The fighting went on and on and on. Under the platform was burning up, but nobody moved out. Then after ’bout an hour, the troops got everybody quieted down again. They took the trouble-makers to jail and brought the rest of us back home.
We heard later it was the secret groups that had caused the trouble. Names like the Ku Klux Klans, the White Brotherhood, the Camellias o’ Luzana—groups like that rode all over the State beating and killing. Would kill any black man who tried to stand up and would kill any white man who tried to help him. Just after the war many colored people tried to go out and start their own little farms. The secret groups would come out there and beat them just because their crops was cleaner than the white man’s crop. Another time they would beat a man because he had some grass in his crop. “What you growing there, Hawk?” they would ask him. “Corn, Master,” Hawk would say. “That look like grass out there to me, Hawk,” they would say. “Well, maybe a little bit, Master.” Hawk would say. “But ’fore day in the morning I surely get it out—if the Lord spare.” “No, you better start right now, Hawk,” they would say. Then they would make you get down on your hands and knees and eat grass till you got sick. If they didn’t get enough fun out of watching you throw up, they would tie you to a fence post or to a tree and beat you. “Tomorrow night we come back again, Hawk,” they would say. “And you better not have no grass out there, you hear?” Or. “Tomorrow night we come back and you better have some grass in that field, hear, Charlie?” They was just after destroying any colored who tried to make it on his own. They didn’t care what excuse they used.
But we seldom had trouble with the secret groups. Bone was important in the Republican Party and he always had soldiers out there guarding his place. Every time the colored politicians came they brought guards and stationed them at the gate and ’long the road. A mile or two away we would hear that somebody had got beaten up or killed, but we knowed it could never happen where we lived. People used to say, “Where y’all from?” We used to say, with our heads high, “Mr. Bone place.” The people would say, “I hear that’s a good place. They need any more people to work?” Sometimes we said yes; other times we had to say no.
Then one evening, right after we had come in from the field, Bone called us to the house. It was dark when we came in the yard, and Bone was standing on the gallery with two people holding lanterns on both sides of him. He said he didn’t own the place no more, the Secesh did. We had heard that the Secesh was fighting for their land, we had even heard in places where they had got it back, but we never thought it could happen where we was. We had soldiers there all the time, colored politicians there all the time, how could the Secesh get the land? What was soldiers for? What was politicians for? What did they fight a war for if not to set us free? Bone said yes they had fought a war to set us free, but now they wanted to bring this country back together. They had to get it together no matter what. He said till that was done the Secesh was go’n beat and kill. We asked how come they couldn’t send more troops in? He said the Yankees was already tired fighting for us. Some of them was sorry they had ever gone to war. Besides that the Yankees saw a chance to make money in the South now. The South needed money to get on her feet, and the Yankees had the money to lend. And that was the deal: the Secesh get their land, but the Yankees lend the money.
After he had paid us off we went down to the schoolhouse to talk. Some was for leaving, some was for staying. “But go where?” we asked. “Before, we knowed what we had to do. We had to leave the place where we was slaves. But where do we go now when Bone done already told us the Yankees don’t care either?” “Let’s stick it out,” some of us said. “We not slaves no more. If we don’t like it we can always move.” We dismissed the meeting round midnight and went home. Half the people left anyhow. But this time I was one of them who stayed behind.
Couple days later the owner showed up. Bone had gone, the teacher and all the colored troops and colored politicians had gone. The few people left in the quarters went up to the house to hear what the owner had to say. He was standing on the gallery in almost the same place where Bone had stood couple days before. Tall, slim, narrow-face man. Still had on his Secesh uniform, even with the sable hanging on his side. His name, he said, was Colonel Eugene I. Dye.
“I hope I don’t have no more nigger soldiers and no more nigger politicians round here,” he said. He looked over the few of us left there. “That schoolhouse up there go’n be shut down till I can find y’all a competent teacher.” He looked over us again to see what we had to say. “Wages still the same. Fifteen for the men, ten for the women. I can’t pay y’all till the end of the year, but you can draw rations and clothing from the store. If that suits you, stay; if it don’t, catch up with that coattail-flying scalawag and the rest of them hot-footing niggers who was here two days ago.”
If Colonel Dye had told me that a week before I would have turned around then and left. But after what Bone had told us I had no more faith in heading North than I had staying South. I would stay right here and do what I could for me and Ned. If I heard of a place where I could live better, where Ned could get a better learning, I would go there to live. Till then I would stay where I was.
It was slavery again, all right. No such thing as colored troops, colored politicians, or a colored teacher anywhere near the place. The only teacher to come there was white; the only time he came was in the winter when the weather was so bad the children couldn’t go in the field. You didn’t need a pass to leave the place like you did in slavery time, but you had to give Colonel Dye’s name if the secret group stopped you on the road. Just because the Yankee troops and the Freedom Beero had gone didn’t mean they had stopped riding. They rode and killed more than ever now. The colored people wrote letters to Washington, sometimes a group would get up enough nerve to go there in person, but the troops never did come back. Yankee business came in—yes; Yankee money came in to help the South back on her feet—yes; but no Yankee troops. We was left there to root hog or die.
Exodus
Then the people started leaving. But the people had always left from here. All through slavery people was trying to get away from the South. The old masters and the patrollers used to go after the people with dogs. If you was a good slave, a good worker, they would bring you back home and beat you. Some of the masters would brand their slaves. If you was one of the troublemakers always trying to run away, then they would bring you back and sell you to a trader going to New Orleans. If you gived them any trouble in the swamps they would just kill you back there. I knowed a man who wouldn’t come back and they had to shoot him. He told them he rather they shoot him down like a dog than go back, and he tored his shirt open to let them shoot at his heart. They shot him right where he was and left him back there for the buzzards. We had a bayou some five miles from where I lived that they called the Dirty Bayou. The people used to run in the bayou to throw the dogs off their scent, and that’s how the patrollers used to catch them. The bayou was too wide and boggy and the slaves couldn’t swim—they had to wade over—and that’s how the patrollers would catch them. The patrollers would put the gun on them and holler for them to come back. If they didn’t come back the patrollers would shoot them in the water or make them drown trying to get away. But many of them made it. Not trying to wade over—it was too wide and the mud too sticky—they used to build wharves. They would go in the swamps every night or every chance they got and they would work little by little till they had finished. Then they would edge the wharf in the water and head out. These was the smart ones. The dumb ones tried to wade over, and that’s when they got caught. That bayou got more people in it than a graveyard.
Now, after the Yankee soldiers and the Freedom Beero left, the people started leaving again. Not right away—because Mr. Frederick Douglass said give the South a chance. But when the people saw they was treated just as bad now as before the war they said to heck with Mr. Frederick Douglass and started leaving. The old masters didn’t think too much of it
at first. They was glad the niggers was leaving. If they got rid of all the bad niggers—them the only ones leaving, any how—if all of them left there wouldn’t be no more trouble. They didn’t know it at first, but it wasn’t just the bad ones leaving. Droves after droves of good and bad was leaving. If you went to town you would see whole families going by. Men in front with bundles on their backs, women following them with a child in their arm and holding another one by the hand. And now seeing this the old masters did start worrying. Who was go’n pick the cotton now? Who was go’n cut the cane? They went to Washington. It was the North enticing the niggers for their votes. The Yankees pretended they wanted to help the South back on her feet, but all they want do is control the South. The people in Washington called the colored in and asked them if it was true the North was buying their vote. The colored said no, they was leaving because they couldn’t get fair treatment in the South. Now, the old masters came back and tried to force the people to stay. They turned the Klans loose on them, the Camellias, the White Brotherhood loose on the people. The people still went. They slipped away at night, they took to the swamps, they still went.
Ned Leaves Home
Some colored soldiers from the war organized a committee to go round and see how the colored people was treated. They went all over the State checking on how the colored was living. Ned found out about the committee and joined it. He reported on the parish where we lived. He told the committee the work we did, how long we had to work, how much money we got for working, how much we had to pay for food and clothes, how the overseer treated us in the field. When the committee found out the colored was treated no better than they was treated in slavery they told them to leave for the North. Ned’s job was to tell people how to get to New Orleans. How to travel, where they could stop, where they could find help and food.
Ned was seventeen or eighteen then. I’m sure he wasn’t twenty yet. Tall, slim, nothing but arms and legs. Very quiet—always serious. Too serious. I didn’t like to see him serious like that. I used to always ask him, “Ned, what you thinking about?” He would say, “Nothing.” But I knowed he was thinking about his mama. He never said it, he never talked about her (he used to call me mama) but I knowed he was thinking about her all the time. I would do anything so he could keep his mind off her. I would make him talk about school. He liked his first teacher, the young colored man who was here when we first came to the place. And we used to talk about him long after he had gone. I would make him talk about the other children in the quarters. Make him talk about anything to keep him from thinking so much. But he was a serious child. Even if this terrible thing hadn’t happened to his mama and little sister he still would ’a’ been a serious person.
He had a pretty little smile though. He was real black, with dimples in his jaws, and he had the whitest teeth you ever saw. Real handsome when he wasn’t serious. Tall, slim, handsome black child. He got heavy when he got older. He got to be two hundred pounds or better. But he was nothing but arms and legs when he was growing up.
He had changed his name now—Ned Douglass. Before, he was Ned Brown—after me. We didn’t know his daddy’s name, so he was Ned Brown. Then he changed it to Douglass, after Mr. Frederick Douglass. He was go’n be a great leader like Mr. Douglass was. He was Ned Douglass awhile, then he was Ned Stephen Douglass. Ned Stephen Douglass awhile, then he was Edward Stephen Douglass. All the rest of the young men round him was taking on names like that. Some Douglass, some Brown—after John Brown, not Jane Brown; some Turners, after Nat Turner; Sumners; some Sherman. Ask one his name, right off he would tell you John Brown. Ask him his daddy’s name, he told you Ed Washington. The old people used to laugh and shake their heads, but these children was serious. I used to tell Ned all the time he was too serious. He had learned to read and he could write. He always had some kind of book round the house.
When the old masters came back from Washington to stop the colored people from leaving the South, they started watching people like Ned. They knowed about the committee, they knowed he was a member, and now they was watching him. Colonel Dye called me to the house one day and told me to make him stop. I told him I would talk to Ned. He told me don’t just talk, make him stop or he was go’n get himself in a lot of trouble. I told Ned, but he said he wouldn’t stop.
One night while he was out doing work for the committee, they came riding. My cabin was way down in the quarters, and they passed all the other cabins to come to mine. It was in the winter, and it was a full moon, and it had plenty stars, and they came on horses. Some eight or nine of them. I didn’t know they was out there till they had kicked the door in. All had on their sheets. Three of them came in, the others stayed out. I could see them out there on the horses.
“Where’s he at?” one of them asked me.
“Who?” I said.
He slapped me down with the back of his hand. Then they turned over everything in the house. Turned over my table, kicked the bench in the fire. The end of it got scorched and when they left I had to douse it out with water.
“You still don’t know where he’s at?” that same one asked me.
“No,” I said, getting up.
He waited till I was up good, then he slapped me back down.
“Still don’t?” he said.
“She don’t know, Bo,” another one said.
“She know,” Bo said.
“Let her be, Bo,” the other one said. “We’ll get him some other time. Let’s get out of here.”
They got on their horses and went back up the quarters. They had to pass by the big house so the people at the house must ’a’ heard them. I wouldn’t ’a’ been a bit surprised if Colonel Dye hadn’t sent them himself.
Late that night Ned came back to the house. My face was swole and he asked me what had happened. I told him. He told me to pack, we was leaving now. We could take to the swamps till we got off the place, then we could take the road to New Orleans. In New Orleans we would get a boat for Kansas.
“I can’t go with you,” I said.
“You got to,” he said. “They came here and beat you this time. They’ll do worse when they come back.”
“They won’t do me nothing,” I said.
“If I stop?” he said. “You want me to stop, too?”
“I want you to do what you think’s right,” I said.
“I’m doing what I think’s right,” he said.
“Then you have to go, or they’ll kill you.”
“You have to go with me.”
“No,” I said.
“You ain’t married to this place,” he said.
“In a way,” I said.
“I can’t stop, Mama,” he said.
“Then you have to go,” I said.
I sat on the bench in front of the firehalf and pulled Ned down side me. I looked in his face and he was already crying.
“This not my time,” I said.
“After the war wasn’t my time,” he said. “But I went everywhere you wanted me to go.”
“People don’t keep moving, Ned.”
“They move when they’re slaves,” he said.
“What’s up there?” I asked him.
“Everybody else going,” he said.
“Many going, but not everybody,” I said. “I think you ought to go. But not me.”
“Just leave you here to be a dog?” he said.
“I won’t be a dog,” I said.
“You’ll be a dog,” he said. “To eat the crumbs they throw on the floor.”
“I won’t eat crumbs, Ned, and I won’t eat off the floor,” I said. “You know better than that.”
“I don’t mean it like that,” he said. “I mean they making us separate, and I don’t want us to separate.”
“It had to happen one day,” I told him. “I told you that when you first started.”
“You want me to give it up?”
“Not less you want to,” I said. “Things like this you got to make up your own mind.”
H
e set there squeezing my hands and crying. I pulled him close and held him to my bosom.
“You ought to go,” I said. “They might come back tonight.”
“I ought to give it up,” he said. “How you go’n live?”
“I’ll make out,” I said.
“I can’t give it up,” he said. “I ought to stay here and just let them kill me.”
“I want you to go,” I said. “They will kill you if you stay.”
I had already cooked up his grub, and while he sat on the bench eating, I packed the rest for him to take. All the time I was packing his things I kept from looking at him. I knowed if I had looked at him he would ’a’ seen how I felt and he wouldn’t ’a’ been able to go. I didn’t want him to go—God knows I didn’t want him to go—but I knowed he had to leave one day, so why not now. When I had packed his food and clothes I put the sack by the door.
Ned took a long time to finish eating. I did everything to keep from looking at him. When he got up to go, my heart jumped in my chest. But I forced myself to go up to him.
“We doing what we both think is best,” I said.
He held me close. He was so tall and thin. I could feel him crying, but I held up till he was gone. I stood in the door and watched him till he had gone out the quarters, then I went back inside and laid down on the bed. And I cried all night.
Two Letters from Kansas
I stayed in the cabin a long time by myself, then me and Joe Pittman started seeing each other. Joe Pittman had been married, but his wife was dead and left him with two children, two girls. We had knowed each other a long time before Ned left for Kansas, but we never looked at each other like we was interested. I had two reasons. Ned was by himself in this world, except for me, and I didn’t want no man and no children spiting him just because he was an orphan. The other reason I never looked at a man, I was barren. An old woman on the place had told me that. I went to her one day and told her how my body act and didn’t act. After we had sat down and talked a while, she said one word: “Barren.” I went to a doctor and he told me the same thing: “You barren, all right.” He told me it had happened when I was nothing but a tot. Said I had got hit or whipped in a way that had hurt me inside. Said this might be one reason I didn’t grow too much either. Asked me how my appetite was. I said, “Appetite? My appetite good as anybody else appetite.” He said, “You all right. Go on back home.”