The Black Man Father Cesar.

Father Cesar, a free man, of color, deceased on February 8, 1859, at 138 years of age, near Covington, in the United States. He was born in Africa and was taken to Louisiana at about 15 years of age. The mortal remains of this patriarch of the black race were accompanied to the resting field by a certain number of inhabitants of Covington, and a multitude of people of color.

(To Saint Louis). – Could you tell us whether we may invoke the black man Father Cesar, to whom we have just referred?

Answer. – Yes; I will assist him in answering you.

Observation. – This beginning makes one foresee the state of the Spirit whom we wish to interrogate.

Evocation.

Answer. – What do you wish of me? What does a poor Spirit like me do in a gathering like yours?

Are you happier now than in life?

Answer. – Yes, for my situation on Earth was not good.

Yet you were free; in what are you happier now?

Answer. – Because my Spirit is no longer black.

Observation. – This answer is more sensible than it appears at first sight. Certainly the Spirit is never black; he means that, as a Spirit, he no longer suffers the humiliations to which the black race is exposed.

You lived a long time. Did that benefit your progress?

Answer. – I grew weary on Earth and, at a certain age, I did not suffer enough to have the happiness of progressing.

In what do you employ your time at present?

Answer. – I seek to enlighten myself and to know in what body I will be able to do so.

When you were on Earth, what did you think of the whites?

Answer. – They are good, but proud and vain, on account of a whiteness for which they were not responsible.

Do you consider whiteness a superiority?

Answer. – Yes, since I was despised as a black man.

(To Saint Louis). – Is the black race indeed an inferior race?

Answer. – The black race will disappear from the Earth. It was made for a latitude different from yours.

(To Father Cesar). – You said that you are seeking a body through which you will be able to progress. Would you choose a white body or a black body? Answer. – A white one, because contempt would do me harm.

Did you really live to the age attributed to you: 138 years?

Answer. – I did not count well, for the reason I have already given.

Observation. – We have just observed that the blacks, not possessing a civil register of birth, can only have their age assessed in an approximate manner, especially that of those who were born in Africa.

(To Saint Louis). – Do whites sometimes reincarnate in black bodies?

Answer. – Yes. When, for example, a master has mistreated a slave, it may happen that he asks, as an expiation, to live in the body of a black man, in order to suffer, in his turn, what he made others endure, progressing by this means and obtaining the pardon of God.