A second Renty was enslaved on Louisiana’s Magnolia Mound Plantation in 1800

Evidence

The document included slave narratives, one of which chronicles the life of a thirteen-year-old enslaved boy in the year 1800 from the Congo. His name was Renty; his father was Hector and his mother, Rose. His siblings were Stephany, Dick, Peggy, Basille, Michael, and Prince. Also noted were the names Caesar and Sancho and twins Adam and Eve. This document told the story of a stubborn little boy named Renty who was enslaved on the Magnolia Mound Plantation in Louisiana by the slaveholder Charles Norwood. This tenacious little boy insisted that his enslaver provide him with a checked shirt, and his parents, astonishingly, limited the hours they would permit him to work. Echoed in these papers was my oral history, the stories of a proud and stubborn Papa Renty, but it was a bit sensational to me. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 207

Categorization

• QUESTION: Lanier is noncommittal about whether this 1800 Louisiana Renty is her Congo Renty or a different, coincidental namesake — worth tracing how she later resolves it.