Associate professor of African and African American studies and sociology Lori Martin recently co-authored “South Baton Rouge”, a book with over 100 images dating back to the antebellum South and up to former President Barack Obama’s visit to Baton Rouge in 2013.
The images, which took about a year to collect, came from numerous sources and were compiled to tell the story of people of color in Baton Rouge, Martin said. The Hill Memorial Library Special Collections were a central source for images. Martin scoured social media and contacted local news organizations and other media outlets in order to collect all the images needed.
Martin’s co-author Raymond Jetson is a local pastor at Star Hill Baptist Church and CEO of the non-profit MetroMorphosis, which seeks to enhance the quality of life for those living in urban communities through civic engagement.
Jetson recently spoke as part of the University’s MLK Candlelight Vigil.
Having a co-author from Baton Rouge was critical in the development of the book, Martin said, as she is not a native of the city.
“I may find something and say ‘Well, this is really fascinating,’ and then it turns out it has nothing to do with South Baton Rouge. He could say to me, ‘We really should include this person or that person.’ We worked really well as a team,” Martin said.
Martin said the most challenging part of writing the book was gathering the images, as she had to get out and engage with the community as well as meet specifications from the publishers.
Baton Rouge holds a historical significance that many are unaware of, Martin said.
The city was the location of the 1953 bus boycott, which acted as a catalyst for the much more widely known 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, lead by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
A few years before 1953, there was an increase in bus fare throughout Baton Rouge, Martin said. As the ridership of the public buses was primarily black, the buses were crowded in the back, where black riders were forced to sit. When the buses were integrated, the seating became first-come first-served, which prompted a boycott from the white male bus drivers. After the ordinance was overturned, a boycott by black riders eventually initiated a compromise in which black riders were free to sit on the buses, Martin explained.
She said she would like to see someone do a similar project for Eden Park, a historic African-American community in North Baton Rouge.
Ultimately, it was the city’s rich history that sparked her interest in writing the book, Martin said.
“I saw that there was a lot of history that occurred in Baton Rouge but it felt like people of color were underrepresented,” Martin said. “It’s always been my passion to dig a little deeper.”