Been in the Storm So Long (55 page)

Rather than reveal a sordid past, the names assumed or revealed after emancipation reflected a new beginning—an essential step toward achieving the self-respect, the personal dignity, and the independence which slavery had compromised. “We hardly knowed our names,” recalled Sallie Crane, a former Arkansas slave. “We was cussed for so many bitches and sons of bitches and bloody bitches, and blood of bitches. We never heard our names scarcely at all.” Describing “the most cruel acts” inflicted upon him as a slave, William Wells Brown singled out the order that he drop the name his mother had given him. (The master had wished to placate his nephew, also named William, who had recently taken up residence on the plantation.) “I received several very severe whippings for telling people that my name was William, after orders were given to change it. Though young, I was old enough to place a high appreciation upon my name.” Until his escape, he went by the name of Sandford, but the moment he reached a safe haven he adopted his old name “and let Sandford go by the board, for I always hated it. Not because there was anything peculiar in the name; but because it had been forced upon me.”
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During slavery, many blacks only had a given name. Although most slaves appear to have named their own children, the master might arbitrarily assign a name, borrowing heavily from classical, biblical, and simplified
Anglo-Saxon appellations; the naming process also afforded him a chance to indulge in some humorous whims, and some did so at the expense of the slave’s dignity. Masters might permit certain favorites and slaves who exercised authority over other slaves to adopt their own surnames; the less privileged were apt to have the same surname as the master—a convenient way to identify the plantation to which they belonged. To allow the slave to use his own surname, Jacob Stroyer recalled, “would be sharing an honor which was due only to his master, and that would be too much for a negro, said they, who was nothing more than a servant. So it was held as a crime for a slave to be caught using his own name, a crime which would expose him to severe punishment.” Numerous ex-slaves, then, like Wash Ingram of Texas, recalled only that “we always went by the name of whoever we belonged to.” In South Carolina, a teacher in a freedmen’s school tried without success to induce one of the pupils to state her surname. “Only Phyllis, ma’am,” she would reply. Finally, an older student interceded, exclaiming, “Pshaw, gal! What’s you’m title?” The pupil then understood what was demanded, and she gave the name of her former master.
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More often than many masters realized, slaves adopted their own surnames. “When the white folks speak of them they say ‘John, that belongs to Mr. So and So,’ ” Robert Smalls testified during the war. “But among themselves they use their titles.… Before their masters they do not speak of their titles at all.” Plantation records rarely listed slaves by surnames, and the vast rice plantations owned by the Heyward family in South Carolina were no exception. Some of the more prominent blacks, however, like “old blacksmith Caesar,” were known by both their given names and their surnames. And “among themselves,” Duncan Clinch Heyward conceded, “the slaves all had surnames, and immediately after they were freed these names came to light. The surnames were selected by the Negroes themselves. Scarcely ever did a Negro choose the name of his or her owner, but often took that of some other slaveholding family, of which he knew.” Occasionally, surnames other than that of the master would surface beyond the confines of the slave quarters, much to the surprise of the white family. “Mammy, what makes you call Henry Mr. Ferguson,” Susan Dabney Smedes remembered asking her “usually indulgent” mammy, who had taken her to a slave wedding. “Do you think ’cause we are black that we cyarn’t have no names?” she replied indignantly. Usually, however, such names were not publicly revealed until after emancipation.
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Although family pride was reason enough, certain practical considerations also encouraged the selection of names after emancipation. Whether to enlist in the Union Army, live in the contraband camps, apply for relief at the Freedmen’s Bureau office, or, some years later, vote in an election, blacks needed to register both a given name and a surname with Federal authorities. Henry Banner took his surname under the erroneous impression that it would qualify him for a government bounty of forty acres and
these appear to have been exceptional cases; the ex-slaves themselves usually took the initiative—like the Virginia mother who changed the name of her son from Jeff Davis, which was how the master had known him, to Thomas Grant, which seemed to suggest the freedom she was now exercising. Whatever names the freed slaves adopted, whether that of a previous master, a national leader, an occupational skill, a place of residence, or a color, they were most often making that decision themselves. That was what mattered.
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That freedmen should have assumed the surnames of prominent white families might have flattered the patriarchal ego and self-image of the planter class, but it also left some whites in utter dismay and few of them had any notion of the considerations that entered into such decisions. “I used to be proud of my name,” Caroline Ravenel wrote a close friend. “I have ceased to be so. I fear it will no longer [be] spotless, as the two meanest negroes on the place have appropriated it.” Eliza Frances Andrews, the daughter of a prominent Georgian, expressed some amusement over the names taken by the family’s former slaves but she also proved to be far more perceptive than most whites. In the Andrews household, the family servant, Charity, announced on her wedding day that she had two names, like her “white folks”; she would henceforth be addressed as Mrs. Tatom, while her husband, Hamp, a field hand, would now be known as Mr. Sam Ampey Tatom. Trying to keep a straight face, Eliza Andrews asked her how they had come by the name of Tatom. “His grandfather used to belong to a Mr. Tatom,” she replied, “so he took his name for his
entitles.”
The blacks “seldom or never” adopted the names of their most recent owners, Miss Andrews observed; almost always, they would take the name of some former master, “and they go as far back as possible.” After all, she surmised, “it was the name of the actual owner that distinguished them in slavery, and I suppose they wish to throw off that badge of servitude. Then, too, they have their notions of family pride.” But even as these changes both amused and impressed her, Eliza Andrews had to confess to herself that they were not altogether pleasing.

B
EING FREE
was often a day-to-day struggle, if only to understand the new possibilities and dangers. The achievement of an individual dignity and self-respect commensurate with their legal status demanded of black people
much more than the adoption or revelation of family names. Now that they were free, some thought the old pretenses and demeanor could be dropped. The need to cringe in the presence of whites or to respond obsequiously to their whims and petty humiliations seemed less compelling. Freedom, as a former Georgia slave defined it, meant taking “no more foolishment off of white folks.” Early in 1865, two white men were walking along a street in Helena, Arkansas, when they encountered a freedman. “How do ye do, Mr. Powell,” the black man greeted one of them. “Howdy, uncle,” Powell replied. Several months earlier, that familiar exchange of greetings would have terminated the conversation, but not in this first year of emancipation. Much to Powell’s astonishment, the black man cursed him, denied that he was his uncle, and made it clear that he did not permit such people to claim kinship with him. When Powell protested that he was only trying to be “civil,” the freedman angrily retorted, “Call me Mister.” And with that parting salvo, the men went their respective ways. The much-perturbed Powell turned to his companion and exclaimed, “Oh my God; how long before my ass will be kicked by every negro that meets me?”
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Comparable incidents and confrontations were bound to arise while former slaves explored the content of their freedom. This was the appropriate time, some of them thought, to give substance to their new status, even to challenge and revamp the traditional and seemingly inviolate code of racial etiquette. Of what use was a family name if white people seldom used it in addressing blacks, if they persisted in referring to adult black men and women as “boy,” “girl,” or “nigger,” while reserving the honorific titles of “auntie” and “uncle” for the venerable few. After emancipation, Emma Watson recalled, she perceived few changes in her status, except that the mistress both acknowledged and demeaned her freedom at the same time, as in the command: “Come here, you li’l old free nigger.” Even without the benefit of organized or coordinated action, freedmen and freedwomen made known their objections to these linguistic relics of bondage, some of them insisting that they be addressed by their surnames (preceded by the appropriate mister, missus, or miss), that they no longer be identified by the plantation or the master for whom they worked (as in Colonel Pinckney’s Ned), that they be treated, in other words, as mature men and women rather than as children or pets. For whites to address adult black men as “boys,” a black clergyman declared, was to evince a “spirit of malice” he deemed incompatible with the rights of free “colored men.” The use of such terms, he charged, assumed that a black man was little more than “a six-year-old stripling or a two-year colt,” and it reminded him of the Irishman who testified that “in the ‘ould counthry,’ when they whistled for him to come to dinner, he never knew whether it was himself or the hogs they wanted.” With unjustified optimism, the clergyman warned that “white or colored Christians” would no longer tolerate such terms of address.
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The problem defied any early resolution. Not only did whites persist in using the familiar terms of address but the blacks themselves found it
difficult to discard the titles by which they had customarily known their former owners. As slaves, they had addressed them as “master” and “mistress,” or even more familiarly as “marster” or “mars” and as “mistis,” “miss,” or “missy,” usually followed only by the Christian name, as in “Miss Ann” or “Mars Bill.” Customarily, they had used titles like “boss,” “cap’n,” “major,” and “colonel” in addressing white men of high rank with whom they were less acquainted. (The term “boss” might be reserved for whites who were neither slaveholders nor “poor buckra.”) After learning of his freedom, a Georgia black wanted to know, “You got to say master?” to which a fellow freedman responded in the negative. “But they said it all the same,” Sarah Jane Paterson recalled. “They said it for a long time.” In Virginia, a Union officer in charge of freedmen affairs reproached some ex-slaves for referring to him as “massa,” explaining that they were no longer slaves. “No, massa,” one of them replied, “but I’m so used to it.” Searching for alternatives to the traditional “marsa” and “missus,” but not wishing to incur the charge of insolence, some freedmen, especially the younger ones, resolved the dilemma by addressing their former masters as “boss” or “cap’n” and their former mistresses as “ma’am.” Since those titles had often been used in the past when speaking with strangers, they suggested less intimacy and seemed more appropriate to the new relationships.
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With some exceptions, the men and women who had once owned slaves evinced no urgent desire to alter the traditional forms of deference and recognition. If nothing else, whites clung to social usages which reminded them of happier and more orderly times. The language and demeanor of the blacks had always defined their place in society and their relationship with whites, and in the chaotic postwar years, many whites preferred to think that a semblance of sanity and good manners might have survived emancipation. Louis Manigault, the Georgia planter, thus confessed his pleasure at being called “Maussa” and at seeing his former slaves “still showing respect by taking off their caps.” Some planters even went so far as to stipulate in the labor contracts they drew up with the freedmen that they be addressed as “master.” Seeking to accommodate himself to emancipation, Thomas Dabney, the prosperous Mississippi planter, advised his ex-slaves they no longer had to call him “master,” but he seemed reassured by the chorus of “Yes, marster” that greeted his admonition. “They seem to bring in ‘master’ and say it oftener than they ever did,” he observed, and Dabney preferred to accept it in good faith as a sign of affection; indeed, as his daughter noted, the term “seemed to grow into a term of endearment,” and former slaves Dabney had never known became tenants on the plantation and also called him “master.” With equal pride, a Mississippi white woman displayed her “little Confederate nigger,” as she called her, to a northern visitor. “She is the only one I have been able to keep, and I only have her because her parents haven’t yet been able to coax her away.” The young black girl still called her “Missey,” and the mistress proclaimed this fact with unconcealed delight, as if it were a singular achievement in
the post-emancipation South. Perhaps it was. “All the niggers have been trying to break her of that, but they can’t. They tell her to call me Miss Lizzie, but she says ‘she may be your Miss Lizzie, but she’s my Missey.’ ” One day in church, her servant left the other blacks, declaring loudly for everyone to hear that she preferred to sit with her “Missey.” That created quite a stir, the mistress conceded. “You should have seen everybody’s head turning to see who it was, in these sorrowful times, that was still fortunate enough to be called Missey!”
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