Leithean Spinks

Leithean Spinks was born in Mississippi in 1855; her mother recorded the date in the family Bible. Soon afterward the enslaver, a man named Thompson, moved to East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, between New Roads and Jackson near the Mississippi River. More than 300 people were enslaved there, living in three long rows of dirt-floored cabins. Meals were cooked in a central shed by a woman called Mammy Dice and four helpers; when the bell rang, everyone lined up with pans and cups.

She vividly remembered nearly dying as a small child. Her mother had latched the three children inside the cabin while she worked in the cook shed, and a burning pine knot fell and set the straw bedding on fire. Choking on smoke, her brother dug under the log wall with a spoon and a poker until there was a hole big enough for the girls to crawl out. He got stuck halfway, and the girls ran for help. Their mother pulled him free.

Leithean's job as a little girl was opening and closing the field gates, and her sister fanned flies away from the white family with a peacock-feather fan. She remembered Saturday fishing, parties, and a hundred voices singing at once. Running away brought the hardest whippings, and runaways were hunted with dogs among the river caves and cliffs. She stayed with the Thompsons two years after freedom. In the late 1930s she lived in Fort Worth, Texas.