An almost 40-mile section of Louisiana Highway 1 in Pointe Coupee Parish has been designated the Ernest J. Gaines Memorial Highway.
The memorial highway pays tribute to Gaines, the internationally acclaimed writer and Â鶹AV writer-in-residence emeritus, and recognizes his substantial influence on American literature.
Gaines, who died in 2019 at age 86, taught creative writing at the University from 1983 until 2010. Following his retirement, he helped to establish the University's Ernest J. Gaines Center, an international center for scholarship on Gaines and his fiction that is housed in Edith Garland Dupré Library.
The Ernest J. Gaines Memorial Highway begins at the intersection of Louisiana highways 1 and 78 near Oscar, La., the unincorporated community near the southern end of False River in Pointe Coupee Parish. It carries north on Highway 1 to the Avoyelles Parish line.
The starting point for the stretch named for Gaines wasn’t selected randomly. It sits near where Gaines was born in 1933, on Riverlake Plantation in Oscar, to parents who worked as sharecroppers. He grew up in Cherie Quarters, the plantation’s former slave quarters. Gaines moved to California as a teenager and studied and taught at Stanford University before returning to Louisiana.
His fiction, however, was always anchored to the place and people of his childhood – and to his ancestors.
“Dr. Gaines was always quite clear in his goal with his fiction – and that was to preserve the legacy, and the experiences of people who lived in Cherie Quarters and other quarter communities throughout the South, and especially throughout south Louisiana,” said Cheylon Woods, an associate professor who directs the Ernest J. Gaines Center.
“The Ernest J. Gaines Memorial Highway designation is wonderful way to recognize Dr. Gaines, and his lifelong commitment to his birthplace, to his fiction and to the culture and history of the region and the state he cared so deeply about,” she added.
The memorial highway originated with legislation proposed by Louisiana Sen. Caleb Kleinpeter. He represents Louisiana District 17, which includes all of Pointe Coupee Parish. The designated stretch has been signed into law by Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, and will take effect on Aug.1.
The Ernest J. Gaines Memorial Highway represents the latest in a long list of accolades for Gaines, who wrote seven novels, a collection of short stories, and a collection of essays and short stories. His fiction has been published in many languages.
Gaines’s literary career began with the publication of “Catherine Carmier” in 1964. His third novel – “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” – brought him widespread notice. The first-person narrative of a fictional 110-year-old woman born into slavery was published in 1971 and later made into a TV movie.
His other most notable work, “A Lesson Before Dying,” tells the story of an illiterate man wrongfully condemned to death. Published in 1973, the novel earned a National Book Critics Circle Award, one of the most prestigious prizes in literature, a Pulitzer Prize nomination, and was selected for Oprah Winfrey’s popular book club.
Gaines has been honored with a National Medal of Arts, the highest award given to artists by the U.S. government; a commemorative stamp issued by U.S. Postal Service; and induction into the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, or Order of Arts and Letters.
Photo caption: Ernest J. Gaines, the acclaimed writer and Â鶹AV writer-in-residence emeritus, has been recognized with a memorial highway in his name. It begins near his birthplace in Pointe Coupee Parish. Gaines died in 2019 at age 86. Image credit: Â鶹AV