![]() However, there is one detail- based partly on folklore and speculation and partly on a patchwork of evidence- about Clementine Hunter’s early life that merits mentioning, at least in passing, in every biography about her: Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, may have based the character Simon Legree, the villainous slave master, on Robert McAlpin, the original owner of Hidden Hill Plantation. In that respect, this series should be better understood as an ongoing, collaborative project, because in a life than spans more than a century, it would be a mistake to believe a linear biography is the best structure. Ideally, what we all hope to create is the most robust, comprehensive, well-researched, and authoritative online resource about the life, the art, the rise to fame, the death, and the subsequent criminal exploitation of a woman who witnessed and documented more of the American experience than anyone today could possibly conceive. And like Hunter, they also grew up on a cotton plantation, though their experiences, as white girls, were starkly different.Īlthough I was only five and a half years old at the time, I do remember when Clementine Hunter died, exactly 31 years ago, on New Years Day of 1988.īut while this series may have been sparked by my own fascination with Hunter’s life and legacy, I recognize it is imperative that for her story to be told honestly and vividly, it must shared by those who have dedicated their own professional careers in pursuit of that story. My grandmother’s sister, Sue Eakin, was a well-regarded Louisiana historian who spent a great deal of time conducting oral interviews with Hunter, which are now archived at Louisiana State University- Alexandria. I do not recall whether my own paternal grandparents ever owned any of Clementine Hunter’s art, but I would be surprised if they hadn’t. That is what made her work so valuable and why it continues to resonate: It was ingeniously confrontational. While her paintings were sometimes demeaned as “primitive” in the ugliest sense of the term, the messages they communicated were both powerful and provocative to a community finally coming to terms with the inevitable reality of integration and the march toward civil rights. Before she became internationally famous, she’d sell her work, often for less than a quarter. Those in my grandparent’s generation all seemed to know her personally. Her artwork was, at one point, part of the area’s built environment, hanging on the walls of dozens and dozens of middle-class homes throughout town. Like many of those who contributed to this series, I was born and raised in Central Louisiana, only twenty or thirty minutes down river from where Hunter spent all 101 years of her life. In the late 19 th century, Hidden Hill Plantation was a notoriously cruel and dehumanizing place for blacks and Creoles like young Clementine. It was an era in which white supremacy ascended back into political power and all of the protections that had been gained by newly-emancipated slaves and the generations that followed were eviscerated through violence, acts of terrorism, and institutional barriers, intentionally designed to systemically deprive them of the freedoms once promised by the Union’s victory over the Confederacy. Antoinette Adams Reuben and Janvier Reuben, Clementine Hunter’s mother and father. ![]() Her parents almost certainly understood the small but symbolic power of the name they gave their first child, a daughter born in either December of 1886 or January of 1887 at Hidden Hill Plantation in Cloutierville (kloo-chee), Louisiana, a decade after the end of Reconstruction. In the law, we use the word clemency, which refers to the power of the government to forgive a person convicted of a crime, usually for humanitarian reasons. Regardless of how her name was originally spelled or eventually pronounced, it derives from the same Latin word for “mercy.” She called herself “Clemen-teen,” but, as she told it and as records from both the 19 Census confirm, her birth name was actually Clemence she was baptized as Clementiam. Her name was not pronounced the same way as the darling daughter of a miner in one of America’s most well-known western songs, which itself was likely appropriated from a Mexican fable, Romance del Conde Olinos o Niño, and set to the rhythm of an old Spanish ballad.
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