Remembering Riverlake Plantation and Ancestral Roots with Norbert Colar

In this installment of oral histories for NCPTT's Documentation of Slave Cabin and Tenant Farming Houses Project, we visited with Norbert Colar. We learn of firsthand experiences from Colar, who grew up on Riverlake Plantation in New Roads, Louisiana before moving west to California. He goes on in detail about life on the plantation and the cultural shock that came with moving away from the south. Once returning to Louisiana later in life, he explains the hardships a sharecropper would face, which caused the dispersal of those that lived in Cherie Quarters. Colar went on to talk about his relatives, such as Aunt Auguesteen, and his brother, Ernest Gaines, and the impact and roles they played in his life.