I grew up knowing the story of  Bonnie and Clyde as well as I knew the fairy tales my mother read to me.  In fact,  in family stories, one of our  distant (always emphasized in the telling)  cousins was rumored to have sheltered them from time to time.  And  if you dug long enough, you were sure to find a common ancestor. My family, however, did not see them as the glamorous  bank robbers  portrayed in the film.  We knew the Barrows gang as reckless killers who robbed and killed anyone who got in their way.  In their brief run they are said to have killed 13 people, as many as 9 of which were law men.  But contrary to the myth that they only targeted banks, they usually robbed  small stores or rural gas stations since  it was easier to escape detection.  Their take was usually small and they were constantly on the run.
Bonnie Parker was not  the pistol packing, cigar smoking desperado depicted in the press and crime magazines of the time.  She, never smoked cigars –  the famous photo of her with a cigar in her mouth was staged as a prank.  And as for the pistol-packing outlaw,  Bonnie was not actively involved in the shootings, and probably never  killed anyone, but only drove the getaway cars.
Bonnie grew up in the depression, the child of a single mother after her father died when she was four.  Life was harsh and they struggled to get by.  But  Bonnie  loved music and the stage. She  performed in school pageants and talent shows and excelled at writing.  She told her friends they would see her name in lights someday, a dream that ironically came true– but in a sadly distorted way.
Both Bonnie and Clyde were devoted to their families and made frequent trips to Dallas to visit. Â When they had money, they sent it to their families; when they did not, the families sent them food and provisions.
While  in prison in 1932 after a failed hardware store burglary, Bonnie 
wrote a collection of 10 poems  called “Poetry from Life’s Other Side,† One of these, “The Story of Suicide Sal,†about an innocent country girl lured by her boyfriend into a life of crime, was left
behind when the gang escaped the police in Joplin, Mo.   Two weeks before her death, apparently sensing that the end was near, Bonnie wrote a poem for her mother  called “The Trail’s End†that ended with the stanza:
Some day they’ll go down together;
And they’ll bury them side by side,
To a few it’ll be grief—
To the law a relief—
But it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.
We may never know the true story of Bonnie and Clyde, but their 
poignant love story shines through. For Bonnie and Clyde  it was love at first sight and their  love endured overwhelming hardship.  Bonnie was still married to her first husband, shocking behavior in those days.  Clyde was a hardened criminal constantly on the run.  But Bonnie remained a loyal companion to Clyde, although she believed their violent deaths inevitable. Their daily lives were difficult as they struggled to evade discovery, resorting to campfire cooking and bathing in cold streams.  In 1933, Bonnie was injured in a car crash and badly burned.  She never regained full use of her leg and  often had to be carried by Clyde.
After two short years on the run, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were killed  in ambush on an isolated stretch of highway in the piney woods near Gibsland, Louisiana, about 50 miles from the farm where I grew up.  A  combined total of about 130 rounds left their  bodies  so riddled with  holes that embalming was almost impossible.  More than 20,000 people attended Bonnie’s funeral, and flowers arrived from all over the country, some said to have been sent by John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd.
Today, you can find Bonnie and Clyde memorabilia – and a t-shirt – at the Bonnie and Clyde Ambush Museum in Gibsland, La.  On display are some of Clyde’s guns, Bonnie’s red hat, and grisly photos of the ambush scene. The  car in which they were killed is in a casino in Las Vegas; its price being beyond the budget of the little museum in Gibsland.  Until recently, the museum was managed 
by the son of one of the arresting law men but is now under new ownership.  The new owner says he may move the museum to nearby Arcadia if he can’t fix the roof.  
In 1972, a small monument was erected at the ambush site.  Over the years, it has been riddled with bullet holes and covered with entwined hearts and initials of young lovers, apparently hoping  for a Bonnie and Clyde romance.
Sadly, against their wishes, the two were buried in separate cemeteries near Dallas.  Bonnie was still wearing the wedding ring from her first marriage when she was buried.  She was 24 years old.
Resources:
Bonnie and Clyde; Wikipedia; Bonnie and Clyde Ambush Museum, Gibsland, La.,
Bonnie and Clyde; Lovers on the lam, Â www.biography.com
10 Things you may not know about Bonnie and Clyde, www.history.com
Bonnie Parker’s Poems, texashideout.tripod.com
$20 bill. She will also be the first woman to appear on U.S. currency.  Ironically, $20 is the exact amount of her Civil War monthly pension.  To add to the irony, the slaveholding president, Andrew Jackson remains on the bill.  We might have chosen a more friendly partner, but at least he has been demoted from its face to the rear.
Around 1844, Harriett married John Tubman, a free man, a rare occurrence at the time. Â Five years later, fearing she was about to be sold, she and two brothers escaped. By this time she had changed her name to Harriett. Her brothers turned back, but she continued alone and finally escaped to freedom. Her husband decided not to join her and instead married another woman with whom he had four children. Harriett was heartbroken, but refused to sacrifice her 
freedom and instead committed to bringing other slaves to freedom. From 1850 to 1860, by her own account Tubman returned to Maryland 13 times and rescued 70 family and friends. Harriet was a no-nonsense leader who carried a rifle on these trips to discourage slaves she was trying to help from trying to turn back. If necessary, she bribed people.
Harriett Tubman was one of the most prolific Underground Railroad conductors of all time. During the Civil War, she served as nurse, scout, cook and spy in the Union Army and became the first American woman to lead an armed raid into enemy territory. Harriet returned to Auburn, New York after the war and began another career as a community activist, humanitarian, and suffragist. The capstone of her humanitarian work was the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged, located near her home in Auburn. Harriett continued to be active in the suffrage movement and appeared at suffrage conventions until the early 1900s. She died at her home in Auburn, NY in 1912, at the age of ninety. Harriet Tubman attributed her ability to risk everything for the cause of freedom to her deep spiritual faith.
Possibly Louisiana’s most famous artist,  Clementine Hunter was born in 1886 at Hidden Hill Plantation and spent most of her life at nearby Melrose Plantation  in the  Cane River region in Louisiana owned  by John and Carmelite (“Miss Cammieâ€) Henry She worked as a field hand and was proud she could pick 250 pounds  a day  (a single cotton boll weighs about 0.15 oz).  She  bore seven children and on the morning before giving birth to one of them, picked 78 pounds of cotton.
