The White Eagle

When Gaines started coming back to Louisiana and Baton Rouge to write and research, he would frequent the White Eagle (pictured above) in Port Allen. Seeing that Baton Rouge was a dry town on Sundays, Gaines and his friends would cross the Mississippi River to Port Allen and frequent the rough and tumble White Eagle. In "Mozart and Leadbelly," Gaines writes, "The White Eagle was a rough place, and there were always fights, but I wanted to experience it all. One novel, Of Love and Dust, and a short story, 'Three Men,' came out of my experience at the White Eagle bar" (26-27). 

Of Love and Dust and "Three Men" both focus on an African American character who kills another African American in a barroom fight. The only difference is that Marcus gets bonded out of jail and Procter Lewis doesn't. Gaines talks about the White Eagle in regards to the inspiration for Of Love and Dust by saying: 

I was in a nightclub once where I saw a knife fight between two boys, two blacks, young men, and the fight was stopped before either of them got really hurt. Now, I also know of an incident where a friend of mine got in a fight like that, and he killed a guy. Three guys jumped on him, and he killed one of them. He was sent to prison. He had been working for the white man, and this man could have gotten him out if he wanted to come out, but he said, "I'd rather spend my time because I killed this guy." So, he went to jail; he went to Angola, the state prison in Louisiana, and he spent five years. (Tooker and Hofheins 100)

The friend Gaines mentions, in a way, resembles Procter because he decided to stay in jail and accept his punishment instead of allowing the white man to bond him out. Munford continually tells Procter in "Three Men" to stay in jail because if he allows Roger Medlow to bail him out he'll be right back in the same situation soon. Talking to Procter, Munford tells him that Medlow could bail him out because white men don't care if he killed another African American. So, Munford implores Procter to go to Angola "saying, 'Go fuck yourself, Roger Medlow, I want to be a man, and by God I will be a man. For once in my life I will be a man" (141).

The institution of African Americans being "bonded" out of jail to work on farms and elsewhere occurred throughout the South during the twentieth century. Writing about Of Love and Dust and the institution of "bonding" people out of jail to work, John A Williams says, "One hears stories from time to time of plantations like this, cut off from the rest of the world where slavery--what else can you call it?--still exists." Essentially, that's what the practice was, a new form of slavery. For more information on the practice, see Douglas a. Blackman's Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.

Gaines, Ernest J. "Mozart and Leadbelly." Mozart and Leadbelly. Eds. Marcia Gaudet and Reggie Young. New York: Vintage Books, 2005. 24-32. Print. 

Gaines, Ernest J. "Three Men." Bloodline. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1976. 119-155. Print. 

Tooker, Dan and Roger Hofheins. "Ernest J. Gaines." Conversations with Ernest Gaines. Ed. John Lowe. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1995. 99-111. Print.