"He didn't have no cross": Tombs and Graves as Racial Boundary Tactics on a Louisiana Barrier Island

This is a story about a Louisiana gulf-coast community's attemptto rediscover its history of racial diversity. The focus isan almost-forgotten, now-hidden indigent graveyard where peopleof color allegedly were buried prior to the Great Depression.The graveyard, now defunct, sets in stark contrast to the officialCatholic cemetery where whites,or those who could pass for white,have been entombed above ground throughout the community's history.Because of the absence and unreliability of official recordsregarding race, births, deaths, and burials in post-Reconstructionsouthern Louisiana, oral history was essential to this story.Moreover, the oral testimony about the graveyard evokes a meta-narrativeabout community identity transformation through the redrawingof local racial boundaries. The indigent graveyard has becomethe ultimate boundary marker; islanders used it as a tacticin establishing a purely white community identity. This processunfolded under the scrutiny of non-islanders when the developmentof the Louisiana offshore oilfield shattered the community'sisolation in the 1930s. This graveyard thus assumes a generalhistorical and theoretical importance.