arrested in towns and formal y convicted in the county seat for
al egedly violating some pet y o ense, most often vagrancy. For
most, there was lit le or no record made of their al eged crimes,
when their "sentences" would expire, or in some cases, even who
they were. Davis was held with men cal ed "Tal asee" and "Gypsy,"
whose identities and origins were never clear to him. No o cial
records of their "arrests" were ever created.
Each was coerced into signing a contract like the one entered into
by John Davis—agreeing to be held essential y as a slave for
approximately a year, locked as "a convict" at night, chained during
the day if Pace desired it, and obligated to continue working past
the expiration of the contract for as long as Pace claimed was
necessary to pay for medical or any other extra expenses over the
term of the agreement—including the cost of recapture if the
prisoner tried to escape. Occasional y, a friend or relative of a Pace
prisoner would appear and purchase their freedom. In the case of
highly productive laborers, Pace nearly always asserted a basis for
keeping them far longer than the original term—often extending
from two years up to ten.
The simplest method of adding additional time to a man's
contract was to accuse him of another made-up charge. A typical
ploy was to claim that a black worker had violated his or her
contract by eating food they weren't entitled to, or rearresting them
contract by eating food they weren't entitled to, or rearresting them
as they departed at the end of the contract on a claim that they
were leaving with clothes that actual y belonged to Pace. Another
theatrical "trial" would be held before one of the various justices of
the peace. If one of the other white men was interested in obtaining
a particular African American, Pace routinely sold them for a
premium over what he had original y paid. In those cases, Pace
made a pro t in addition to the value of the year or more labor
received. The black worker was then compel ed to sign a new
contract with his buyer—usual y agreeing to work another year or
more to pay of his new "debt" to the white man.
To resist the system was more than foolhardy. Arther Berry, the
man Pace most often relied on to discipline his laborers, was like
most southern white men in his belief that black workers could
only be ful y productive if frequently subjected to physical
punishment. Berry's tool of choice was a three-inch-wide leather
strap. The whipping end was eighteen inches long, at ached to a
wooden handle. Berry or one of the other guards, ordered laborers
to lower their pants and lie on the ground while being whipped
with the strap on the but ocks, back, and legs. Those who resisted
were held down at the hands and feet by other laborers, often
stretched across a barrel or the stump of a tree. In the crude
environment of the farm's timber-cut ing operations, Berry would
whip with any available object if his strap was not handy, cut ing a
switch from a tree or using a sapling the size of a broom handle.33
Other whipping bosses on the farm were his brother, Jesse Berry,
and the thuggish guard James Todd.
One prisoner described in an a davit how the obedience of
laborers was enforced: "I was mistreated bad sometimes," said Joe
Pat erson, who became an object of particular cruelty. "Mr. Todd
whips the hardest. Sometimes Mr. Todd would tie [a convict's]
hands together and put them over the knee and put a stick in
between the legs and whip him with a big buggy trace, pul ed the
clothes down so he would be naked. Sometimes he would hit over
one hundred licks, sometimes fty, or seventy- ve times, sometimes
thirty—never less than thirty…. The whipping would take place in
thirty—never less than thirty…. The whipping would take place in
the eld or stockade, no doctor present and nobody to count the
licks, or time it."34
In another bit er echo of antebel um years, any e ort to escape
the slave farm risked not just the laborer who at empted to ee but
any black person he or she encountered. After a black man named
Dave Scot ran away, Pace tracked him down with dogs and then
arrested everyone on the property where he was taking refuge. Pace
ordered that Scot 's wife, four other family members, and two more
blacks found nearby be brought back for "harboring" the runaway
slave.
After being found guilty by James Kennedy, the half dozen
workers were sold to George Cosby, who held them in a stockade
surrounded by guard dogs and beat them regularly. When the
sentence of one of the workers , Lum Johnson, was about to expire,
he was rearrested and charged with stealing potatoes from another
nearby white farmer, Bob Patil o. Cosby took him back to his farm,
claiming he'd paid an $18 ne on his behalf. Johnson was forced to
sign another labor contract and returned to the stockade.
Nearly al the black residents of Tal apoosa and the surrounding
counties had heard stories about atrocities on the farms of Pace and
other forced labor enterprises in the area. Everyone knew black
men faced medieval-era punishments for any failure to work; black
women faced the double jeopardy of being required to submit both
to the cot on elds and kitchens, as wel as the beds of the white
men obtaining them.
A black neighbor near the farms named M. J. Scroggins said the
Cos-bys starved their forced laborers and were violent. "They would
feed the negroes on nothing but a lit le corn bread and syrup. Go
barefooted in cold weather, women and men," Scroggins said. "The
white people would be afraid to go by the Cosbys. Some people
had got en kil ed out there, and never could prove who did it. The
Cosbys are pret y bad folks. If a strange negro walked along the
road they would catch him up and put him on the chain gang." The
Turner farm was particularly notorious for sadistic in ictions upon
Turner farm was particularly notorious for sadistic in ictions upon
sexual y de ant black women. At one point, an African American
woman named Hazel Slaughter suddenly reappeared in Dadevil e
after a months-long disappearance. She showed other women in the
community how her stomach was scarred and raw from an at ack
by dogs used to track her down after an at empted escape from the
farm of Fletch Turner. In whispered tones, Slaughter said she had
run away after watching Turner's teenage son, Al en, use a spade to
beat to death another black prisoner, named Wil ie Ferral .
Bloodhounds were set on her track. They tore through the woods
behind her as she ed, nal y running her down miles from the
farm. Before guards caught up on horseback and began dragging
Slaughter back to service on the Turner farm, the dogs had torn the
clothes from her body and ripped open her stomach.
The account was more than plausible. Stories circulated in the
county months earlier that Al en Turner had kil ed a young black
woman on the farm named Sarah Ol
iver. Another black woman,
Cornelia Hammock, was arrested in Dadevil e and charged with
larceny on May 20, 1902, according to the rudimentary trial docket
erratical y maintained by the town's mayor. She pleaded innocent,
but was immediately declared guilty by the mayor and ned a total
of $16.40. Unable to pay the ne, Hammock was ordered to the
farm of Fletch Turner to work until November 1903—a total of
eighteen months. She survived only two days. No cause of death
was recorded. Her death was never investigated.35
"It is the general talk of the colored people in and about
Dadevil e," swore a local black leader a year after the kil ing. The
stories were "reported to colored people by other colored people
who have been there that these practices are carried on there al the
time…. Colored people believe it."36
Tal apoosa County had become the embodiment of the casual new
slavery ourishing across the South. White southerners had clearly
won the national debate over who would decide the future of the
country's black population. As southerners had insisted for more
country's black population. As southerners had insisted for more
than a decade, the nation's "Negro problem" would be dealt with
using the southern, white man's solution. None of the ostensible
al ies of black citizenship would act meaningful y to stop it.
From the perspective of most white Americans, the new racial
order had been a rmed formal y and informal y at the highest
levels of society. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling four years earlier
i n Plessy v. Ferguson, sanctioning "separate but equal" public
facilities for blacks and whites, sancti ed the wave of new
legislation and business practices requiring disparate treatment of
blacks and whites. The ruling's e ects went far beyond the courts
and legislative chambers. The open wil ingness of the highest court
to base its seminal ruling on claims that were so clearly false—that
train cars designated for blacks were no di erent from those of
whites—sent a profound message to al Americans. So long as
whites performed at least the bare rituals of due process and
cloaked their actions behind claims of equality, the crudest abuses
of blacks and violations of their protections under law would rarely
ever be chal enged.
The neo-slavery of the new century relied on a simple but
extraordinary ruse that the Supreme Court's ruling implicitly
endorsed. Men such as Franklin, Pruit , Kennedy, Berry, and Todd,
in places like Goodwater and Tal apoosa County, could safely force
a black man into servitude for months or years as long as they
pretended that the legal rights of those black men had not been
violated. The implications were as deeply absorbed by black
people as were the rhythms of farming in the era of old slavery.
This long era of false trials and arrests would taint the African
American view of legal processes and guarantees for generations to
come.
In the larger scheme of what was happening across the South, the
capture of John Davis was a routine, inconsequential event. John
Pace acquired a steady stream of mostly anonymous black men
throughout the year leading to the seizure of Davis. Pace and his
son-in-law Anderson Hardy bought Jack Melton in February 1901,
using the pretext of a fake warrant signed by James Kennedy
using the pretext of a fake warrant signed by James Kennedy
accusing Melton of the ubiquitous al egation of "violating a writ en
contract." In April of that year, Elbert Carmichael was seized. Then
came Ed Burroughs, on an al egation no one could later recol ect.
He was fol owed by Joe Hart and Otis Meyers. Just before
Hal oween—a month after Davis was kidnapped and sold—Pace
bought Lewis Asberry for $48.
Through the winter and approaching spring planting of 1901, the
seizures of black men continued steadily37 After the turn of the year
came Joe Pat erson, the de ant black man sold for $9.50 to
Anderson Hardy, who in turn resold him to Pace. Pat erson had
been arrested in Goodwater and convicted by "Judge" Jesse London,
the same storekeeper who "convicted" John Davis the previous fal .
On January 17, 1902, Franklin and Pruit were back at the Pace
farm o ering a young boy named W. S. Thompson, convicted at
Goodwater of carrying a concealed pistol. Pace paid $50 for him.
The so-cal ed witness to Thompson's signature on a contract
agreeing to work for Pace for one year to pay o his nes was
Lewis Asberry—the black man seized three months earlier. Ten
months later, Pace sold Thompson back to his mother.38
Near the end of February, Turner wrote a check to John G.
Dunbar, the Goodwater town marshal, against his account at
Tal apoosa County Bank in the amount of $40. On the memo line,
Turner scratched: "Cost of nes for 3 Negroes." In March, Robert
Franklin delivered to Pace a black man named Hil ery Brooks and
traded him for $35.
The seizure of black men on the back roads of the South was no
longer even a brazen act. Note Turke, a young black man from the
Tal apoosa County hamlet of Notasulga, held a job as a free worker
with Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad in Birmingham. After a visit
home, he was walking down a dirt road outside Dadevil e on the
way to catch a train back to Birmingham on a harshly cold day in
the middle of November 1902. Suddenly Burancas Cosby, the son of
W. D. Cosby, appeared on the road and tackled Turke without
W. D. Cosby, appeared on the road and tackled Turke without
provocation.39
"Where are you going?" Cosby shouted.
"To the depot," Turke replied.
"Do you want a job?"
"I already have one. I'm on my way to it."
"Where are you from?" Cosby asked.
Turke explained where he lived, who his family was, and even
rat led o the names of white people he knew, al in a vain e ort
to demonstrate that he was a black man who deserved not to be
molested or harmed. The result was only to convince Cosby that
Turke was a worker worth having.
"You are a very good nigger. You bet er stop over with me,"
Cosby proclaimed, pointing to his house up the road. Cosby
mounted his horse and continued on his way.
Turke knew bet er than to go to the white man's house. He
hurried toward the train station, stil miles away. Cosby, no doubt
uncertain of whether he could manhandle Turke in a one-on-one
struggle, stayed behind. But soon Cosby caught back up, this time
accompanied by a boisterous crowd of other white men.
"Turn around and go back with me," Cosby shouted.
Turke could do lit le else.
Cosby took him to the farm of his uncle, George Cosby, and
locked him inside a corncrib. The next morning, a black farmhand
named Luke unlocked the door and took Turke before George
Cosby.
"Hel o, young man, what are you doing here?" the elder Cosby
asked through the slats holding Turke and the bulging harvest of the
farm's corn crop.
"I don'
t know. They have got me here. I don't know what for."
"What are you going to do about it?" Cosby said.
"I don't know. I am a stranger here. They stopped me and got me
here. I cannot help myself," Turke said.
here. I cannot help myself," Turke said.
"Young man, didn't you know they would do things like that?
There are grand rascals about here. Do you want me to go your
bond?"
Turke was abbergasted. "I have not done anything for you to go
my bond."
Cosby, playing out the thin charade of a kind and reasonable
white man, told Turke that he should plead guilty to whatever
charge the white men claimed against him. "If they cal on you, you
plead guilty," Cosby said. "If you say you want me to go, I wil get
you out of this thing and work you."
"Plead guilty of what?" Turke asked. "I am guilty of one thing,
that is going on the public road, and I thought that was free for
everybody."
"You plead guilty and you wil get of light," Cosby reassured him.
"I am in a strange county," Turke replied. "But if you wil al ow
me a chance to write or telegraph home …"
"No, we don't want that at al , you go ahead and plead guilty—
whenever they get their hands on you they are going to do what
they like with you. You just plead guilty."
Turke nal y told the older white man that he and his son would
have to do whatever they chose—kil him or imprison him—but
that he would not plead guilty to a crime dreamt up by others. "Kil
me or do what you please," Turke said. "I propose to do what is
right."
As dark fel , Burancas Cosby and the gang of white men returned
and took Turke into the night. They dragged him outside a window
at the home of another white man who was a justice of the peace.
Turke never heard his name. Talking beneath the raised sash of the
window, the justice astonishingly said he wouldn't play along with
the ruse that night. "Men, I can't have anything to do with this
thing," the justice said. "I have had a lot of those things before me,
and I told you not to come before me any more with such things as
that."
The mob took Turke back to the log crib. The next day, they
The mob took Turke back to the log crib. The next day, they
returned, on horseback, buggies, and wagons, and took Turke to a
smal warehouse where another ostensible justice of the peace
Slavery by Another Name Page 22