On September 19, 1922, Beulah M., a thirty-year-old cook, saved a “small child from a vicious cow on Angola.” This event occurred only a few months after her admission to the Louisiana State Penitentiary (LSP), where she was serving a life sentence for alleged murder. The infant was one of the many of the white prison staff's children raised on the penitentiary plantation nestled in a large meander of the Mississippi river. This happy-ending drama featuring a Black woman prisoner and a free white child arose from the “cohabitation” of free white households within the incarcerated population. The incident, quite unexpected in a carceral setting, prompted the penitentiary general manager to place Beulah M. on the “eligibility list” for parole and to grant her “full single good time for meritorious service,” which meant the possibility of an earlier release by a few months. Beulah's action might also have motivated authorities to assign her to be “servant” in the Camp D Captain's house in July 1923, and later to be a nurse in the nine-bedroom “Big House,” occupied by one of the penitentiary staff of higher rank. The peculiar nature of her alleged crime, the beating to death of her seven-year-old Black step-daughter, was apparently not perceived as a deterrent to entrust her to care for white children. Her courageous action toward a white child at Angola might even have been a compelling argument for her early pardon and discharge, which she received only after nine years at Angola, although her plea for a pardon had been rejected at least once before. Beulah M.'s story is the story of a coerced African American domestic laborer in white homes, rewarded for her perceived subservience to the Jim Crow order. It exemplifies one aspect of Black women's experiences of hard labor for the state of Louisiana during the first half of the twentieth century.

1922 年 9 月 19 日，三十岁的厨师 Beulah M. 从“安哥拉的一头恶牛手中救出了一个小孩”。这一事件发生在她进入路易斯安那州立监狱 (LSP) 后仅几个月，她因涉嫌谋杀而被判无期徒刑。这名婴儿是许多白人监狱工作人员的孩子之一，他们在坐落在密西西比河蜿蜒曲折的监狱种植园中长大。这部以黑人女囚犯和自由白人儿童为主角的幸福结局剧，起源于被监禁人口中自由白人家庭的“同居”。这一事件在监狱环境中非常出乎意料，促使监狱总经理将 Beulah M. 列入假释的“资格名单”，并给予她“完整的单身好时光以立功，”这意味着提前几个月发布的可能性。Beulah 的行为也可能促使当局在 1923 年 7 月指派她在 D 营队长的房子里担任“仆人”，后来在由一名高级监狱工作人员占据的九居室“大房子”中担任护士。秩。她被指控的罪行的特殊性质，即殴打她 7 岁的黑人继女，显然没有被视为委托她照顾白人儿童的威慑。她在安哥拉对一个白人孩子的勇敢行为甚至可能成为她提前赦免和出院的一个令人信服的论据，尽管她在安哥拉的赦免请求至少曾被拒绝一次，但她在安哥拉待了九年后才获得赦免。Beulah M.' 这部小说讲述了一个在白人家庭中被胁迫的非裔美国家庭佣工的故事，她因对吉姆克劳命令的屈从而获得了回报。它体现了 20 世纪上半叶路易斯安那州黑人妇女的艰苦劳动经历的一个方面。