Lizzie Eugene Wright

The Legacy Papers Lizzie Eugene Wright

The Legacy Papers are like unto the guiding hand of Lizzie Eugene Wright who was the orator of the Thompson-Eugene Family History. Author P. Anne Battiste opens this book by reflecting on the life of Lizzie Eugene's mother, Mary Thompson, as a young adult living in St. Rose with her parents who were both born before the American Civil War. Mother Millie Williams had been born in St. Rose, Louisiana, in 1855 and father Charlie Thompson was Native American and he was born in 1850 in South Carolina. In this work, P. Anne Battiste rests at the antebellum properties, which Lizzie Eugene Wright identified as ancestral sites from whence Thompson-Eugene family got its start. The year was 1888 and the times were especially difficult for Negroes in the south where Jim Crow laws control. Mary Thompson braves yet her travels from St. Rose in order to return to St. John the Baptist Parish at the door steps of one Jacques "Jack" Eugene whom she had only met briefly while with her father and working on the Terre Haute Plantation. It should be noted that Mary Thompson did not arrive emptied handed but that she showed up at the Ory Plantation with her entire family. She came with her mother, four siblings and Uncle Sam Thompson. Mary & Jacques were married that same year, and the couple were successful in marrying off all of her relatives not long after that. The Ory Plantation ultimately became the San Francisco Plantation, and it still stands today in all of its brilliance affront the River Road not far from the last remaining structure of the Terre Haute Plantation in St John the Baptist Parish. The Legacy Papers recognizes the resilience of her African American Thompson-Eugene family during Jim Crow's south after reconstruction. It too acknowledges the tenacity of the American Negro who after centuries of the racial bigotry, which is systemic to American political legislation and cultural biases, have prevailed against all odds.