[Louisiana Cemeteries] St. Lukes abandoned church
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- Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2011 11:23:14 -0800 (PST)
Background on St. Lukes Baptist Church Chackbay, Louisiana
http://www.tri-parishtimes.com/articles/2008/08/06/news/147_51_churchpg1.txt
NSU dig traces roots of Chackbay church
By KEYON K. JEFF
St. Luke Baptist Church is easy to pass by while driving through
Chackbay.
What
was once the spiritual center of an independent black community is
dilapidated. Overgrowth has nearly blended the property with the woods.
Its history is slowly fading from the collective conscious.
But a
group of current and former Nicholls State sociology students has
embarked on the Little Zion/St. Luke Baptist Church Service Learning
Project in hopes of rediscovering the historical contributions the
church laid for African-Americans in south Louisiana and Lafourche
Parish in particular.
"This allows us to look at that part of
southern history that somehow doesn't always get into the textbooks,"
said Dr. James A. Butler, Nicholls associate professor of sociology and
principal investigator on the project.
The Nicholls State
Sociology Club took a big step toward capturing some of the last
memories of St. Luke before it was abandoned in the late 1960s.
On
July 26, the club gathered members of the Shanklin and Woods families,
descendents of one of the church's founding families - the Parks - at
the Moses Community Center in Thibodaux. The purpose was to collect oral
histories from members who attended the church.
"This needs to
be done because there are too many stories that get lost," said Tom
Shanklin, a second-year Assumption High School Spanish teacher. "I don't
remember that church as a kid growing up in the early 1960s. Obviously,
it was there."
"This is a beautiful thing," said Priscilla
Macintosh, the great-great-great-granddaughter of founding members
Joseph and Sarah Parks. "I was surprised because I learned some new
information besides the information I collected over the past year. I
only remember the church as a little bitty girl in the 1950s."
Most
of the oldest Shanklin family members could not make the mini-reunion,
but the club did conduct nine interviews, three from those who attended
services at St. Luke.
'The family members have been very
cooperative," said Tina Granger, research associate for the Little
Zion/St. Luke's Baptist Church Project. "They are very interested in
helping us move forward on this project."
For the students, the
experience does not just fulfill an academic pursuit. It helps them
understand the impact of their work on the people and themselves.
"I
felt great talking to the different people," said Ja'costa Parker, 18, a
sophomore sociology major from New Orleans. "Hearing how they feel
about St. Luke, what they know about St. Luke, makes it more than just a
church ... it was a community."
Service Learning
Driving
to pick up his grandson from Sixth Ward Middle School in 2006, the old
abandoned church on Louisiana Highway 20 caught Dr. Butler's eye. He
knew immediately it was something he wanted his students to investigate.
"Prior
to that, I had been talking to students about doing community service
and other research projects," he said, "but I was looking for something a
little different, and I was interested in service-learning."
The
idea was to bind academia and the community together to make students
much more rounded. In the fall 2006 semester, he challenged Granger,
then-president of the Sociology Club, to head the task.
"Dr.
Butler asked me this one question," she recalled. "'Mrs. Granger, have
you considered that little church in Chackbay?' I had no idea what he
was talking about. I had never seen it, didn't have any history, and
neither did anyone else."
Granger and the rest of the Sociology
Club began their research in the Lafourche Parish Clerk of Court office
trying to find ownership records.
The first six months proved
fruitless. While people in Chackbay knew the church as St. Luke, all the
legal records were under its original name, Little Zion Baptist Church.
"From
finding the title Little Zion, all the land titles came forward, and
the names of individuals came forward," said Granger, who graduated in
May with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology and Associate of Science
in paralegal work.
Origins of Little Zion
Little Zion sits on Lot 15 of what was once Cleona Plantation.
After
the Civil War, the land was sold twice, first to a Leon Guidry in 1868,
and then four years later to Louisiana Nelson and Washington Dunn.
On Sept. 4, 1882, Nelson and Dunn separated the land and sold the property to
the congregation of Little Zion Baptist Church.
"The
church was not incorporated until 1891 but that was quite an
achievement for an African-American church at that time," Granger
explained.
Little Zion's roll of incorporation listed 30 members over the age of 21, seven
of whom were members of the Parks family.
The ancestors were Joseph and Sarah Parks, slaves emancipated after the Civil
War. They had 12 children, seven of whom survived.
Parks
and the other founding families of Little Zion did back-breaking,
labor-intensive jobs to earn a living - farming, moss gathering, tree
cutting, making railroad ties or day laboring in the sugarcane fields. A
few found work in the nearby Bowie Lumber Mill.
On Jan. 2, 1878,
Joseph bought 40 acres of land across from Grand Bayou in a joint
venture with Gabriel Vicks and Michel Mitchell. The trio paid $500 -
with a down payment of $300 and two annual payments of $100 - at eight
percent interest for the property. It was a tremendous feat for the
black men to independently own land.
The church and the community
were unified and thrived for about a quarter-century. In 1907, however,
there seemed to be a separation of church membership.
"Part of
the Parks family moved a little further up toward the Thibodaux area,
and they began a new church called Little Zion," Granger said. "The
remaining family members of the Parks and the Vicks family chose to stay
at the old church."
Where did everybody go?
On Jan. 25,
1907, the church was sold to the congregation. A new name was chosen:
St. Luke Baptist Church, by which it is known in the community to this
day.
Despite being an African-American church in a mostly white
rural area, no family members who attended St. Luke can recall any
racial tension in Chackbay. Historical research also turns up nothing.
"It
was weird," said Larry Woods, 49, who grew up near St. Luke. "Most of
the trouble they (church elders) had was from us being us, doing the
things we were doing. Good thing we had some serious icons, serious
heroes, strong people of faith, God and life."
Many would mature
from their youthful indiscretions to become prominent in the church
themselves. Over time, they would also move on and start their own
churches not far from St. Luke.
Woods' grandfather, the Rev.
Joseph Woods Sr., started a congregation in Greenwood. His brother, the
Rev. Alex Woods, ministered at a church in Labadieville.
In the
late 1960s, St. Luke held its last congregational meeting. The Rev.
Andrew Robinson, who was the father-in-law of Woods Sr., was the last
known presiding pastor of St. Luke's Baptist Church.
The
congregation dispersed to Greenwood, which is no longer in operation, or
other churches in the surrounding area. St. Luke had survived a cholera
and two yellow fever outbreaks in 1890s, Jim Crow segregation and
Hurricane Betsy in 1965, but depopulation was its undoing.
When
the church disbanded, 80 years of African-American history nearly went
with it. Their stories of success over the toughest of odds were almost
lost to history.
"They were farmers and workers who held on to
their property - held on to their church," Granger said of the
landowners. "They went through the hard times of civil sanctions that
were placed against African-Americans and came through. In their family
are educators and doctors and lawyers today. They were an independent
group of African-Americans that was very rare in rural south Louisiana."
Reclaiming St. Luke
"To
my eye, it was beautiful," recalled Granger of first seeing the
abandoned St. Luke in fall 2006. "As an oil painter, I could see the
beauty of this church. Its lines were perfect. It was built with perfect
symmetry, meaning its roofline continued into the line of the alcove."
In
spite of its decaying condition, the church still stands. That is a
testament to the craftsmanship of the builders who tapped into the local
Bowie Lumber Mill's cypress for materials. The beams extend 24 feet
high, 9 inches-by-6 inches deep in solid length.
"Being a
contractor, that is beautiful lumber," Granger said. "The ceiling lats
are set very close, which secure a tight fit against hurricane winds.
The walls are built with a beam running sideways, which is an
architectural feature that adds 100 times support against wind sheer. It
is probably the reason the church still stands today. That was only
discovered this past semester due to some of the planks falling."
Regardless
of its aesthetic quality, the church also has a gloomy side. From the
interior markings, it is clear that séances and other ritual acts were
performed inside since its desertion.
There has been much
graveyard desecration and theft there - the bell tower, pews, windows,
and iron railings have vanished into the wind.
In April 2007,
Butler led about 40 of his students on an extensive cleanup of the
graveyard. In the process, 13 graves were discovered at the site, more
than the nine originally thought to be there.
The students - not
Butler, who serves more as an advisor and director - have done the
majority of the research of census and genealogy records on the Little
Zion/St. Luke Baptist Church project.
"The history of this
particular project has been divided among several students - Tina
Granger, Lakesha Woods, Yolanda Jenkins, Olinda Ricard - just to name a
few," he said. "My joy comes from watching students participate, work
and discover, and being excited about what they've discovered."
Last year, Butler and Granger applied for and received a grant from the
University of Louisiana System.
In December 2007, the college group received a one-year, $11,000 grant to
continue the project.
This semester, research will focus on Cleona Plantation and the socio-economic
factors that affected the church in the 1890s.
Butler
anticipates the 2008-09 year to be the final year of research on the
project. Once everything is compiled, he hopes to present the findings
at a national conference.
"The long-term goal is to do a much
more holistic assessment beyond the church itself, but particular to the
history of that church," Butler explained. "Also, the placement of all
that information in NSU's Ellender Library for all who come after us and
have an interest in Little Zion, that data will be there. You can go to
bazaars, various functions and restaurants in Baton Rouge, for
instance, and find a mural of Little Zion Baptist Church on the wall."
On
Monday, students who have worked on this project will present a
PowerPoint presentation and a hands-on exhibit at the Claiborne Building
in Baton Rouge of all the progress they have made.
The
presentation is only a glimpse into a forgotten tale of black
determination to overthrow the chains of slavery and realize the promise
of the American dream.
"Sometimes you find out, especially if
you're African-American, when you start finding out your history, the
only time you can find out about it is through some legal document,"
Shanklin said. "(The project) may not tell the story, but the result of
the story. You just don't know the whole story."
Latest update: Aug 06, 2008 - 01:10:58 pm PDT
tina granger wrote on Aug 8, 2008 9:13 AM:"
Thank you Triparish News for your selection and publicaiton of our
project. If anyone has any information that they would like to submit
please contact me via this email.
Tina Granger
Research Associate
Little Zion/St. Luke Project
NSU Sociolgy Dept. "
See Also PDF Forgotten People
http://www.sdetillier.com/uploads/4/4/7/3/4473897/forgotten_people.pdf
Photos on La-cemeteries.com taken November 2010
http://www.la-cemeteries.com/Maps/Lafourche/Pics/StLukeCemetery-LF66/SJA66Pics1.htm
Louisiana Cemetery Preservation
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