When Edward Ward Jr. was growing up in Natchitoches in the 1950s, he would visit the city’s train station on hot summer days: “We stopped in there—on the colored side, of course—to get water and rest,” he says. Even as a young child, he recognized the injustice of segregation. “Our water fountains were at room temperature, and the refrigerated water fountain was on the white side,” Ward recalls. Years later, the longtime community leader worked to preserve the building, which closed in the late sixties and recently reopened as the visitor center for Cane River Creole National Historical Park. The Italianate and Spanish Revival station has kept its separate Black and white entrances and waiting rooms intact. “It retains the architecture of discrimination,” says park ranger Barbara Justice. Exhibits in the former Texas & Pacific Railway Depot chronicle local African American history, from plantation enslavement to the civil rights movement. Ward says he’s proud of the restoration, and the message it sends. “You can’t change history, no matter how painful it is, no matter how inappropriate it is,” he says. “But you can preserve it and learn a lesson, and never ever, ever go back there.”
Southern Agenda