Perspectives: Rebecca D. Henry

Opelousas folk artist Rebecca D. Henry on preserving Creole culture and the importance of speaking one’s truth

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Rebecca D. Henry, folk artist and founder of the Creole Heritage Folklife Center in Opelousas, lives and paints to preserve her Creole heritage and culture. “I think that Creole is family, culture, heritage, and tradition. But all that connects the inner and outer family with the ancestral past,” Davis told me. “It wasn't meant, to me, to be a racial confusion.”

Convoluted definitions of the word “Creole” are not the only things Henry thinks could benefit from simplification and referring reverently to our past. Now eighty-one years old, Henry was born in Leonville, in St. Landry Parish; a sharecropper’s daughter and one of six children. “And I’m not old—I asked for longevity,” Henry insisted, laughing. “I don’t care. Give me all the years that I can have …There's no limit as to what you can do in one lifetime.” She is among a dwindling number of individuals who still have vivid memories of growing up within the sharecropping lifestyle, and all the hardships that came with it.

“I think that Creole is family, culture, heritage, and tradition. But all that connects the inner and outer family with the ancestral past."—Rebecca D. Henry

“When I was younger, we didn't have copy machines, and didn't have access to many books. I didn't see a Black artist, you know,” Henry said, matter-of-factly. “You thought about leaving the countryside, but to go where? Because all you could see was people working in the fields, and sugar cane, and cotton, and potatoes, and corn … And everybody was doing the same thing. You dated a farmer, you married a farmer, and you went in the field, not knowing if you was going to ever get out. But you never even thought about getting out of that, because that was all you knew.”

When one plot of land became barren, and no amount of Henry’s father working and re-working it could make the soil fertile again, the family would pick up and move to another farm. "And so, people would just move and move,” Henry said. One of the places she and her family landed when she was a young child was Bellevue, Louisiana, where they would sharecrop until Henry was eighteen.

She explained that back then, everyone started working at the age of five, and they’d all wake up at five in the morning. The women had to bring their infants into the field with them. “You couldn't leave the babies that far away, because all mothers were breastfeeding,” Henry explained. “So, you brought them into fields and set them underneath the wagon, where the youngest child babysat the baby. And then the mother would come and wash down her breast and let it cool down, and then would breastfeed that baby. And then she went back, picking cotton or digging potatoes or whatever.”

It was an arduous lifestyle, but Henry looks back on her childhood with gratitude, even abundance. “We weren't poor people. I never was poor, and I don’t plan to be poor. You understand? … You had a beautiful mom and a dad and loving family. The neighbors were cordial to each other. So, you can’t equate that with money.”

[Read Alexandra Kennon's Perspectives profile on quilted photographic artist Letitia Huckaby here.]

In her artwork, Henry reflects on many of her experiences—playing her part in preserving a fading way of life. “It’s what I perceive about my life. And what I enjoyed in my life. Even if it was part of sadness, I still put it on the canvas. Because that brings me peace and comfort. It’s a sense of healing…The healing process, you have to go through all of that. Some of the paintings that I do, it takes a while, because I have to kind of like go within myself and find a quiet place, a soft place to fall.”

“It’s what I perceive about my life. And what I enjoyed in my life. Even if it was part of sadness, I still put it on the canvas. Because that brings me peace and comfort. It’s a sense of healing…The healing process, you have to go through all of that. Some of the paintings that I do, it takes a while, because I have to kind of like go within myself and find a quiet place, a soft place to fall.” —Rebecca D. Henry

She has forged this quiet place, an artist’s refuge, in a special part of her yard in Opelousas where she doesn’t mow the grass, turning the land back over to the flowers and bees and butterflies. Growing up in the country has instilled in her a deep reverence for nature, which, like her artwork, soothes her. Painting in that spot, she listens to the birds in the morning, “And they’re all singing in unison, but you know, there’s harmony anyway,” Henry mused. “You have frogs and crickets chirping, they take over the choir at night.” This is all part of who we are, she explained. “Because animals are here for a purpose too, you know?” She checked in with me in this way throughout our interview, ensuring that I was with her, in the way of a matriarch whose own ultimate purpose is educating younger generations to her wisdom and way of life.

“All of my paintings have a story,” explained Henry, who is also an avid quilter, appliquér, crocheter, seamstress, and cook. “So within my paintings and in my work, you will see my upbringing and what we did as Creoles. And I'm truly a sharecropper’s daughter. You know, being a sharecropper, you have a lot of rich stories.  At the time, for some people, it may have seemed like it was hard work. But to me, it was like something that was necessary. So, I've seen this ordinary person doing necessary things for my culture, my heritage, and leaving a legacy for my children. You don't want it to die. You don't want the culture and the rich heritage to go to the grave.”

Henry’s paintings are currently on display at the Acadiana Center for the Arts as part of the exhibition Poetics of Selfhood / Poétique de l’Ipséité, a project by the ACA in partnership with La Station Culturelle, Fort de France, Martinique. The exhibit highlights five artists’ individual unique experiences as Creole and Francophone individuals from around the world, with a goal to “expand the understanding of Creole identity as a worldwide cultural identity”. While Henry’s work and interpretation of what it means to be “Creolité” represent a perspective from Louisiana and the United States, Poetics of Selfhood / Poétique de l’Ipséité also includes the work of Gwladys Gambie and Jérémie Priam from Martinique, Tabita Rezaire from Guyana, and Modou Dieng Yacine from Senegal and the United States.

"At the time, for some people, it may have seemed like it was hard work. But to me, it was like something that was necessary. So, I've seen this ordinary person doing necessary things for my culture, my heritage, and leaving a legacy for my children." —Rebecca D. Henry

Henry says she feels “elated” to represent Louisiana and honored to serve as the only artist in the exhibition based exclusively in the United States. “We’re all striving for the same thing, right? Preserving what? Our culture and our heritage,” she emphasized. “Even though we’re from afar, the mindset was the same, all the same. Even if we’re halfway across the world, because why? We are all connected, no matter where we are.”

Besides in her paintings, Henry carries her culture forward through her Creole Heritage Folklife Center—a nine-room Victorian home in Opelousas, each room containing artifacts and displays depicting part of the history and narrative of what it means to be Creole in Louisiana. “When people come for tours, when they leave, they leave with a better understanding—especially African American children,” Henry said, emphasizing the importance of educational resources like the Center in towns like Opelousas, particularly for families who lack transportation and as a result may not even be able to travel as far as Lafayette.

Henry also carries on local folk medicine traditions—another aspect of Louisiana Creole culture that has largely been forgotten—by giving regular educational presentations on the subject. Her granddaughter is now also a folk medicine apprentice, through a state grant. “The healing tradition, you know, is a spiritual thing,” she told me. "Healing can be more than teas, and salves, and oils. Healing can be speaking to the elders, and to someone that's older than you, asking advice. You know, all that’s a part of healing within our African American culture.”

[Read Jonathan Olivier's story about Louisiana's medicinal plants here.]

And in an era where there is a resurgence of interest in restoring childbirth to a more natural experience for the mother and child, Henry’s knowledge as a midwife and doula is incredibly valuable. “I delivered one of my babies, and I said there was nothing more in touch and in tune with nature, and the way a child is supposed to come into the world,” Henry said. "And to me, it was easier than the ones that I had at the hospital.”

Those who attend her presentations, she says, leave with an understanding of healing traditions in different areas of Louisiana—much like the different dialects of Creole and Cajun French. As a fluent Creole French speaker who teaches classes to preserve that, too, Henry emphasized the importance of carefully saving each dialect and tradition, much in the same way one stores vegetables like okra and corn in jars for a long winter.

"How are we going to find all of our ancestors? So, we have to pick it up where it is. And move on. And tweak what is written about us. This is what I tell: my own truth. We have to be truthful in what we say." —Rebecca D. Henry

In Henry’s mind, the importance of saving each unique tradition is only magnified by the fact that many of Louisiana’s people nearly had their cultures stripped from them. “We’re all immigrants, you know. The Acadians, who left Acadie. And then you had the Trail of Tears. And then you had the Africans that came—everybody came under, oh, really violent ways,” Henry said, pausing to sit with the weight of it. “But in their mind, they had the template to keep that tradition in mind. And to be able to present it, and to teach it, and to keep it. If you got it in your head, nobody can take it out there, you know what I'm saying?”

Throughout our conversation, Henry also emphasized the importance of reassessing history and looking at the accepted historical records through a critical lens—particularly when it comes to the limited history of African American life here.  She pointed to the unclear origins of her own maiden name, Davis, as an example of this. “But where did the Davis come from? So that is the part that you cannot find [in] your lineage, because my great grandmother may have been put out like property and sold out to California, or New York, or Abbeville, or—you know, you name these places, but you don't know. How are we going to find all of our ancestors? So, we have to pick it up where it is. And move on. And tweak what is written about us. This is what I tell: my own truth. We have to be truthful in what we say. And I think if everybody would tell that truth, that we would be in a better place.”

If everyone could set fear aside and speak their own truth in this way, engaging in difficult conversations about difficult histories, Henry believes the world would be a much more harmonious place. “We can talk about the hard subjects and we can disagree without being disagreeable, you know?” Henry posited. “We could live in harmony.”

Henry’s work is on display as part of the exhibition Poetics of Selfhood/Poétique de L’Ipésité at the Acadiana Center for the Arts until January 14, 2023. Learn more at acadianacenterforthearts.org.