An Interview with Leila H. Taylor

This interview was conducted August 8, 2006 via telephone between College Station, TX and Baton Rouge, LA.

JACKSON: Tell me a little bit about yourself and how and where you grew up.

TAYLOR: I grew up in an area of North Baton Rouge called Scotlandville. It was not incorporated when I was a child, and some people referred to it as a rural area because the people in the neighborhood had gardens and animals. One man down the street had a cow and a chicken, and I think he had a pig. My grandfather had pigs and chickens when I came along; prior to that, he had a horse and cow. His "garden" was something that spanned nearly two acres. I say "garden" because most people would have called it a field. I also grew up in an unusual family setting. I was an only child, but my grandmother had asked my mother to take care of my grandfather prior to her death. And as a part of that my mother would cook everything for my grandfather at what we called the Big House. And then we would go home at night next door to sleep.

JACKSON: So the Big House belonged to . . .

TAYLOR: My grandfather. And next to our house was the brother's house and he had one son and a wife for twelve years, then a daughter came along twelve years later. The next house—when I was in college—belonged to my mother's older sister. And then next to that, which happened after I got married, my mother's younger brother built the funeral home. So all of these properties were straight down Robin Street in Scotlandville, and the property spanned over from Robin Street, to the back, to Sora Street, which ended at our fence line. The property behind our property belonged to my mother's older sister. And her property went from Sora to Swan. And I remember climbing over some steps that put us over the fence. We didn't have a gate. We walked from the stairs. Up the stairs, over the fence, and down again when we got ready to go to her property.

JACKSON: Your family owned a good bit of land in the area.

TAYLOR: Yes. And that was due to my grandfather's vision and wisdom. By that I mean that at the time he purchased the property, the bank that made the loan had become notorious for lending money to black families, but when the property was nearly paid for, they would foreclose on it and resell it. Since my grandfather knew about that tactic, he saved the money, and when they sent him the foreclosure notice, he made the final payment. And all that property, except the funeral home, has remained in the family.

JACKSON: All of the original land that your grandfather had still remains in the family?

TAYLOR: Yes, except for the property included with the funeral home. Only a portion of what my aunt and her husband had remains in the family.

JACKSON: Can you tell me a little about your grandfather and his garden specifically?

TAYLOR: My grandfather was a very industrious man. He would get up early in the morning, around four, and he would go to work in the garden. Then he would walk about six or seven miles to the Standard Oil, which is now Exxon Mobile. He worked all day; then he would go and work in his garden. And in his garden he had quite an array of foods. Usually in the summer he would plant corn, and he had about ten rows of corn because he knew that we weren't going to eat it all in the summer or can it all. But he wanted to have feed for the chickens, the hogs and a cow. So he had lots of corn; then he had, usually, three or four rows of tomatoes, four rows of okra, four rows of lima beans, about two rows of string beans, and a wide bed in which he planted things...