Mother Steward and the mission of compassion

For over 30 years, Lula Stewart was at the heart of outreach and rehabilitation efforts for many in the Bossier Parish Jail.

Here's her story.

Lula Stewart spent her life serving the community. She taught in Bossier schools for 46 years before retiring. Stewart also served as president of the Women’s Missionary Department of the North Calvary Baptist Association, District 13 for 41 years. She remained active in the organization even after relinquishing her role. But one of the things Stewart was best known for was her prison ministry.

LSU Shreveport and KTAL NBC 6 partner for Caddo Parish Civil Rights Heritage Trail project

Mrs. Lula A. Stewart portrait, The Times, Apr. 24, 2004 (Source: Newspapers.com, public domain)

She gained approval from Sheriff L.H. Padgett and started a yearly Thanksgiving feast for the inmates. Although she regularly visited the jail, the Thanksgiving cook-in was a special occasion. Before the feast, the Women’s Missionary Department organized a sermon and hymns.

Stewart said inmates often asked for prayers or for help writing letters to parents. The prisoners and others in the community affectionately referred to her as “Mother Stewart.”

During a 1978 interview with The Shreveport Times, Mother Stewart explained why the program was important to her. “Some in the Benton jail have not had a visitor or even a letter since they have been there. In this manner, we exemplify God’s love to those who are lonely and sometimes forgotten.”

Mother Stewart believed those in jail could be rehabilitated.

“They can reform and go and make a good citizen,” she asserted. “They’ve just let the devil get ahead of them. Just because they’re in that dilemma doesn’t mean they can’t get out of it.”

She believed that the prisoners weren’t inherently delinquent but that often, mentors simply failed to bring up children in a better way.

Another part of her mission was working with the Bossier Parish Sheriff’s Office to improve prison conditions.

Mother Stewart visits at jail again, The Shreveport Times, Nov. 24, 1978 (Source: Newspapers.com, public domain)

Mother Stewart passed away in 1987 at the age of 105. Her obituary in The Times highlighted some of the good works Stewart did for the community during her life.

“For more than 20 years, she sought and received assistance of business firms, banks, churches, politicians and individuals for clothing, food and toys, which she distributed among the needy in Bossier and Caddo Parish during the Christmas holiday season.”

Through her efforts, she raised thousands of dollars for Bishop College, which she presented to them yearly.

Civil Rights activist Mamie Wallace, one of Stewart’s 12 children with husband Rev. R. A. Stewart, told The Shreveport Journal, “She was a humanitarian and a devout Christian. And she taught us by example.” Her son Riley Stewart, who played as a Negro League pitcher in the 1940s and a member of the Caddo Parish School Board, told the Journal she encouraged them to be the best they could be.

One year after Stewart’s death in 1988 the Christian Service Program named its new homeless shelter in her honor. CSP coordinator Margaret McCaffrey and Stewart’s living children told the Journal that Mother Stewart would have been pleased.

The Mother Stewart House served the homeless of Shreveport for more than 30 years before it was abandoned. Sadly, the building caught fire in 2019 and again in 2023.