at me and look back down. Didn't move a muscle.	19:06
Felix Armfield	What kind of impression does [indistinct 00:19:38]?	19:36
Jerome Ledoux	Very poor, very bad. But growing up at the time when I did, although the impression was very poor and made you feel unwanted, we had such a thick crust, thick skin from years of discrimination, years of segregation, from so many incidents in our particular lives. And all of us suffered incidents. You were just tough. It shook you up, but you just kept moving. You figured, "Well, this isn't going to stop me." We didn't let anything stop us.	19:39
Felix Armfield	That's interesting. When did you come out of— When did you complete disciplinary training?	20:33
Jerome Ledoux	I was ordained on May the 11th, 1957. So 14 years from the day I entered. I was 27 years old. I was ordained with Raymond Guidry and Joseph Guidry, both Black priests from Abbeville, in New Iberia, not far from Abbeville.	20:45
Felix Armfield	They're there now? Are they there now?	21:10
Jerome Ledoux	No, no. That's their native city.	21:12
Felix Armfield	That's native city.	21:13
Jerome Ledoux	Right. Oh, no. Raymond, Ray is in Opelousas at Holy Ghost. And Joe is— Where is Joe now? Joe is in Baton Rouge at St. Paul the Apostle.	21:15
Felix Armfield	Give me, as we, as probably the last segment of the interview, talk a little bit about this establishment, St. [indistinct 00:21:49].	21:35
Jerome Ledoux	This is an unbelievable establishment.	21:49
Felix Armfield	When was it founded? What were the conditions? I heard of one particular atrocity that came out of here, but I'll wait to see if you tell me.	21:52
Jerome Ledoux	I'm not sure about the reference there. But the origins of St. Augustine Church here in New Orleans are fascinating. First of all, this is the first suburb of Old New Orleans, which is the quarter. Rampart Street was literally the ramparts of the quarter. That was the guarded area of the quarter, the ramparts, which acted as a guard to the quarter. So when the ramparts came down, Rampart Street came in. And the quarter blossomed into its first suburb or subdivision, which is Treme, Faubourg Treme.	22:05
Felix Armfield	It's called Fall?	22:48
Jerome Ledoux	F-A-U-B— Sorry, we can't do this.	22:52
Felix Armfield	Hold that thought— [indistinct 00:24:14].	22:56
Jerome Ledoux	Yeah. Okay. Oh, okay. Let's see. I hate it, and this was unnecessary. This could have happened another time, this particular person who rang. But wait, I'm trying to think exactly where I was. Oh, the transmigration. Deacon Lloyd Glapion and a number of other parishioners remember—	24:16
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:24:38] Glapion?	24:37
Jerome Ledoux	G-L-A-P-I-O-N.	24:38
Felix Armfield	G-L-A-P?	24:41
Jerome Ledoux	I-O-N. Glapion. He's one of our deacons here. We have two deacons. The other is Lawrence Keller, both Black of course, well, just about everybody here he is Black. But anyway, they remember sitting way back in this little segregated area far to the back of the church. Now, in 1964, of course, the Civil Rights bill opened seating everywhere, order mandated by the Arch Bishop and so forth. The Whites began to leave.	24:43
Felix Armfield	So the Whites actually attended St. Augustine [indistinct 00:25:24]?	25:17
Jerome Ledoux	Well, keep in mind now, this church was petitioned for by free Blacks.	25:24
Felix Armfield	Exactly.	25:30
Jerome Ledoux	When it was built in 1842 and it was finished, slaves were in the outer aisles. The two middle aisles were mainly populated by free Blacks, some Caucasians. When the Blacks migrated to the north in segregation times, the Whites flooded in, became the majority population in the congregation. When the Civil Rights bill came about, the Whites flooded out. But this time the Blacks did not flood in because there weren't that many Black Catholics proportionally in the area. So the population of the congregation simply fell, but the main part of the congregation was Black. And eventually most of the Whites left.	25:31
Felix Armfield	In the opening days of this [indistinct 00:26:26], what was the bulk of congregation?	26:23
Jerome Ledoux	I guess it was at the turn of the century that segregation laws came in with [indistinct 00:26:38] Plessy Ferguson—	26:31
Felix Armfield	Plessy Ferguson 1896.	26:38
Jerome Ledoux	Yes.	26:38
Felix Armfield	And clearly by 1900s, Jim Crow was a rule of law.	26:38
Jerome Ledoux	You got it. So that's when the population shifted because Blacks fled the south, migrating to the north, leaving places like this to the White population.	26:48
Felix Armfield	So clearly you have Whites [indistinct 00:27:05] numbers here—	27:01
Jerome Ledoux	At the turn of the century. And then in 1964, the opposite happened. And when they found out that the coffee was coming in, the milk didn't like it. So milk left.	27:06
Felix Armfield	I guess I need to say this just for the record and such that we can also keep that in mind that when we start to talk about the Catholic Church, and correct me if I'm incorrect, we're not talking about a White congregation or a Black congregation. Are we?	27:17
Jerome Ledoux	No.	27:17
Felix Armfield	Okay. Unlike the [indistinct 00:27:50]. [indistinct 00:27:54] trying to give [indistinct 00:27:57]. Oh, we were talking about what I think needs to be set straight for the record [indistinct 00:28:07]. That we have this clear understanding that when we start to talk about the Catholic Church as an institution, we're not talking about separate Black and White perishes are not an issue.	27:17
Jerome Ledoux	No. At least that's the theory of it. I guess you can say that's also the actuality of it.	28:24
Felix Armfield	Because what I discovered here in New Orleans, [indistinct 00:28:32] Plessy v. Ferguson [indistinct 00:28:39]. And that was for a long time Black people here in New Orleans [indistinct 00:28:47] congregations that may have been majority White [indistinct 00:28:55] and sat on the back pew.	28:31
Jerome Ledoux	Yes.	28:31
Felix Armfield	Which itself is an act of Jim Crow.	28:31
Jerome Ledoux	And very demeaning.	29:05
Felix Armfield	And could not do their communion?	29:06
Jerome Ledoux	At the same time. Did not receive communion together with the others, but after the others. That was true of many churches.	29:15
Felix Armfield	But they were members of congregation.	29:25
Jerome Ledoux	Yes, members of the parish.	29:32
Felix Armfield	What [indistinct 00:29:37]?	29:32
Jerome Ledoux	Well, you had the same situation here. This was at that time, we are talking about after Plessy Ferguson, of course. Excuse me. All of your churches were typically the same. If they were so-called White churches, and I say so-called because of the makeup of the congregation. Then you had the philosophy, the prevailing social philosophy in place. And I need not explain to you what that is, or what that was. And because of that, well, we had our place and we knew our place.	29:41
Felix Armfield	Even in the church.	30:30
Jerome Ledoux	Yeah, even in it was that way in all the churches, but it was more pronounced in certain churches. See now, in some of the other denominations, you did not have that at all. All you had was White churches and Black churches. You didn't have Blacks at all in White churches. So you can say we had a pittance in the Catholic Church. In some of the churches, they didn't even have the pittance. Now, whether that's good or bad or indifferent, that's debatable. But that's the way it was.	30:33
Jerome Ledoux	And eventually, of course, this swung around the pittance in church after church, and particularly after '64, of course, turned around. But before 1964 and the Civil Rights bill, before people like Cardinal Ritter, I think jumped far ahead of the 1964 Civil Rights bill, Ritter began to desegregate things.	31:08
Felix Armfield	How you spell [indistinct 00:31:42]?	31:41
Jerome Ledoux	R-I double T-E-R.	31:43
Felix Armfield	R?	31:44
Jerome Ledoux	R-I double T-E-R. Like Tex Ritter.	31:46
Felix Armfield	Oh, Ritter. Okay.	31:49
Jerome Ledoux	Ritter. And I can't recall the year. This is so long ago. I don't recall whether Ritter, I think Ritter jumped the gun on the '64 thing. Yeah. I'm trying to think of a— I wish I had a ready source which would tell.	31:51
Felix Armfield	Now when you say he jumped the gun—	32:21
Jerome Ledoux	In other words, most bishops, most people waited until the Civil Rights bill was enacted before they came forth. In other words, they were not prophets, they were not trailblazers. They were, does the name Aaron Henry? Yeah, Aaron Henry, ring a bell? Not Henry Aaron now, the baseball player. Aaron Henry years ago, president of the NAACP in Mississippi. And someone may have said it before him, but he's the one I remember seeing it first. The church has been a taillight, not a headlight.	32:21
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:33:05].	33:02
Jerome Ledoux	Yeah. That's why I'm saying I think Ritter was a headlight, I think. I'm trying to figure out a way to check that out very quickly.	33:06
Felix Armfield	And if they weren't coming forth, [indistinct 00:33:24] I'm assuming that he's saying that—	33:19
Jerome Ledoux	They weren't sticking their noses out.	33:25
Felix Armfield	They didn't make a mandate for their congregations.	33:26
Jerome Ledoux	Yes. No.	33:26
Felix Armfield	That they [indistinct 00:33:33].	33:26
Jerome Ledoux	Right. They weren't saying, "Hey, open seating folks, sit wherever you want." See, that happened. The Arch Bishop Romo said that after the Civil Rights bill was signed, not before. Yeah.	33:36
Felix Armfield	I think I've been told that, was it the— What it is called?	33:54
Jerome Ledoux	The Holy Family. Sisters of the Holy Family.	34:10
Felix Armfield	Sisters of the Holy Family. What if they did something first?	34:12
Jerome Ledoux	They were founded here.	34:19
Felix Armfield	Founded?	34:21
Jerome Ledoux	Physically.	34:21
Felix Armfield	Physically founded?	34:23
Jerome Ledoux	Here in this church. They are about a month younger than we are in foundation. So this church was finished in October, October 11th, 1842. 1842.	34:24
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:34:43].	34:40
Jerome Ledoux	The Sisters of the Holy Family.	34:53
Felix Armfield	Holy Family. Sisters of the Holy Family.	34:54
Jerome Ledoux	So their founders came here. I'm going to try to pick up a resume of St. Augustine before you leave. I think I should have one somewhere handy. You can take a long with you. It has a fascinating facts in it. But Aria DeLillo came over here from St. Louis Cathedral where she was baptized, joined this parish. And under the urging of the first pastor, ATN Russoloff, together with two ladies, physically founded the order of the congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Family here in this church. That would've been November of 1842. So they're the same age as we are, practically speaking. 152 years old.	34:58
Felix Armfield	What has been the issue of race [indistinct 00:36:07]?	35:40
Jerome Ledoux	Now you're talking about in recent years? Or what?	36:11
Felix Armfield	What was during [indistinct 00:36:19]?	36:15
Jerome Ledoux	Outlet as a culture? I'd have to say zero. Without even knowing, and I say it for this reason, until the late '60s, Latin was the universal language for the Catholic Church, at least for the Western Catholic Church. There's the Eastern Catholic Church, which has its own language and its own rights and has had for years. But for the Western Catholic Church, also called the Latin, right, we didn't have English. We didn't have French. And French was the language spoken here when the church was built, by the way. It's in all the old recordings and everything, baptismal recordings. You might want to just glimpse at them on the way out. We don't have the oldest ones here, but we have some old ones.	36:21
Felix Armfield	I guess I have one quick question on that subject. If there wasn't, as you said, practically zero of a cultural outlet, [indistinct 00:37:24]?	37:15
Jerome Ledoux	Good question.	37:16
Felix Armfield	And I say that seriously.	37:16
Jerome Ledoux	Raw faith.	37:16
Felix Armfield	And I think there has to be something else there than just raw. I seriously question that along the lines of what's [indistinct 00:37:57] the light outside of the church have a sustained [indistinct 00:38:03] or a sustained force.	37:23
Jerome Ledoux	Yes. But I don't think that answered the first question. You mean, once they left worship and went outside, then they went in into their own culture doing the things they did best. But then I don't think that would affect what went on inside of church. I don't think, at least I'm having trouble seeing that that would perpetuate their membership in the church. I don't know whether I'm saying that quite right.	38:08
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:38:38]. Maybe my question [indistinct 00:38:42].	38:37
Jerome Ledoux	No.	38:43
Felix Armfield	I don't know.	38:43
Jerome Ledoux	No. It's not a dumb question. Let me explain, far from being a dumb question.	38:44
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:38:49].	38:47
Jerome Ledoux	Because—	38:48
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:38:50].	38:48
Jerome Ledoux	No, because a number of people made a statement, sort of in answer to your question. This was made mainly by White priests working among Blacks. One White priest in particular said, now this is back deep in the days of segregation, "I do not understand how or why Black Catholics have the strength to remain in the Catholic Church." In other words, given the fact of segregation, discrimination, stepchild status and so forth.	38:50
Felix Armfield	One that I think I want [indistinct 00:39:43] contribute to the fact that Black folks would stay in the Catholic Church directly [indistinct 00:40:07], it's almost like [indistinct 00:40:07] talked about [indistinct 00:40:07] there were certain social/economic [indistinct 00:40:07] that certain establishments were [indistinct 00:40:07] faith, [indistinct 00:40:09], educational purposes. And I'm wondering if somewhat of the same applies?	39:39
Jerome Ledoux	I wouldn't doubt it.	40:17
Felix Armfield	Catholics here, New Orleans specifically along the lines of social upward mobility and slash economic opportunities.	40:19
Jerome Ledoux	I think that's always, not always, but in very many cases, I think that's a mix. No matter what you're talking about, no matter whether you're talking about politics, social life, religion, business, I think you always have mixed motives. Plus in addition to the, I guess you'd call it economic upward mobility and so forth, you would have the purely social reason or cultural reasons shall we say. Because even though the people were African Americans, they were also mixed with other cultures.	40:32
Jerome Ledoux	And they were relating to those cultures even in worship. And here specifically, I mentioned the French, because this church definitely had a French culture. The architect was French. The language of the church was French. The records are all in French in the early years.	41:17
Felix Armfield	Isn't that interesting? Well, I guess you was talking about French. You're talking about French and cultural language and customs, not necessarily French men.	41:36
Jerome Ledoux	Exactly. You're talking about—	41:47
Felix Armfield	You stated earlier that in fact this church was petitioned by [indistinct 00:41:59].	41:53
Jerome Ledoux	By free Blacks.	41:58
Felix Armfield	By free Blacks.	41:59
Jerome Ledoux	Right.	42:00
Felix Armfield	And they were obviously of a French culture.	42:01
Jerome Ledoux	Right. Well, many of the Haitians came here, people from San Domingo and other places. The people who came here were French speaking. Their color made very little difference. They were French speaking. Their culture was French. No matter how they looked, their culture was French. That's exactly what you're saying. Yes. So the color had little to do with it.	42:09
Felix Armfield	And when was that [indistinct 00:42:35]? Do you know? Can we see, at any kind of timeline when that transition breaks? We see things begin to move from French towards a Latin? At the turn of the century?	42:32
Jerome Ledoux	French toward English, you mean? Because all of this was in Latin. Keep in mind, the Mass was in Latin, but otherwise the language was French. So the Mass was the centerpiece, always in Latin. Now, the move toward English, I would imagine had to have happened probably around Plessy Ferguson. It had to have happened shortly after that because so many of the Blacks here were French speaking. They moved out.	42:53
Jerome Ledoux	The Whites who flooded in I'm willing to bet were mostly Anglos or Italians, which was no longer French then. See the Italians, although the Italians were at their height, more like approaching the 1920s, that's when the Italians were at their height. That's when the marble was put in into the church, imported from Italy. So it's an educated guess. It'd have to be the early 1900s when this turnover to English began to happen. But not quite the early 1900s, the records are still in French. I recall. We can check some of the records. 1910 still some. So maybe getting closer to 1920. Maybe around the time of World War I.	43:35
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:44:39].	44:34
Jerome Ledoux	No, I don't consider this taxing.	44:53
Felix Armfield	Okay. Long as you [indistinct 00:44:58]. Let me [indistinct 00:44:58]. And this is just Jones— Was Jim Crow then, or was Jim Crow alive? Jim Crow as we new prior to the Civil [indistinct 00:45:19].	44:58
Jerome Ledoux	Now of course, you're asking an in an invalid question. You know why you're asking an invalid question?	45:19
Felix Armfield	No, I don't. [indistinct 00:45:27].	45:26
Jerome Ledoux	Because Jim Crow was an institution. The institution is there. What you're really asking is, is the ghost of Jim Crow, or is the spirit of Jim Crow still alive?	45:27
Felix Armfield	So you think Jim Crow is institution?	45:42
Jerome Ledoux	Keep in mind that's a legal thing. The legal thing is dead. The legal thing is kaput.	45:45
Felix Armfield	Legal institution is dead.	45:50
Jerome Ledoux	Right. The question is whether the actuality is still there somehow without the legality. Yes. Not the way it was. Not nearly the way it was.	45:53
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:46:06].	46:05
Jerome Ledoux	I'll tell you one thing, which I always laugh at it. It is ugly and it's—	46:05

Felix Armfield	Take three. Your father was different, as you were saying. Your father was what?	0:04
Jerome Ledoux	My father's father was the only Black child in his family. Now you figure on that one for a while.	0:10
Felix Armfield	The only Black child in his family.	0:18
Jerome Ledoux	In his family. It sounds like a joke. You'd say, "No, that's not for real." But it is, it was. Yeah. But just as you say, I mean, people don't want to get into these cans of worms. And there are many. It's not just one can of worms. It's many cans of worms.	0:23
Felix Armfield	Yeah, and then I was also coming to think of the population of New Orleans. That there's this spiritual difference between the retired professional Blacks and retired non-professional Blacks. non-professional Blacks I've gathered [indistinct 00:01:08] I did what I was supposed to do. [indistinct 00:01:18] You go talk to the mayor and then see what he has to say. So they see these big headline names [indistinct 00:01:38]	0:43
Jerome Ledoux	That's their perception. Yeah.	1:37
Felix Armfield	And it surely is not the main [indistinct 00:01:46]	1:38
Jerome Ledoux	Well, it's a great fallacy too. This country, well, you can go lower than that. Not just the non-professional Blacks, whatever you want to call them. But this country was built up in great part by slaves. You talk about non-professionals. In great part, this whole country was built—	1:46
Felix Armfield	I did not think of that [indistinct 00:02:15].	2:13
Jerome Ledoux	— By slaves. Yes. Yes, indeed.	2:14
Felix Armfield	So and I've had people say, "Well, how do you know that?" And I say [indistinct 00:02:28]	2:19
Jerome Ledoux	Well, if you go into individual communities, you can track most of this stuff. And all you have to do is track which corporations, which companies did certain things, which groups of men, people, and then find out who helped them and to what extent they were helped. In most cases, what I call the mule labor was done by the strongest people. Who were the strongest people? The same folks who perform on the football field, the baseball field, the basketball courts, track and field. Well, they're the children of the forbears, the strong people. On their backs, agriculture was carried. On their backs, construction was carried. We just know this. And without being written up completely in the history books, it is there. We know who were the mules. We know, don't we?	2:43
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:04:07]	4:02
Jerome Ledoux	The nannies. Yes, yes. Wait, who was this?	4:18
Felix Armfield	Maria Stewart.	4:41
Jerome Ledoux	Oh, Maria Stewart. Yes. Yes.	4:42
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:04:45] First Black female political [indistinct 00:04:50] speaker. She made that public speech in Boston in 1831.	4:45
Jerome Ledoux	Okay, back to your question. We're still talking around it, of course.	4:58
Felix Armfield	Yes, we are.	5:03
Jerome Ledoux	It's still the same question. Is Jim Crow dead? Of course not. I mean, the legal Jim Crow is dead. The legal crow is gone. But there's a ghost or a spirit crow still there. And I guess you have to describe this for what it is. In order to understand what's going on, I think we have to look to Bosnia-Herzegovina, where you don't have Black-White. You have to look to Ireland, south and north, where you have White-White. You have to look to even to part of ourselves. Rwanda, Black-Black. It's cultural. It's cultural. It's ethnic. In this case you have two— It's tribal. The Hutus, the Tutsis in Rwanda.	5:05
Felix Armfield	It's tribal. Right, right.	6:20
Jerome Ledoux	Yeah. So you find the same syndrome around the world. You find the Jews in the Arabs. And what got my attention more than anything else, it had to be just before Christmas of 1983 when Anwar Sadat visited Jerusalem, visited Menachem Begin, and this was on international TV. Anwar Sadat looked Menachem Begin in the eye. He said, "We are brothers. Abraham is our father." Not your father, our father. Begin did not contradict him because genetically these are the same people. And I didn't realize that until, "Hey, the Jews and the Arabs are what and what? Genetically, they're just what and what? Abraham is our father.	6:23
Jerome Ledoux	And of course when Louis Gossett Jr. played Sadat in the movie Sadat, he needed no makeup and he looked like him. Just like him. I mean, receding hairline and all complexion even looks. But it tells a whole lot about people discriminating against one another on a whim or on the slightest excuse. Whether that's cultural, ethnic, tribal, religious. And Ireland sticks out like a sore thumb. Rwanda sticks out like a sore thumb. Wow. These are brothers in the flesh. The Middle East. It's a gumbo part of the same stuff. And of course people must not let the modern Jews throw them off. The modern Jews do not look the way Jesus looked. The modern Jews look like Polish Jews, Russian Jews, German Jews, European Jews. And the others at the time of Jesus looked a lot more like Lou Gossett and Anwar Sadat.	7:37
Felix Armfield	Let it be known. They're quite clear.	8:53
Jerome Ledoux	Let it be known. But this Jim Crow thing, I mean all of this is speaking to what we're saying about the ghost of Jim Crow. People look for things and they look for things not necessarily between races and between ethnic groups. They look for things within the same groups. And that's not just a Black thing. That's a White thing. It's a brown thing. What I heard the Japanese doing Koreans, I could not believe. I guess you've heard about that. The worst thing you can be in Japan is half-Japanese and half-Korean.	8:59
Jerome Ledoux	You think we had it hard? Uh-huh. I mean this is visceral. This is acid. This is really awful. The very worst thing you can be is half-Japanese, half-Korean. And Time Magazine had a thing in it that said, "What on Earth?" And it's still bad. And I mean we look at one Oriental and another and say, "Which is which?" Well, I mean we can tell a little bit, "Oh, that's Vietnamese over there." And then some people look from the Vietnamese to the Korean and they don't know where they are. And don't throw in the Thais that's from Thailand. And I've seen people look at a Chinaman and say, "Look at that Japanese over here."	9:43
Felix Armfield	We do it all the time, just group them all together. That, "There goes the nation."	10:36
Jerome Ledoux	There you go. And then of course the White people say, we all look alike. When I taught at Xavier, I taught a number of things in theology. In Christian marriage, we always had a section on what we're discussing now, actually. Different strains of Black people, light, dark and all these other things. And I always challenge them. Tell the class, "All right, put your arms together and match colors." Do you know we never got a match except with identical twins? Never got a match. Came close.	10:46
Felix Armfield	Guarantee with identical twins.	11:25
Jerome Ledoux	Yeah, at least. But you got fooled. But I mean you came real close. But they could still say, "Ooh, not quite." What does that tell? We have a complete rainbow. You want a rainbow? We have it. But there are still Blacks to this day, there are some in New Orleans, although it's better. It used to be bad. How bad it used to be in New Orleans. Until somewhere between 30 and 40 years ago, it was still extant. You had paper bag parties. Ever hear of that? Comb parties.	11:27
Felix Armfield	And what was the comb party.	12:11
Jerome Ledoux	Well, there was a comb hanging from a string as you enter the door. And if you couldn't get it through your hair, you didn't go in.	12:15
Felix Armfield	So the coarseness of your hair.	12:21
Jerome Ledoux	Yes.	12:22
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:12:32].	12:22
Jerome Ledoux	You had to have quote, "Good hair."	12:34
Felix Armfield	That quote.	12:38
Jerome Ledoux	And of course Blacks still have a lot of self-hatred without realizing it. Hatred is maybe too strong a word. Self-dislike. We still talk about good hair.	12:41
Felix Armfield	I don't know if hatred is a harsh word [indistinct 00:12:58]	12:53
Jerome Ledoux	That it's rife.	13:03
Felix Armfield	Yeah. [indistinct 00:13:15] and how it manifests itself [indistinct 00:13:22]	13:14
Jerome Ledoux	Exactly. Exactly. Oh, yes. I mean it's awful abuse among our youngsters. I mean, these unprintable words in terms and epithets, the obscenities, blasphemies, profanities and everything. Incredible. And just as you say, the bile I'm spewing forth on you is coming out of me.	13:28
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:14:01].	14:00
Jerome Ledoux	Exactly. If I feel very secure about myself, I won't wrap you out because I feel good about me, but we don't feel good about ourselves. And so it's manifested to this day and people say it without even thinking about it. "Oh, she has good hair." There's no such animal as good hair and bad hair. Now you can speak of coarse hair and you can speak of let's say straight hair and smooth hair because those are descriptions. But they're neither good nor bad because each one has a purpose.	14:03
Felix Armfield	And [indistinct 00:14:47] there is a such thing as tight and curly. That's just tight and curly.	14:52
Jerome Ledoux	But the word kinky is a negative term.	15:04
Felix Armfield	It it, I think. It is.	15:09
Jerome Ledoux	It's a bad term in itself. Whether it refers to hair or sex.	15:10
Felix Armfield	Exactly. What I tell students is that when I think of kinky, the texture of my hair certainly doesn't come to mind. So therefore [indistinct 00:15:23]	15:14
Jerome Ledoux	That's the other thing. There are other things also are kinky.	15:26
Felix Armfield	So we won't necessarily be doing kinky in this formal classroom setting.	15:29
Jerome Ledoux	Exactly.	15:29
Felix Armfield	So therefore my thing is I correct those kinds of things.	15:29
Jerome Ledoux	And the other thing, he has nice features, meaning his nose is not too Negroid or his lips are not too Negroid.	15:43
Felix Armfield	Or he or she is fair. [indistinct 00:16:12] My skin is smooth. My skin is amber. Fairness is a detection of that, is a notation that. If he or she is of light or dark complexion.	15:52
Jerome Ledoux	Light. Yes. Fair skin.	16:17
Felix Armfield	Fair skin. [indistinct 00:16:17] Makes you think there's something good in being a Black [indistinct 00:16:20]	16:17
Jerome Ledoux	Yeah. Fair and unfair is the obvious thing. Yeah.	16:21
Felix Armfield	Exactly, and if the person is non-White, obviously unfair.	16:21
Jerome Ledoux	But then it only takes, and this wipes out—	16:28
Felix Armfield	Can we pretty much end the interview recording something [indistinct 00:16:39].	16:33
Jerome Ledoux	Except I haven't quite made the point yet about Jim Crow.	16:39
Felix Armfield	Okay, well let's keep talking. Whether we would just—	16:43
Jerome Ledoux	No, no, what we are saying has very—	16:48
Felix Armfield	Something else that you said a little ago that, I don't know if you heard, but I tried to make the correction about being offensive. And that is when we talk about African as opposed to European issue, we talk about European [indistinct 00:17:12] we refer to them as slaves and kings or whatever. We talk about the different African roots and tribes. Only in Africa. Why do we refer to them as tribes? [indistinct 00:17:36]	16:50
Jerome Ledoux	Oh, you said tribes slash ethnic.	17:38
Felix Armfield	Ethnic groups. And I think ethnic groups is the more presentable term, because we place African societies right on the same plane with the others.	17:41
Jerome Ledoux	Definitely, because see now of course that may have something to do with the seminary training I was telling you about when we read the original stuff in Latin. You see, people like Caesar in speaking of Europe refers to tribes.	18:01
Felix Armfield	He does?	18:16
Jerome Ledoux	Yes, like the Celts. This was a tribe. They call them—	18:18
Felix Armfield	But not an ethnic group.	18:25
Jerome Ledoux	Well, I mean not denying that they were an ethnic group. See, in other words, I guess I'm hearing the terms as being not mutually exclusive. And I'd have to go back and check on my Caesar, but if I recall Caesar— I'm trying to think way back. The Celts were wild men. Those who fought them in France, they came in from the woods.	18:28
Felix Armfield	Exactly.	18:55
Jerome Ledoux	And so I guess tribal refers simply to a more primitive way of living until people build cities or something like that. And it's not exclusive of what is now. It simply shows something about origin, where they once came from. And even though they're established, I guess, they are established as ethnic groups now. The Hutus. But it shows some kind of movement, I guess, if you see what I'm saying. At least that's the way I was picturing it, because I'm hearing the same thing about Europe. I mean the Germans, they were wild men. We speak of the Germanic nation. They were men who came in from the forest. You read Caesar. When Caesar talks about these wild men, he's not talking about this great ethnic group of Germans. No, he's talking about these folks he was fighting out there in the forests. But it only shows again their point of origin. They came in from the forest and made cities, whatever. And I don't know whether that's a fair appraisal or what.	18:56
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:20:26] Your wrap up. Your closing comments on Jim Crow.	20:28
Jerome Ledoux	Okay, now we lost our way with that tribal thing. Let's see. Wait, no. Let's see, we were just about to hit this thing about features. I guess I learned you— Well, when you get old enough, you learn many lessons you just can't learn when you're young. You just keep observing and there's certain things you admire. And you grow up and you see the Greek statues, the fine features, you admire them. And all of a sudden you discover, "Hey, there are Ethiopians, like this. Same features."	20:32
Jerome Ledoux	And then you grow up with what they consider the classic idea of beauty, which is Greco-Roman, something like Anglo. And then you observe and you say, "Look at all these lapins. Aren't they beautiful people?" And you observe some more. And the more you observe your own people, you observe some young lady distinctly Negroid. Say, "Darn good, this is a lovely woman." All Negroid. The Knowles here and maybe has a bit of the Native American here. My father's great maternal grandmother was Choctaw. And many Blacks have that. I mean I'm convinced most Blacks have a bit of Native American and they have that mixture. The African, the Native American, maybe at kiss of European and so forth.	21:13
Felix Armfield	Just enough of a kiss.	22:19
Jerome Ledoux	And if you really wanted to describe adequately many Black Americans, you would've to say Afro-Euro-Asian Americans. Now they have a little, and God knows how much of each. It varies. But anyway, what I wanted to say. Oh, you observe these Black people and the longer you live, the more you appreciate the features of your own people. You look at the men and look at the women and you say, "Big lips, big nose. What beautiful? I like this. I like it. I don't care what anybody says. I like this." And it grows on you. And I think what you're doing in the process is overcoming a brainwashing in which you grew up. The brainwashing of the Anglo, the Greco-Roman, the line of beauty and so forth. Grade of hair, whatever you want to call it. Type of hair rather than grade. That word grade is a negative word too. Let's grade this. F, D minus.	22:30
Felix Armfield	So many negative [indistinct 00:24:04].	23:59
Jerome Ledoux	Yeah. Now this is within our own race. So you had a struggle between the so-called Creoles, light-skinned Negroes, who thought they were better, many of whom thought they were better than the Black-skinned Negroes or Blacks. I can remember members of my own family when I was a child on my father's side, we had the Deveo family, relatives. And the Deveos, you look at them, you say, "What are they?" They have cat eyes and many of them had bluish, greenish almost auburn or gold something. And the regular hair, the lighter skin. And you had basically three groups, not just among Negros, everywhere. You had one group which was always Black. One group which worked White and came home Black. And let's see, now you had a third group always White. [French 00:25:10] That's the French passing for White. [French 00:25:13] That's the same thing. [French 00:25:21] passing for White. Same thing.	24:03
Jerome Ledoux	Now when you have this much static inside your own race, it gives you an understanding of static between the races and between the ethnic groups so that you don't have to ask whether Jim Crow is still alive. If you want, it's wrong to say that, but Jim Crow is alive inside the races, not just between the races. And of course that doesn't make sense. Technically and legally it's wrong. But conceptually you can understand we discriminate among ourselves. And even to this day we do to a great extent.	25:28
Jerome Ledoux	Whites discriminate among themselves. Do you realize that Joe DiMaggio, now that name I know rings a bell, at the height of his athletic prowess and fame could not go to certain country clubs because he was Italian? People like Hank Greenberg, I don't know what that name rings a bell. Big Slugger. So you do know some history there. Once hit 58 home runs, also could not go to certain country clubs because he was Jewish. That's White and White. Of course now Jewish, that's debatable because the real Jew is not mixed with the German and Polish and so forth.	26:10
Felix Armfield	So what you're saying is that Jim Crow could manifest itself in many other ways in regards [indistinct 00:27:02].	26:55
Jerome Ledoux	Yes, so much so that Whites themselves are so mixed up, they don't know what they're discriminating against. Number one. I mean, we could really get deeply into this. White people don't even know who's White. If we go by the old definition of the Code of the South, you were discriminate and don't even know what they're discriminating about. Black people, I tell you a couple of things. Ralph Dupas. Let's see, he must have fought welterweight here in New Orleans at a time when Black and White fighters were not allowed to fight one another. Not here and in the south. Ralph Dupas is Black, his name was du Plessis. I happened to know some of his cousins. One of his cousins went to Bay St. Louis, I think it was Alvin du Plessis. Attended the seminar. Told me all about his second cousin who's passing for White.	27:02
Jerome Ledoux	The White people here still think he's White. There was an article in the paper on some of the old fighters just what, six, seven weeks ago. And he was featured among others. Wait, there's another fighter, I can't think of his name, but the hated— I can't even think of his name's name now, as much as I'm trying to think of his name. His name is right there and won't come. But anyway, look at that. I'm trying to think of his name. The hated down in Blackman Parish Judge Leander Perez. I have spoken to several people who know they are related to him. A church was burned down in Blackman Parish, which is just down the river from here.	28:14
Jerome Ledoux	The church had his vital records, his baptismal records in it. It is generally known the man was Black. But the upshoot of the whole thing is— The upshot of the whole thing is, I guess it's better saying, White people are steadily living with, socializing with, marrying people who may consider White and they're not. We're talking about in this technical sense, whatever you want to say it is. Dinah Shore, I guess you know was in [indistinct 00:29:45] or did you?	29:12
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:29:49].	29:44
Jerome Ledoux	Yes, all White people consider her White. What does that say about discrimination now? It says all these folks are mixed up in trying to discriminate.	29:50
Felix Armfield	That Jim Crow is alive anyway.	30:02
Jerome Ledoux	It's alive because for some ungodly reason, and it has to be an ungodly reason, people, and that's not White, Black, otherwise, is people choose to discriminate even among themselves, even within racial groups, even within the same ethnic groups and all the more between those racial and between the ethnic groups. But we see that all around the world even today. We don't have to talk about what's happening here in the States. Look around the world, you see the same picture. Ireland, Africa, Middle East, it's always the same story, discriminating. And they seem to look for excuses to discriminate.	30:05
Jerome Ledoux	And so it is and I would use one word, there's one word I always use for I guess a basis of discrimination. Not segregation, discrimination and separation or separatism. And the word is comfort. You go with whom you are comfortable. And you've been to many conventions and meetings. What happens? If you let those people just go where they want to go, where do they go? How do they group? How do they pair off? They make little groups according to their feelings of comfort. And of course usually that's according to racial lines, ethnic lines. But not only, not only. It's according, even within groups, we find groups within groups always looking for, "The people I can feel laid back with. The people I don't have to throw up any defenses against or in front of."	30:54
Jerome Ledoux	And I think that's really the basis for all this mess. The White people who are running from the inner city have been for years, don't feel comfortable among Blacks. There are social reasons, historical reasons. There are physical reasons at least perceived. And that word perceived is a diabolical term quite often. And of course we hear all the time, perception is reality because there is no other reality but our perceptions, and our perceptions are so stinky quite often. And when I say ours, that means the Whites, the Blacks. We, Blacks as we explain, have so many terrible perceptions about ourselves, about one another. And of course we throw that against the Blacks. Louis Farrakhan throws his venom against all Whites, especially, well, the Jews, although technically they're not really White. Not the real Jews, the watered down Jews, I guess somewhat mixed ethnic Jews.	32:00
Jerome Ledoux	So you still have groups running from groups. The Whites run into the suburbs. Well-heeled Blacks run after them because they have the money. And when enough well-heeled Blacks get into the suburbs, the White collar moves farther out until there's no more running room. And then they begin to do what folks are complaining about here at Treme. Folks at Treme are complaining about gentrification. I'm sure that word rings a mail off. "Don't allow the gentrification of Treme, keep it Black, keep it mostly Black." But that's the way it's going. Folks running away from folks and it's a charade of Jim Crow all over again. And they find themselves running in circles.	33:18
Jerome Ledoux	They ran to the suburbs and now they're coming back and they're populating the river along Tchoupitoulas, Napoleon Avenue. They call it the Warehouse District, which is an upscale district, right smack in New Orleans, where once they had run and whether they have returned, well, some at least. So they're sneaking back in. Those in the suburbs are getting more and more Black neighbors, Hispanic neighbors, other neighbors. So the suburbs are no longer the White collars around the Black inner tube of them in the city. Is that speaking to Jim Crow?	34:16
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:35:07] And this so concludes my interview with Father [indistinct 00:35:13]	35:08

Item Info

Title:

Jerome Ledoux interview recording, 1994 July 14

Date:

July 14, 1994

Creator:

Ledoux, Jerome Gaston

Contributor:

Armfield, Felix

Description:

Name: Jerome Gaston Ledoux; Date of birth: 1930-02-26; Place of birth: Lake Charles, LA; Occupation(s): minister; catholic Priest; Residence: New Orleans, LA
Informant ID: 553; Interviewed by: Felix Armfield.

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English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

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Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South interviews, photographs, and project records, circa 1864-2011, bulk 1990-2004

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The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired the Records of the Behind the Veil Oral History Project from the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies in 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2002.

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Copyright for content created by the Behind the Veil project is held by Duke University and made available to the public using a Creative Commons Attribution / Non-commercial (CC-BY-NC) license.

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RL00170-CS-1226
RL00170-CS-1227
a76b9985-2208-43c7-8c9d-41c751a8b814
behindtheveil
1604e507-26b2-499d-8e59-a2afc9319cf9
ark:/87924/r4kh0s75k
1604e507-26b2-499d-8e59-a2afc9319cf9

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Jerome Ledoux interview recording, 1994 July 14

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1. Jerome Ledoux administrative file, 1994

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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