Finally, in 1875, the whites decided they had had enough of it, and it must stop in some way. It was managed differently in different places. In Lee county we had a meeting of prominent workers for the cause and it was decided that everybody should be on a committee to make a general and close canvass of the county one day before the election and press home to the negroes every argument we could to induce them to vote with us. I remember very well to have been in that canvass. We searched out the brother in black and told them one by one in as much as we could, and each squad of whites numbering as many as we well could, and one man talking for awhile and then another. Many agreed to vote with us, but said it in such a way that we knew very well that they did not mean it. Many others were mum. On the next day when the polls were opened the whites were much and early on the ground, and when the negroes came in they did not present that solid black phalanx of column they had formerly done. The truth is they had been informed that it was not good manners. The most of them, though, were very anxious to vote the Republican ticket. No violence was offered, but many whites would surround a negro voter and use all kind of arguments and persuasions to vote the Democratic ticket, and as each voter could be induced to cast his vote in that way, the entire white contingent would raise a yell that would have done honor to the old Rebel soldier’s battle cry; and thus one by one the negroes were induced to fall into line, except a few who retired to the rear without voting at all. This took place throughout the state, and the Republican party was put out of business in Mississippi.
EXTRACTS FROM LAY MY BURDEN DOWN: A FOLK HISTORY OF SLAVERY
(1945)
Historical memory also lay at the heart of the stories about Reconstruction told by former slaves and collected by Benjamin Albert Botkin (1901–1975) in the 1930s. Botkin, one of America’s foremost folklorists, directed the slave narrative program of the New Deal’s Federal Writers’ Project, which recorded more than two thousand interviews with ex-slaves aged seventy-five to one hundred five. He pioneered the use of ex-slave narratives to document slavery and emancipation. The former slaves recalled the joys of freedom, the success of finding work and gaining self-respect, and earning money. But many of their stories highlight the serious difficulties the blacks experienced making the transition from slavery to freedom—finding and reestablishing families and feeding, clothing, and sustaining themselves. As eighty-five-year-old Warren McKinney, a former South Carolina slave, put it: “Reconstruction was a mighty hard pull.”
HE SOLD HIS FIVE BOYS
. . . . I ’members day of ’mancipation. Yankees told us we was free, and they call us up from the field to sign up and see if us wanted to stay on with ’em. I stayed that year with the Moorings, then I bargain for land, but couldn’t never pay for it. Turned loose ’thout nothing.
But they was a coal-black free-born nigger name George Wright had a floating mill right here on the ’Bigbee River, stayed at the point of the woods just ’bove the spring branch, and it did a good service. But he got in debt, and he sold his five boys. They was his own children, and he could sell ’em under the law. The names was Eber, Eli, Ezekiel, Enoch, and Ezra, and he sold ’em to the highest bidder right yonder front of the post office for cash. And Jack Tom was another free nigger here, and he bought some of ’em, and they others the white folks bought, and I never heard no complaint, and I seed ’em long as they lived. They was a heap of things went on. Some I likes to remember, some I don’t. But I’d rather be free now. I never seed Mr. Lincoln, but when they told me ’bout him, I thought he was partly God.
THEY JUST EXPECTED FREEDOM
They just expected freedom, all I ever heard. I know they didn’t expect the white folks to give them no land ’cause the man what owned the land bought it hisself ’fore he bought the hands what he put on it. They thought they was ruined bad enough when the hands left them. They kept the land, and that is about all there was left. What the Yankees didn’t take they wasted and set fire to it. They set fire to the rail fences so the stock would get out—all they didn’t kill and take off. Both sides was mean. But it seemed like ’cause they was fighting down here on the South’s ground it was the worst here. Now that’s just the way I sees it. They done one more thing too. They put any colored man in the front where he would get killed first, and they stayed sorta behind in the back lines. When they come along, they try to get the colored men to go with them, and that’s the way they got treated. I didn’t know where anybody was made to stay on after the war. They was lucky if they had a place to stay at. There wasn’t anything to do with if they stayed. Times was awful unsettled for a long time. People what went to the cities died. I don’t know, they caught diseases and changing the ways of eating and living I guess what done it. They died mighty fast for awhile. I knowed some of them, and I heard ’em talking.
That period after the war was a hard time. It sure was harder than the depression. It lasted a long time. Folks got a lots now besides what they put up with then. Seemed like they thought if they be free they never have no work to do and just have plenty to eat and wear. They found it different, and when it was cold they had no wood like they been used to. I don’t believe in the colored race being slaves ’cause of the color, but the war didn’t make times much better for a long time. Some of them had a worse time. So many soon got sick and died. They died of consumption and fevers and nearly froze. Some near ’bout starved. The colored folks just scattered ’bout hunting work after the war.
THEN CAME THE CALM
When freedom come, folks left home, out in the streets, crying, praying, singing, shouting, yelling, and knocking down everything. Some shot off big guns. Then come the calm. It was sad then. So many folks done dead, things tore up, and nowheres to go and nothing to eat, nothing to do. It got squally. Folks got sick, so hungry. Some folks starved nearly to death. Times got hard. We went to the washtub—onliest way we all could live. Ma was a cripple woman. Pa couldn’t find work for so long when he mustered out.
I GOT ALONG HARD AFTER I WAS FREED
I got along hard after I was freed. It is a hard matter to tell you what we could find or get. We used to dig up dirt in the smokehouse and boil it and dry it and sift it to get the salt to season our food with. We used to go out and get old bones that had been throwed away and crack them open and get the marrow and use them to season the greens with. Just plenty of niggers then didn’t have anything but that to eat.
Even in slavery times, there was plenty of niggers out of them three hundred slaves who had to break up old lard gourds and use them for meat. They had to pick up bones off the dunghill and crack them open to cook with. And then, of course, they’d steal. Had to steal. That the best way to git what they wanted.
RECONSTRUCTION WAS A MIGHTY HARD PULL
I was born in Edgefield County, South Carolina. I am eighty-five years old. I was born a slave of George Strauter. I remembers hearing them say, “Thank God, I’s free as a jay bird.” My ma was a slave in the field. I was eleven years old when freedom was declared. When I was little, Mr. Strauter whipped my ma. It hurt me bad as it did her. I hated him. She was crying. I chunked him with rocks. He run after me, but he didn’t catch me. There was twenty-five or thirty hands that worked in the field. They raised wheat, corn, oats, barley, and cotton. All the children that couldn’t work stayed at one house. Aunt Mat kept the babies and small children that couldn’t go to the field. He had a gin and a shop. The shop was at the fork of the roads. When the war come on, my papa went to build forts. He quit Ma and took another woman. When the war close, Ma took her four children, bundled ’em up and went to Augusta. The government give out rations there. My ma washed and ironed. People died in piles. I don’t know till yet what was the matter. They said it was the change of living. I seen five or six wooden, painted coffins piled up on wagons pass by our house. Loads passed every day like you see cotton pass here. Some said it was cholera and some took consumption. Lots of the colored people nearly starved. Not much to get t
o do and not much houseroom. Several families had to live in one house. Lots of the colored folks went up North and froze to death. They couldn’t stand the cold. They wrote back about them dying. No, they never sent them back. I heard some sent for money to come back. I heard plenty ’bout the Ku Klux. They scared the folks to death. People left Augusta in droves. About a thousand would all meet and walk going to hunt work and new homes. Some of them died. I had a sister and brother lost that way. I had another sister come to Louisiana that way. She wrote back.
I don’t think the colored folks looked for a share of land. They never got nothing ’cause the white folks didn’t have nothing but barren hills left. About all the mules was wore out hauling provisions in the army. Some folks say they ought to done more for the colored folks when they left, but they say they was broke. Freeing all the slaves left ’em broke.
That reconstruction was a mighty hard pull. Me and Ma couldn’t live. A man paid our ways to Carlisle, Arkansas, and we come. We started working for Mr. Emenson. He had a big store, teams, and land. We liked it fine, and I been here fifty-six years now. There was so much wild game, living was not so hard. If a fellow could get a little bread and a place to stay, he was all right. After I come to this state, I voted some. I have farmed and worked at odd jobs. I farmed mostly. Ma went back to her old master. He persuaded her to come back home. Me and her went back and run a farm four or five years before she died. Then I come back here.
WHO WAS FREED BY THE WAR?
When I was a boy we used to sing, “Rather be a nigger than a poor white man.” Even in slavery they used to sing that. It was the poor white man who was freed by the war, not the Negroes.
FREEDMEN’S BUREAU
When freedom was on, Papa went to Atlanta and got transportation to Chattanooga. I don’t know why. He met me and Mama. She picked me up and run away and met him. We went in a freight box. It had been a soldiers’ home—great big house. We et on the first story out of tin pans. We had white beans or peas, crackers and coffee. Meat and wheat and cornbread we never smelt at that place. Somebody ask him how we got there, and he showed them a ticket from the Freedmen’s Bureau in Atlanta. He showed that on the train every now and then. Upstairs they brought out a stack of wool blankets and started the rows of beds. Each man took his three as he was numbered. Every night the same one got his own blankets. The room was full of beds, and white guards with a gun over his shoulder guarded them all night long. We stayed there a long time—nearly a year. They tried to get jobs fast as they could and push ’em out, but it was slow work. Mama got a place to cook at—Mrs. Crutchfield’s. She run a hotel in town but lived in the country. We stayed there about a year. Papa was hired somewhere else there.
I GOT MY MONEY, TOO
I went down to Augusta to the Freedmen’s Bureau to see if ’twas true we was free. I reckon there was over a hundred people there. The man got up and stated to the people: “You all is just as free as I am. You ain’t got no mistress and no master. Work when you want.” On Sunday morning Old Master sent the house gal and tell us to all come to the house.
He said: “What I want to send for you all is to tell you that you are free. You have the privilege to go anywhere you want, but I don’t want none of you to leave me now. I wants you-all to stay right with me. If you stay, you must sign to it.”
I asked him: “What you want me to sign for? I is free.”
“That will hold me to my word and hold you to your word,” he say.
All my folks sign it, but I wouldn’t sign. Master call me up and say: “Willis, why wouldn’t you sign?” I say: “If I is already free, I don’t need to sign no paper. If I was working for you and doing for you before I got free, I can do it still, if you wants me to stay with you.”
My father and mother tried to git me to sign, but I wouldn’t sign. My mother said: “You oughta sign. How you know Master gwine pay?” I say: “Then I can go somewhere else.”
Master pay first-class hands $15 a month, other hands $10, and then on down to $5 and $6. He give rations like they always have. When Christmas come, all come up to be paid off. Then he calls me. Ask where is me. I was standing round the corner of the house. “Come up here, Willis,” he say. “You didn’t sign that paper but I reckon I have to pay you too.” He paid me and my wife $180. I said: “Well, you-all thought he wouldn’t pay me, but I got my money too.”
I stayed to my master’s place one year after the war, then I left there. Next year I decided I would quit there and go somewhere else. It was on account of my wife. You see, Master bought her off, as the highest bidder, down in Waynesboro, and she ain’t seen her mother and father for fifteen years. When she got free, she went down to see ’em. Wa’n’t willing to come back. ’Twas on account of Mistress and her. They both had childrens, five-six year old. The childrens had disagreement. Mistress slap my gal. My wife sass the mistress. But my master, he was as good a man as ever born. I wouldn’t have left him for nobody, just on account of his wife and her fell out. . . .
I quit and goes over three miles to another widow lady’s house, and make bargain with her. I pass right by the door. Old Boss sitting on the piazza. He say: “Hey, boy, where you gwine?” I say: “I ’cided to go.” I was the foreman of the plow hands then. I saw to all the looking up, and things like that. He say: “Hold on there.” He come out to the gate. “Tell you what I give you to stay on here. I give you five acre of as good land as I got, and $30 a month to stay here and see to my business.”. . .
I say, . . . . “I can’t, Master. It don’t suit my wife round here. She won’t come back. I can’t stay.”
He turn on me then, and busted out crying. “I didn’t thought I could raise up a darky that would talk that-a-way,” he said. Well, I went on off. I got the wagon and come by the house. Master say: “Now, you gwine off but don’t forget me, boy. Remember me as you always done.” I said: “All right.”
I went over to that widow lady’s house and work. Along about May I got sick. She say: “I going send for the doctor.” I say: “Please ma’am, don’t do that.” (I thought maybe he kill me ’cause I left him.) She say: “Well, I gwine send for him.” I in desperate condition. When I know anything, he walk up in the door. I was laying with my face toward the door, and I turn over.
Doctor come up to the bed. “Boy, how you getting on?” “I bad off,” I say. He say: “See you is. Yeh.” Lady say: “Doctor, what you think of him?” Doctor say: “Mistress, it ’most too late, but I do all I can.” She say: “Please do all you can, he ’bout the best hand I got.”
Doctor fix up medicine and told her to give it to me.
She say: “Uncle Will, take this medicine.” I ’fraid to take it . ’Fraid he was trying to kill me. Then two men, John and Charlie, come in. Lady say: “Get this medicine in Uncle Will.” One of the men hold my hand, and they gag me and put it in me. Next few days I can talk and ax for something to eat, so I git better. (I say: “Well, he didn’t kill me when I took the medicine!”)
I stayed there with her. . . . . Next year I move right back in two miles, other side where I always live, with another lady. I stay there three year. Got along all right. When I left from there, I left there with $300 and plenty corn and hog. Everything I want, and three hundred cash dollars in my pocket!
AFTER FREEDOM
Right after freedom, my father plaited baskets and mats. He shucked mops, put handles on rakes, and did things like that in addition to his farming. He was a blacksmith all the time, too. He used to plait collars for mules. He farmed and got his harvests in season. The other things would be a help to him between times.
A Just and Lasting Peace: A Documentary History of Reconstruction Page 64