All God's Dangers (8 page)

Still and all we didn't go hungry because my daddy was a marksman: killed squirrels, possums, wild turkeys, catch fish and all. That was his job. I seed the day come and pass that he'd feed us just on his game. He wouldn't go out in the woods once a week without comin back with all the game he could tote.

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cleanin up—Mr. Albee done come to the house and taken everything my daddy had in the way of stock and farm tools; taken my daddy's cows, his mule, harnesses, while my daddy was waitin in Beaufort jail for Mr. Jasper Clay to get him out. Moved away from Mr. Clay back down to Mr. Todd's place and scuffled around. Mr. Todd took my daddy up, furnished him land to work and helped
him out, gived him the cost of a plow and money to buy a horse; my daddy worked that horse two years. And my daddy went—old man Clem Todd agreed for my daddy to get somebody else to furnish him but stay on his place. So my daddy went down there and got in with the Akers in Apafalya. And about the first or second year, Akers cleaned him up.

Ruel Akers' daddy was Dudley Akers. And Dudley Akers and his daddy, which was Ruel Akers' granddaddy, old Hy Akers—used to be a doctor accordin to the name they give him, Dr. Hy Akers—I know they didn't give my daddy a chance to redeem himself. They claimed they had a note against him and they took all he had. In those days, it was out of the knowledge of the colored man to understand that if you gived a man a note on everything you had, exactly how you was subject to the laws. Because the colored man wasn't educated to the laws for his use; they was a great, dark secret to him.

Akers took everything he had except goin in the house and gettin the house furnitures—they'd a got that if my stepmother had signed my daddy's note. Some of em ordered when they gived notes for furnishin, some of em wanted to go in the house and get that woman and have her sign it, too. Well, what was that for? I quickly learnt this: if you furnishes me any amount of money and I give you a note on what you want a note on as a security for the money you furnishin me, that aint enough to satisfy you, you want my wife to sign this note, too. And she come out and sign it—been that way ever since I was a little boy; have a Negro to sign a note, they goin to try to get that woman to stick her mark on that paper. That gets household, kitchen plunder and all. If I wanted supplies in the days I come along after I married my first wife, if I wanted to do any business with a white man for any part of furnishin, I didn't let her go on no notes; she stayed out of it because that would give em a chance to go in the house and get her stuff. O Lord, I have been through tribulations and trials in this world but nobody never has went in my house and got no house furnitures out of there.

The year them Akers cleaned up my daddy I begin to come in the knowledge of a crop. And I was plowin a little old gray horse—at that time it was the only horse or mule or anything my daddy had to plow. Mr. Clem Todd gived my daddy the money to buy that horse. And at the end of plowin, weren't plowin no more, them
Akers took that horse. They come out there—my daddy'd bought a new one-horse wagon, little iron-axle wagon, good wagon; bought it brand new from them Akers. They come out there and took that horse and wagon and even went in the pen and got the fattenin hog.

I watched em take it and I learnt right quick what it was all about. Got all the cotton he made. But there was no corn for em to get. That spring my daddy had as pretty a prospect for corn as I ever seed. Corn was way up there, pretty, tall; I done the plowin too. So that corn growed up there—and dry weather hit it. And when it got to shootin, still stayed dry on that corn until the time it oughta been made and the ears just standin off. Bless your soul, it just continued dry and that corn come right on up there and when it hit the key note that it oughta made a good crop of corn—still dry, just stayed dry like a drought. There that corn stood with nice shoots, done tasseled out—and didn't make enough corn to pull. My daddy lost all his corn in the field—Akers lost it, them Akers woulda got it all when they cleaned him out.

They could have, if they'd a done it, squared along with my daddy and help him, if they wouldn't a helped him just a little bit. Why, the next year was all right and he could have squared through maybe and paid em. But they didn't give him no chance; they grabbed what he had when he failed to come up with cotton enough to pay em—dry weather parched that cotton crop to a great extent. They took what cotton he made but there weren't no corn to take. Took his horse and wagon, went in the pen and took his fattenin hog, what meat my daddy was raisin for his family. I was big enough and old enough to stretch my eyes at conditions and abominate what I seed.

So I seed that twice: my daddy stripped of everything he had. He moved off the Todd place, then just a little piece up the road on the Wheeler place, and he never did prosper none after that.

H
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wasn't a slave but he lived like one. Because he had to take what the white people gived to get along. That much of slavery ways was still hangin on. Accordin to slave days you wasn't allowed the privilege to seek knowledge without the white man, master man, allowin you. And that was the rule durin of my daddy's lifetime and up through my life, to be sure.

Of course, years ago I heard that President Lincoln freed the colored people; but it didn't amount to a hill of beans. And me, for myself, I was born in 1885, a very long time ago, and I know more about the happenins under this way of life than I can tell.

W
HEN
I was a little boy I watched em disfranchise the Negro from votin. I was old enough to look at folks and hear the talk. I didn't like it but nothin I could do. Over yonder in the settlement where my daddy lived at that time, they'd always go up here in Tukabahchee County to the Chapel Ridge beat, white and colored, to vote. What did I see and hear? Votin time come and I seen my daddy and plenty of other colored people from our settlement go on up to Chapel Ridge and vote. My daddy was a man that voted. The white man would let him vote, wanted him to vote. Some of em would travel around, workin for who they wanted and get the nigger's decision about who they was goin to vote for and they'd pay him in some way to vote for their pet man. I knowed and I thought at all times, it was only fair for a man, if he goin to vote to vote for who he wanted. But it never come to that; nigger didn't know the difference in one from the other. He was kept out of the knowledge of knowin so that he would
want
to sell his vote because that was the only advantage he could get from votin. White men traveled around, “Well, who you goin to vote for?” Sometimes, nigger would tell em he didn't know, he hadn't decided. How could he decide? They'd have the man for him to vote for. Give the nigger a middlin of meat, give him a barrel of flour—if they was able to give him that much, give him that to vote for who they wanted. Nigger would go ahead and vote. I
seed
that—whites buyin niggers' votes; give em a middlin of meat, shoulder of meat, sack of flour—flour was cheap them days; give em barrels of flour to vote their way. Nigger let himself be handicapped. If I'd a been a voter in them days they would have handicapped me because I wouldn't have knowed as much as I do now. And in that way my daddy was easily handicapped. In other words, it was just a thing to keep the nigger goin the white man's way. Let the nigger vote and turn the vote against the nigger, nigger doin it to hisself. Niggers just fell in there like pigs around their mammy suckin: votin the white man's way. Come time to vote, white man runnin all about the settlement buyin
the niggers' votes. Give him meat, flour, sugar, coffee, anything the nigger wanted.

Then they disfranchised him, cut the nigger clean out from votin. The average nigger was votin the white man's way, especially if he lived on the white man's place. Combed in the niggers' votes like flies. Soon as enough of that was done they kicked the nigger out, deprived him of his rights, what that they had made a sham of while he had em. What was that, votin or not votin, either way under them conditions, but keepin the nigger under their thumbs? But takin the vote away was worse: if they couldn't just slave the nigger back like he used to be, it was pointin the nigger in that direction.

Never did hear my daddy say nothin bout losin the vote. But I believe with all my heart he knowed what it meant. He just as well—the way he handled hisself in this votin business and other colored handled themselves, they had to come under these southern rulins. They thought they did, and the white man said they did, and that's all there was to it. So he just stopped goin up to Chapel Ridge on votin day; stayed home or went out and done what he wanted to. But he didn't vote no more.

Who was behind that? I felt to an extent it was the rich white man and the poor white man, both of em, workin to take the vote away from the nigger—the big man and a heap of the little ones. The little ones thought they had a voice, but they only had a voice to this extent: they could speak against the nigger and the big man was happy for em to do it. But they didn't have no more voice than a cat against the big man of their own color.

As I growed to more knowledge I thought that was as bad a thing as ever happened—to disfranchise the nigger. Tellin him he didn't have a right to his thoughts. He just weren't counted to be no more than a dog.

I never voted: I was right there with my neck under the yoke like the rest of em. I wanted to vote, but I didn't want to vote if my vote weren't no good, weren't worth a doggone. What I goin to vote for? Just votin the other man's way, just like sugar in the bowl for him. I seed the nigger vote till he'd vote his head off—done him no good at all. It taken a enlightened day—today it's a new way as far as I can see. Nigger'll vote and if it come up any flaws in it the high authorities will take the matter over, straighten that
thing out. They tell me now I can vote and I believe I could. But I been disencouraged so bad—I learnt too much about this votin after I growed up and begin to hear folks talk and seed how it was runnin regardless to how the cut went or come.

If anybody understood, had a education enough to understand that he had a right to vote, if a colored man was really eligible to vote, if he went on his way where his book learnin teached him what was right and what was wrong in the way of votin, or just if his experience teached him to vote for who he wanted to vote for—that kicked the nigger out of votin. White man revealed in that he was afraid the nigger was gettin to be too smart to just follow his way of votin like sheep.

Any way they could deprive a Negro was a celebration to em. “We just goin to pull the thing our way.” They didn't definitely tell me—I was watchin and listenin. As the years come and go it leaves me with a better understandin of history.

1903, I worked up at an old water gin—that was the old Clay gin up on Sitimachas Creek right where I was born and raised. Gin brush fell on my forehead and knocked me as flat backwards on the floor as ever I was in my life. I was cleanin up the gins—Lord, it looked like it would kill me.

They had a gin house there and a sawmill and a grist mill, grind your own wheat. I've known wagon loads of wheat come out of the low country way back south up to Clay's mill. That was in the days when people raised wheat. I've cut many a grain—I never did raise no wheat but in my daddy's lifetime I et many a biscuit made from wheat grown here in this country. My daddy growed a little wheat; he was just a little hitter but I've known him to raise as high as twenty to thirty bushels of wheat. When I got old enough to marry, everybody practically had fell out with wheat. And then I was havin to work on halves for four years and didn't no white man want his niggers to fool with wheat—cotton brought the money; wheat was cheap.

There's a heap to a wheat crop; you got to know how to raise wheat and take care of it. And when it gets ready, when wheat gets ready to harvest, you couldn't fool around and cut it in your own
time, you had to obey that wheat. I've known my daddy to go out in the field and cut wheat all day long for himself. And I've known him to harvest many a wheat crop for other people and take me with him to cut it. Wheat would get up waist high and he'd cut it with a cradle—hand tool, wheat tool, oat tool. But wheat give out in this country until there was none of it raised here when I begin farmin for myself. People didn't have sufficient help to handle wheat like it was due to be handled and owin to conditions they learnt they could make more by foolin with cotton and not fool with cotton and wheat both, but buy the flour they used in place of growin the wheat.

It's been years and years since I seen a stalk of wheat grow. And it grows just like oats. My daddy'd get out there with a old grain cradle and sling it around, catch all he could hold his hand around, cut it with that cradle, drop it in piles, knee-high—cuttin wheat or oats. And he'd go back out there when it had laid on the ground and dried—hot, fair weather calls for cuttin grain—gather it up: go down, pick that wheat up enough to make a bundle, tie it up, drop it down. When he got the field cut down and it all tied up, if it looked like rain—wheat was a heap of trouble—cut all day and it begin to look like rain, he'd have to shock that wheat in a close shock; if he didn't and it rained on that cut crop, it'd ruin the wheat and he done squandered his labor. You got to use special care for a wheat crop. A oat crop too, if you want to feed your stock on pure, cured-out oats. That consumed a whole lot of time. And you take the average farmer, when the price of cotton fell, why, he just quit foolin with wheat and oats altogether for cotton, cotton and corn. Now, by God, they're leavin the corn off, right here in this settlement.

F
IRST
time my daddy hired me out—he never did hire me out but twice; he kept me right under his thumb until the year I was nineteen years old. 1904, he hired me out. He'd kept me around him all the time until then but he thought he could help hisself more by drawin on me. Well, he hired me out and he et up my wages as fast as I worked. Truthful to God, I got one suit of clothes out of my labor that year, store-bought Sunday suit of clothes and my daddy collectin the balance of it. Well, that was just like slavery with me. I thought I was a little too old to be treated that way.