The Autobiography Of Miss Jane Pittman Part 7

Then they had the colored politicians that used to come to the big house to hold meetings with Bone. They would come to the house once, maybe twice a week, stay couple hours and then leave. If they had anything important to tell us they would gather us at the school. This was church, too: school and church the same cabin. Most of the talk was about the Fedjal Gov'ment-'specially the Republican Party. It was the Republicans that had freed us, and it was the Republicans that had the Freedom Beero there to look after us. They wanted us to take interest in what was going on. They wanted us to vote-and vote Republican. The Democrat Party was for slavery, they said, and believe it or not, they said, there was n.i.g.g.e.rs in the Democrat Party, too. You could always spot him, they said, because he had a white mouth and a tail. They told us they was go'n take us to Alexandria one day so we could see a n.i.g.g.e.r Democrat at work. The day came, they sent some colored troops to the plantation to bring us in town. The town square was full of people, white people and colored people. It was hot that day. People just standing there sweating and fanning. On the platform the people was giving their speeches. One after another, white and colored. Every now and then somebody would holler and call somebody else a d.a.m.n liar, then the troops would have to step in to keep them apart. When a n.i.g.g.e.r Democrat got up on the platform, somebody hollered, "Pull his pants down, let's see his tail. We done already seen he got a white mouth." The n.i.g.g.e.r Democrat said, "I rather be a Democrat with a tail than a Republican that ain't had no brains." The people on the Democrat side laughed and clapped. The Democrats talked awhile, then the Republicans got up there and talked. The Democrats wanted the Yankees to get out so we could build on our own. The Republicans wanted the Yankees to stay. The Democrats said we wouldn't have peace till the Yankees had gone. The Republicans said we didn't have peace before they came there. The Republicans said every free man ought to have forty acres and a mule. The Democrats said that was strange coming from a Republican when a dirty scalawag had one of the biggest plantations in the parish. The Republicans said Bone had the plantation there to give people work who couldn't go out and get work on their own.

It was burning up. The square packed. The arguing going on and on and on. Then somebody hauled back and hit somebody-and what he did that for? Looked like everybody was waiting for that one lick. I grabbed Ned and dragged him under the platform. I had to fight my way under there, because everybody who wasn't fighting on top the platform or round the platform was trying to get under there just like I was.

The fighting went on and on and on. Under the platform was burning up, but n.o.body 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 gra.s.s in his crop. "What you growing there, Hawk?" they would ask him. "Corn, Master," Hawk would say. "That look like gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s out there, you hear?" Or. "Tomorrow night we come back and you better have some gra.s.s 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 n.i.g.g.e.r soldiers and no more n.i.g.g.e.r 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 n.i.g.g.e.rs 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 pa.s.s 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 Dougla.s.s 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 Dougla.s.s and started leaving. The old masters didn't think too much of it at first. They was glad the n.i.g.g.e.rs was leaving. If they got rid of all the bad n.i.g.g.e.rs-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 n.i.g.g.e.rs 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 Dougla.s.s. 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 Dougla.s.s, after Mr. Frederick Dougla.s.s. He was go'n be a great leader like Mr. Dougla.s.s was. He was Ned Dougla.s.s awhile, then he was Ned Stephen Dougla.s.s. Ned Stephen Dougla.s.s awhile, then he was Edward Stephen Dougla.s.s. All the rest of the young men round him was taking on names like that. Some Dougla.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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."

He 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-G.o.d 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 appet.i.te was. I said, "Appet.i.te? My appet.i.te good as anybody else appet.i.te." He said, "You all right. Go on back home."

When Joe Pittman asked me to be his wife I told him I wanted to think about it awhile. Because I didn't want to tell him I was barren. I liked him now and I was scared if I told him I was barren he would leave me for somebody else. He asked me again and I told him I wanted to think some more. He kept on asking me, and that's when I told him. We was sitting down in the house that day eating when I told him that. I told him if he didn't want me no more that was all right, I would understand. But all he said was. "Ain't we all been hurt by slavery? If you just say you'll help me raise my two girls, I'll be satisfied." He was a real man, Joe Pittman was.

We didn't get married. I didn't believe in the church then, and Joe never did. We just agreed to live together, like people did in the slavery time. Slaves didn't get married in churches, they jumped over the broom handle. Old Mistress and Young Mistress held the broom handle up off the floor, and Old Master told the slaves to hold hands and jump over. If they was old people, Old Mistress and Young Mistress would hold the broom down low and the old couple would step over sprightly. Old Master would say, "Step sprightly there, Jubal; step sprightly there, Minnie." They would step sprightly, and they was p.r.o.nounced husband and wife. Me and Joe Pittman didn't think we needed the broom, we wasn't slaves no more. We would just live together long as we wanted each other. That was all.

Not long after we started living together Joe told me he wanted to leave Colonel Dye's plantation. Joe was sharp with horses and he was sure he could find a place where he could get more money and get better treatment than what he was getting here. I told him if he wanted to leave I would go with him, but I didn't want to leave till I had heard from Ned. It was almost a year and I still hadn't gotten a word from Ned. I didn't want him to come back and I wasn't there or him to write me a letter and I didn't get it. Joe said he would wait till I heard but at the same time he would look around for a new place. Every chance he got he went out looking. If he heard of a place, no matter how far it was, if he could get there and get back before he had to go in the field he went and checked it out.

Ned wrote me a month after he left home, but I didn't get the letter for a year. He wrote the letter to somebody he met in New Orleans just before he got on the boat for Kansas. He didn't want send the letter directly to me because the people here would 'a' been suspicious. Anything that had Kansas or the North on it might 'a' been torn up and throwed away. He sent the letter to his friend and his friend was supposed to send it to the preacher on the plantation, and the preacher was supposed to read it to me. Instead of his friend sending the letter on to the preacher like he was suppose to do he put the letter somewhere and forgot it. When he found it again he could hardly read the address and he sent it to the wrong place. When it came back he had to get in touch with Ned in Kansas again. Ned was in Leavenworth when he first wrote the letter, but now he had gone to a place called Atchison. It was a year before everything got straightened out.

The letter told how people was coming into Kansas by the boat-load. At first how the white people in Kansas was helping them. How they collected money to give them. How they organized committees to go to Washington and places like that for money and clothes, money and food. Even from cross the sea they got money and clothes. The people at first was almost too nice. But that was the first letter. When I got the second letter things had changed already. The white people couldn't help all of them, and there wasn't any work for them to do. Now the white people didn't want them in town. Ned was on a committee that found new places for people to live. He traveled by boat up and down the river, but no matter where he went there was already too many people. His committee sent letters back to the South: not all the people to come to one place. There was other States where they could go and find comfort. But the people had heard of Kansas first. Like sheeps they had to go where everybody else had gone. Now the riots. When the letters and papers didn't keep them out, the white people drove them out with sticks and guns. When Ned went out in the country to see how they was living, he said some of them had died from the cold. Others was starving. Some was talking about coming back South. But most of them was going farther West or head North.

The only good news I got from Ned at this time-he was working for some white people who liked him. They saw how much he cared for his race, and they thought he could help them much more if he finished school. He told them he wanted to go on to school, but he thought he ought to help me. From the first letter on he always sent me three or four dollars every time he wrote. When I got the first money I wrote back and told him I didn't need it, I was making out just fine. He told me if I didn't need it, put it up, but keep it. He never told me he wanted to go back to school, he didn't tell me that till I wrote and told him me and Joe Pittman was married. We wasn't married, we was just living together, but Ned wouldn't 'a' like that. But it wasn't till after I told him about me and Joe he told me he wanted to go back to school.

Ned was working on a farm in Kansas. He worked in the day, he rode a horse to school at night. This went on five, six years. When he finished, they gived him a job teaching there. He stayed till that war started in Cuba, then he joined the army. After the war he came back here. He wanted to teach at home now.

Another Home.

Joe Pittman found a place near the Luzana-Texas borderline where he could break horses. He knowed all about breaking horses and branding catties-he had learned that on Colonel Dye's place-but now he wanted to go where he could make a better living. After we had talked it over, just me and him, he went up to the house to tell Colonel Dye he wanted to leave. Colonel Dye was old and wrinkled now, but onery still. Not just onery, he was losing his mind now. Once every year he used to put on his Secesh uniform and ride to Alexandria. Two or three days later he would come back. Looked like every time he went and came back he was more and more crazy. Sometimes he used to gather us all at his house just to look at us. After he had looked at us about a minute he would tell us to go back. One time he called us up there, and by the time we got there he had forgot he had sent for us. "What y'all doing here?" he asked. "You sent for them, Pa," one of his boys said. "Well, I'm sending them right on back," he said. "Get out of here. Go back to work." When Joe went up there that day and told him he wanted to leave, he said: "What's the matter, I ain't been treating you right?" Joe told him it wasn't that, he had been treated very good there, but he wanted to go out and do little sharecropping of his own. (He wouldn't dare tell the old colonel he wanted to go break horses for more money, he told him sharecropping.) Colonel Dye told Joe he would pay the family five dollars more a month if he stayed. Joe shook his head-no, he wanted to go out and do little sharecropping. The colonel said, "Listen, Joe, I'll turn over piece of that good bottom land to you, and you work it like you want." This was the first time Colonel Dye had offered anybody a piece of land on his place. He had said before that this was the last thing he would ever do. Joe knowed this before he went up there, that's why he went up there saying sharecropping. He said the old colonel looked at him like he was losing his best friend. "You a good man, Joe, and I need you here to mind my stock. My children round here too lazy to do a thing, and there ain't another n.i.g.g.e.r on this place that can tell you a cow from a hog." Joe shook his head. "I like to go sharecrop." Now, the old colonel got mad. Acting like he was losing his best friend one second, next second he was blazing mad. "All right, if you want go sharecrop, go sharecrop," he said. Joe thanked him and turned to go. "Just a minute," the colonel said. Joe stopped and looked at him. "Ain't you forgetting something?" "Sir?" Joe said. "My hundred and fifty dollars," the colonel said. "What hundred and what fifty dollars?" Joe said. "That hundred and that fifty to get you out of trouble when the Klux had you," the colonel said. "You forget that?"

It was true Joe Pittman had been mixed up in little politics just after the war, and everybody round there knowed about it. The Klux had got after him, and the colonel had spoke out. But at that time nothing was mentioned about money.

"I didn't know you paid," Joe said.

"Kluxes don't stop killing a n.i.g.g.e.r just because you say hold it," the colonel said. "Now you pay me my hundred and fifty dollars or get away from my door."

Joe came back and told me what had happened. We sat up all night trying to think what we ought to do next. Joe was set on leaving, no holding him back, but he couldn't leave and not pay Colonel Dye his money. He knowed he didn't owe Colonel Dye any money, but how could he prove it? The Freedom Beero once, but they wasn't there no more.

We stayed up all night. Then we both said that Joe ought to go see if he couldn't borrow the money from the new man he was go'n work for. 'Fore day the next morning Joe packed a lunch and started out. Started out on foot with a hundred miles to go. Somebody told Colonel Dye he was missing and Colonel Dye came out in the field and asked me where was. "Gone look for your money," I said. The old colonel got mad at first, saying what he was go'n do to Joe when Joe got back. But then he started laughing. Where could a n.i.g.g.e.r get a hundred and fifty dollars from? He rode away laughing.