The Lewis family were slaves on the plantation of Colonel Duncan Stewart Cage Sr. in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana near the town of Houma.

All those who had worked the plantation prior to the Emancipation Proclamation were given the option to stay by Colonel Cage, who claimed to be a "poor man" without them.

In an attempt to win the favor of the workers and to keep his power, Welch offered the following: It now becomes my very pleasant duty to bestow upon you certain gifts, as evidence of the appreciation of your excellent service.

This appears to have been J. Vance Lewis's first exposure to the legal system and its place in his narrative implies that it had some significant influence in the outcome of his future.

His father had served well in the trial, and his final word about when a pig becomes a hog convinced the jury that Benjamin was innocent.

Eventually, a public school for the African-American children on the plantation was founded by Lewis's father, the "overseer" Mr. Welch, and Mr. Cage who hired a teacher, a West Indian.

Lewis was an excellent student, friendly and competitive with a boy named Warner Wright, who was nicknamed "Dick."

(Warner Richard Wright became a teacher, school principal and the owner of a pharmacy in the city of Alexandria, Louisiana.

[2] One of his sons, Crispus Attucks Wright, moved west to Los Angeles and became noted as a lawyer with offices on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, California[3] as well as a civil rights activist who in 1997 contributed US$2 million (~$3.53 million in 2023) to the law school of the University of Southern California.

He continued to work as a school teacher and principal in east Texas before attending Lincoln University (Pennsylvania) for two terms.

Through advice from a successful African-American lawyer, Lewis then decided to finish his education at a school in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

[6] Vance Lewis' friend Warner Richard Wright's birthdate was January 1864[7] and that year is reflected in the 1870 census enumeration for Terrebonne's Eleventh Ward.

[8] If Lewis's actual birthdate is December 25, 1863, rather than 1853, he would have been 16 months old at the end of the American Civil War and have had no memory of his life in slavery.

I felt that "Out of the Ditch" might shed new light upon some of the difficult phases of the Negro problem, and might be the means of helping to change certain adverse conditions for the better.

Naturally in a work of this kind I have employed a good bit of ego, but I saw no way to avoid it in a simple relation of facts.

Beseeching you to read carefully, and ponder thoughtfully every phase of the author's struggles and the causes therefor, whether of prejudice, jealousy, envy or conspiracy, we send this book into the world.