Christopher Jolivette Family History

The following focuses on the maternal side of my family as the paternal side is long, upsetting, and has many of its themes reflected in my mother’s family history. In Southern Vacherie, Louisiana; on a small plot of land used for sharecropping; in a house that was too small for any family, let alone this one, Pierre Steib was born into a family with 14 brothers and sisters, of which he was the youngest. This day in 1932 would mark the beginning of a long and storied family history that spans multiple races, colors, and attitudes and details the tenacity of a people through seemingly insurmountable struggles. My family history is the story of how a poor black family from Louisiana can overcome their circumstances and attain the civil rights dream of having better for their children, their children’s children, and generations on and on to come. On the aforementioned sharecropping field, Pierre Steib was made to work to help support his family. For much of his youth Steib was, by no choice of his own, a day laborer. The schools for negro children were about a 5 to 9 mile walk across the Mississippi River, and even in going there were still threats of violence against them every day. To protect themselves, it made more sense for Pierre Steib and his family to work. While the shackles of slavery had left his family’s ankles, the mark from the chain remained. He and his family had to work, had to survive, had to overcome. Before the civil rights movement capitalized on the idea of surmounting the current struggle, Steib and his family had a firm understanding. The phrase “we shall overcome” was true—it had to be true. Up until the age of 15 Pierre Steib worked and lived on that field. At the age of about 16 Pierre Steib went to live with his sister, who at this time was married with a few children and lived across the way from his parents. Here, continued to work to make ends meet. Steib was not granted the opportunity for education until the 1960s, at which time he immediately enrolled in school. As he would say, there were numerous people who were defiantly against integrated schooling. People who would readily use racial slurs to describe him simply because he desired an education. However, he persevered through these struggles as much as he could. He attended school for as long as he could and as long as he was allowed. As he was in his 30s, it was a bit more than difficult for him to continue his education. So rather than pursuing a fruitless venture, he settled down in Southern Vacherie on a long stretch of road leading to nowhere in the middle of the swamp. Here, along with a strong-willed woman named Claire, he would raise 4 children: Roger Steib, Rosemarie Steib, Tammy Steib, and Sandy Steib. I grew up and took trips to my grandparent’s home in the shadow of the institutions that limited my family. My mother, still in the midst of segregation in the 1970s dealt with the understanding of her own skin from a young age. As Fredrick Douglass would note, the African American has a keen awareness of their race by around the age of 7. In the 1970s and 80s Vacherie had a private pool that was only open to whites while my mother had to play on a makeshift slip and slide. Her church was segregated, even to the point of having the bathrooms separated between blacks and whites. Her school even hosted separate proms that divided the races along the color line. The irony of this was that my mother’s first job was on a plantation-–oak alley. An institution I was aware of but refused to acknowledge until very recently. Pierre Steib, my grandfather, is the crux of my family’s history his constant sacrifice and work to create a better future for his children through his teaching was a seminal part of their development. Where he was barred from going to class, integrating, and being a part of White America, his children were given an opportunity that was entirely unheard of in his time. They were given the chance to go to school, to learn and work as they chose. To be a part of White America. I am a byproduct of this struggle. I was born out of this fight for equality. I can tell my story because of my grandfather Pierre Steib.