Keys to the Archive: A Lesson Before Dying

New Roads Then and Now

Gaines drew upon his experience of life in Pointe Coupée Parish to create the rich settings of his fiction. Living on Riverlake Plantation as a child led him to dramatize the lives of sharecroppers in the quarter. The closest town center to Riverlake is New Roads, LA, which Gaines famously fictionalized as Bayonne. The images on this page illustrate what New Roads looked like in the late 1930s and 1940s, when A Lesson is set, and what it looks like about eighty years later in 2021. Some of the iconic landmarks remain, including the red brick courthouse.

Other aspects of New Roads have evolved as economic forces shifted the town from an agricultural hub to more service-oriented businesses. The buildings along Main Street evidence that change. Some underwent renovation while others have been demolished. Instead of an Auto-Lec general store, downtown New Roads now boasts antique malls and clothing boutiques. Despite economic changes, the demographic structure of the town remains largely as it was in the 1930s and 1940s. The railroad tracks that bisect New Roads mark a physical color line, with the African Americans residing north while whites mostly live south, closer to False River. Gaines represents such geographic segregation in his the novel by describing two parts of Bayonne: "back of town" and "front of town."

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