Up Jumped the Devil

by Bruce Conforth

  Julia was born in Hazlehurst in October 1870, the daughter of Gabriel (b. 1850) and Lucinda Brown Majors (b. 1853). Gabriel’s father, Wiatt Majors, was born in Virginia in 1814, as was Lucinda’s father. All Julia’s family dating back to the eighteenth century identified as mulattoes, not as Negroes. This meant more social, legal, and cultural acceptance; mulattoes had greater freedom to own personal property and could “acquire … and … dispose of the same in the same manner and to the same extent that white persons may.” Cohabitating mulattoes were considered legally married, and mulattoes were even considered to be “by law competent witnesses … in civil cases, and in criminal cases where they are the victims.” These were rights that blacks in the Mississippi Delta simply did not enjoy.1

  Julia Majors. © Delta Haze Corporation

  Charles C. Dodds was born in Hazlehurst around 1867. His father, Charles Dodds Sr., was born in 1831 in North Carolina, and his mother, Harriet (last name unknown), was born in 1846. She also listed herself as a mulatto.

  On that Saturday the young couple was starting a new life together, and this would have been a time for celebrating. As an increasingly prosperous carpenter and maker of wicker furniture, Charles would have had the ability to provide a pleasant time for his new wife and anyone else in attendance. One can imagine the crisp afternoon air becoming full of the smell of barbecue or a fish fry, both Mississippi culinary standards, and possibly the sounds of music makers: perhaps a fiddle and guitar. There was little that would not have made the prospects seem bright for the newly married pair. With Charles able to provide comfortably for his wife and family-to-be and Julia a hardworking housekeeper, the freedom they found in Hazlehurst seemed welcoming, as it had to their parents and grandparents.

  Charles Dodds. © Delta Haze Corporation

  Even in those early years, according to a 1907 Sanborn Fire Insurance map, the nine blocks that comprised the town proper contained at least seven general merchandise stores, five grocery stores, three drugstores, two hardware stores, at least two restaurants, three livery stables and harness shops, two women’s clothing and notions stores, three churches, a Masonic Hall, a bank, carpentry shop, three hotels, a dentist/doctor’s office, a barber, a courthouse, a jail, a train station, a cotton gin, and a school. Blacks and whites at least appeared to peacefully coexist. It was everything that a new family could want.

  Although not in the Delta proper (Hazlehurst is some thirty-five miles south of the state’s capital, Jackson, fifty miles southeast of Vicksburg—generally regarded as the southern tip of the region—and two hundred miles south of Clarksdale, considered the “heart” of the Delta), the town is still in the alluvial plain created by thousands of years of regular flooding of the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers, a plain that boasts some of the most fertile soil in the world. European settlers in the eighteenth century grew sugarcane and rice at first, but the invention of the cotton gin at the end of the century made the cultivation of cotton more profitable, and an increased demand for labor drove the domestic slave trade, forcing more than one million slaves to fill that need. After the Civil War the need for labor to farm this rich land attracted thousands of migrants who traded their labor for the opportunity to purchase some of its acreage. Somewhat surprisingly, by the late 1800s two-thirds of the independent farmers were African American. Economic conditions changed, however, and the price of cotton fell, causing many black landowners to sell their property and become sharecroppers, laborers for white landowners. Between 1910 and 1920, the first and second generations of African Americans after slavery lost almost all of their stake in the land.

  Although sharecropping and tenant farming replaced the slave system, there was little actual difference in social and working conditions, and since many black families were illiterate, they were often horribly exploited by plantation owners. The number of lynchings of black men rose dramatically, and due to its harsh and tenacious brand of oppression, the Delta became known as “the most Southern place on earth.”2 But Hazlehurst, though still within a state whose racist history was considerably worse than that of its neighbors, developed a culture that was far more liberal in its treatment of African Americans, especially those who were biracial, such as Robert’s ancestors.

  February 2, 1889, marriage license of Julia Majors and Charles Dodds. Marriage Certificates, Recorder of Deeds, City of Hazlehurst, Copiah County, Mississippi

  Of the approximately twelve million Africans brought to the Americas, as few as 350,000 came directly to the territories that would become the United States.3 Virtually all of those slaves were brought to the East Coast, primarily to Virginia and the Carolinas. Among them were the ancestors of Wiatt Majors and Charles Dodds, who were given their freedom in their respective states prior to the Civil War and moved from Virginia and North Carolina to Mississippi as free men. There are no records that they settled anywhere else in between, and there is no indication that members of either side of the family were enslaved in Mississippi.

  Free blacks in the South were not uncommon. In 1810, there had been 108,265 free black persons there, representing “the fastest-growing element in the Southern population.” By 1860, more free blacks lived in the South (261,918) than in the North (226,152). Forty percent were mulattoes, and for the most part they had been released from slavery through manumission (formal acts of emacipation by their slaveowners). After receiving their freedom they often moved, as did Robert’s ancestors, from the Upper South (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee) to the Lower South (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas). For the most part, such movement was instigated by the possibility of money to be made in the Lower South’s cotton industry.4

  1900 Hazlehurst Census for Dodds family. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. State: Mississippi; County: Copiah; Hazlehurst West; Precinct: Part of Beat One; Enumeration District 31, Sheet 2-B. June 1, 1900.

  The 1901 deed. State of Mississippi, Copiah County Chancery Clerk, Hazlehurst, Mississippi

  A platt map from 1901 shows the exact location of the white Damascus church and the specific land that Charles bought. State of Mississippi, Copiah County Chancery Clerk, Hazlehurst, Mississippi

  Because of their status as free black persons before the Civil War, and as mulattoes after, the Dodds and Majors families enjoyed a better lifestyle than most black families who lived in the Delta. They had more legal and cultural opportunities. Julia and Charles settled in Beat One in the west part of the Hazlehurst and Martinsville precincts of Copiah County and had six children in their first eleven years of marriage. The 1900 United States Census listed Charles Dodds, head of household (35), wife Julia Majors (25), children Louise (12), Harriet (9), Bessie (8), Willie M. (5), Lula B. (4), and Melvin Leroy (1).5

  On December 4, 1901, Charles purchased “eight acres, more or less” from a white family, the Mangolds, for the sum of $181—more than $5,000 today. The Mangolds had owned the large plantation that bore their name and were now dividing it up into sharecropper lots.

  The family’s new land was located on the northern side of Hazlehurst, just outside the existing city limits. The area was known for its ramshackle black homesteads near what is still called Damascus Road. The deed referred to the property as part of “Damascus Land.” Two Baptist churches are now located in the area. The original white Baptist church lay to the east between North Water Street (now Highway 51) and the Illinois Central railroad. The congregation had allowed both slaves and free blacks to sit in the back or the balcony during services until its members finally raised enough money to help the black members build their own Damascus church, located on the west side of North Water Street on Damascus Road.

  No record of a deed of purchase or permit for a building under the name Charles or Charley Dodds exists in any Copiah County record books. The Dodds family lived, therefore, in either a rented building or in one of the shacks that didn’t require registration with the township. The town’s chamber of com
merce reports today that Charles built a house in 1905, although there is no recorded confirmation of this. In 1906 Charles defaulted on indebtedness and the deed to the property was lost. For someone who had been able to purchase a plot of land for a sizeable amount of money only five years earlier, this must have been embarrassing, and perhaps even infuriating for Charles. It’s unknown whether he simply ran into a streak of financial bad luck or whether his misfortune was the result of a calculated plot by another local family—the Marchettis.

  Frank Marchetti came to America from Italy in 1866 and married Martha Ann Tanner in Copiah County on December 14, 1872. He became both a farmer and businessman and soon had a large family.6 Marchetti’s farm was one of the most profitable in the area, and his son John also established a thriving business as a shoemaker. When Frank died in 1908 he left his estate to his sons John and Joseph. It was rumored that Joseph and Charles Dodds shared the same mistress, a black woman known as Serena.7 The affair is denied by surviving Marchetti family members, and a search of city directories, census, and other records do not show any reasonable candidates, black or white, named Serena in Copiah or surrounding counties, or in or around Memphis.8 Although the story seems to be false, the rumors persisted, and were so severe, that Charles was forced to flee Hazlehurst in the dead of night disguised as a woman to avoid a lynching.

  The area and property as it appears today; the land still sits just outside the Hazlehurst city limits. Bruce Conforth

  Joseph Marchetti. Steve Amos, chancery clerk, Hazlehurst, `Mississippi

  Charles settled in Memphis and changed his last name to Spencer to avoid detection. Polk’s 1908 Memphis City Directory listed Charles “Spencer”—a carpenter—living in an apartment at 1 North Handwerker Place, also known as Handwerker Hill, in the center of Memphis.9 By 1912 he moved to a larger apartment at 906 Court Avenue, and the following year to 898 Court Avenue at the corner of North Dunlap. This apartment was only a few blocks from Beale Street, the most active section of Memphis.

  Back in Hazlehurst, the Marchettis succeeded in having Julia evicted from her house for nonpayment of taxes ($150) and the house and property were deeded to L. E. Matthews, a white Hazlehurst farmer. Now homeless and without an income, Julia moved from place to place doing whatever she needed to in order to try to take care of her children, and as it became increasingly difficult she sent Louise, Harriet, Willie M., Lula B., and Melvin Leroy to live with their father in Memphis. In the April 1910 census, Julia listed herself as thirty-eight years old and identified herself as “divorced.” Living with her were her children Bessie (21), Caroline (Carrie, 15), John (12), and Codie (Charley) M. (10).10 The discrepancy in the given ages of family members on the census records seems to have been a common occurrence. In 1900 Julia was listed as twenty-five while in 1910 she is thirty-eight. And by 1920 she is forty-five. Daughter Bessie was listed in 1900 as eight years old, but in 1910 she is twenty-one. Even Robert, whom the 1920 census listed as seven years old, appears as fourteen in his 1924 school record. The reason for such variation is unclear. But it was common.

  Charles (Dodds) Spencer in 1908 Memphis Directory. R. L. Polk & Co. 1908 Memphis City Directory

  In 1910 she moved into the shack on the Mangold estate occupied by Noah Johnson, a twenty-four-year-old laborer in a sawmill on that farm. Noah was also born in Copiah County to parents who came from the East Coast, or “Upper South.”11 In 1904 he had married Mary Nelson, a washerwoman with two children from her first marriage, who was fifteen years older than he was, but by 1911, just when Julia needed a home, Noah and Mary had separated, and he and his shack were available.12 Julia and her three children joined Noah in a shed with timbers barely head high.

  The house, still standing (but moved by its present owner, Hugh Jenkins, from its original location to save it from the expansion of Highway 55), is what was commonly called a saddlebag house: one room on each side of the entryway. It has cypress siding and a tin roof. The interior walls were covered with newspaper and cardboard. Julia was glad to have something resembling a real home, and on or about May 8, 1911, Robert Johnson was born there, the illegitimate son of two unmarried parents. However, an extra child was apparently too much for Noah to bear, and he and Julia would get into furious arguments about food and adequate care for her children. The incidents became so frequent that Julia and her children left Noah, and Hazlehurst, to seek a better lifestyle. She had no real plan nor any idea what she would do with her newly born son.

  Probable birthplace of Robert Johnson. Bruce Conforth

  1910 Census Record for Julia Dodds and children. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, State: Mississippi; County: Copiah; Hazlehurst City; Enumeration District 45, Sheet 6-B, April 20, 1910

  3

  MEMPHIS DAYS

  Julia, homeless and without means of support, hired on with a Delta labor company after leaving Noah Johnson and drifted from place to place and man to man. She had difficulty taking care of her infant son and three other children: food, clothing, even a roof over their heads were no longer reliable expectations. For Robert, a lack of adequate nutrition as a newborn could have contributed to one of his most distinguishing features: he had either a lazy eye or a cataract that seemed to come and go. This latter diagnosis seems particularly appropriate, for transient cataracts were not uncommon in children with very low birth weight. Due to Julia’s desperate financial conditions, the infant Robert was almost certainly undernourished at birth.1

  Seeking opportunities in Arkansas, Julia found herself in trouble with a plantation owner there and fled, hotly pursued by one of the overseer’s boss men. It must have been terrifying for the single mother and her young children to constantly feel under pursuit. Not only were the basic necessities of life now uncertain, so was their safety. After a brief period of hiding, Julia, two-year-old Robert, and his half sister Carrie relocated to Helena, an Arkansas town well known for its black community and blues music. Unskilled female laborers were in abundance there, however, and having no luck in finding work Julia was left with only one option: to seek refuge with the renamed “Charles Spencer” in Memphis.2 She had already sent some of his other children to stay with him, and now she had no other options for a safe place for the remainder of her family.

  The three-story wooden walk-up that Charles and his new wife, Mollie, lived in was already crowded when Julia arrived, but he welcomed them anyway. The new living arrangements were awkward for everyone. Charles and Julia had each moved on with other relationships, and Julia now had another son. She also had found no way of supporting herself yet and so, only shortly after arriving in Memphis, she left again to find whatever future she could create. In doing so, however, she left her two-year-old son Robert with strangers, one of a child’s worst fears. This was only the first in a series of traumatic experiences that would scar Robert as a child, and it left a mark on his young life. Although he would come to consider the Spencers as his “real” family, that first year must have been a nightmare for him.

  Although census records are only done every ten years and hence we have no true record of what the household looked like in 1913 when Robert became a part of it, the 1920 US Census record provides an insight into the Spencer household.3 In the four-room wooden tenement were Mollie (erroneously identified as “Mandy”), Charles’s new wife; who was forty years younger than him; Hattie Curry, Julia and Charles’s daughter Harriet, now widowed with a son, George; Robert’s half sister Carrie and her husband, Louis Harris; his older stepbrother, Charlie; and two more stepbrothers, Alex and Ted.

  Robert adapted to his new family and environs, eventually enjoying all it had to offer, for the Spencer house was only a short walk from Beale Street, a center of attractions for all ages, genders, and races.

  For family entertainment, R. R. Church’s twenty-two-hundred-seat auditorium and park was located on the south side of the street near Fourth and Turley Streets. There, audiences could see the most famous black acts of the time: the Black Patti Troubad
ours with John Rucker (known as “The Alabama Blossom”) and Madame Sissieretta Jones (the famous “Black Patti”), the Smart Set with S. H. Dudley (advertised as “The Greatest Colored Show on Earth”), and the Fisk Jubilee Singers.4

  1920 Memphis census for Charles Dodds and family. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, State: Tennessee; County: Shelby; Memphis, (Part of); Enumeration District 176, Sheet 2-A, January 3, 1920

  Church’s Auditorium and Park. Memphis Public Libraries, Memphis and Shelby County Rooms

  The nearby Palace Theater, originally the largest black theater in the South, was described as “hot and heavy.” Couples danced and hugged tightly to the blues of black musicians. The dancers would drift almost in slow motion through the smoke-filled room, until Black Carrie, the club’s tall and shapely hostess, would throw herself onto the ballroom floor. She’d lift her skintight dress to expose her knees, toss her long hair back and forth, and gyrate her body in slow erotic circles, driving the crowd almost to pandemonium. As her display grew more intense they’d yell out, “Go on, Carrie, shake it! Ah shucks, you ain’t gwine tuh heben [heaven] nohow!”5