I am a negro and was born some time during the war in Elbert County,
Ga., and I reckon by this time I must be a little over forty years
old My mother was not married when I was born, and I never knew
who my father was or anything about him. Shortly after the war
my mother died, and I was left to the care of my uncle. All this
happened before I was eight years old, and so I can't remember
very much about it When I was about ten years old my uncle hired
me out to Captain . I had already learned how to plow, and was
also a good hand at picking cotton. I was told that the Captain
wanted me for his house boy, and that later on he was going to
train me to be his coachman. To be a coachman in those days was
considered a post of honor, and, young as I was, I was glad of
the chance. But I had not been at the Captain's a month before
I was put to work on the farm, with some twenty or thirty other
negroes men, women and children From the beginning the boys had
the same tasks as the men and women. There was no difference.
We all worked hard during the week, and would frolic on Saturday
nights and often on Sundays. And everybody was happy. The men
got $3 a week and the women $2. I don't know what the children
got Every week my uncle collected my money for me, but it was
very little of it that I ever saw. My uncle fed and clothed me,
gave me a place to sleep, and allowed me ten or fifteen cents
a week for" spending change," as he called it I must
have been seventeen or eighteen years old before I got tired of
that arrangement, and felt that I was man enough to be working
for myself and handling my own wages. The other boys about my
age and size were"drawing" their own pay, and they used
to laugh at me and call me "Baby" because my old uncle
was always on hand to"draw" my pay. Worked up by these
things, I made a break for liberty. Unknown to my uncle or the
C aptain I went off to a neighboring plantation and hired myself
out to another man. The new landlord agreed to give me forty cents
a day and furnish me one meal. I though that was doing fine. Bright
and early one Monday morning I started for work, still not letting
the others know anything about it. But they found it out before
sundown. The Captain came over to the new place and brought some
kind of officer of the law. The officer pulled out a long piece
of paper from his pocket and read it to my new employer. When
this was done I heard my new boss say:
"I beg your pardon, Captain. I didn't know this nigger was
bound out to you, or I wouldn't have hired him."
"He certainly is bound out to me," said the Captain.
"He belongs to me until he is twenty one, and I'm going to
make him know his place."
So I was carried back to the Captain's. That night he made me
strip off my clothing down to my waist, had me tied to a tree
in his backyard, ordered his foreman to give me thirty lashes
with a buggy whip across my bare back, and stood by until it was
done. After that experience the Captain made me stay on his place
night and day,- but my uncle still continued to "draw"
my money.
I was a man nearly grown before I knew how to count from one
to one hundred I was a man nearly grown before I ever saw a colored
school teacher. I never went to school a day in my life. To day
I can't write my own name, tho I can read a little. I was a man
nearly grown before I ever rode on a railroad train, and then
I went on an excursion from Elberton to Athens. What was true
of me was true of hundreds of other negroes around me- 'way off
there in the country, fifteen or twenty miles from the nearest
town.
When I reached twenty one the Captain told me I was a free man,
but he urged me to stay with him. He said he would treat me right,
and pay me as much as anybody else would The Captain's son and
I were about the same age, and the Captain said that, as he had
owned my mother and uncle during slavery, and as his son didn't
want me to leave them (since I had been with them so long), he
wanted me to stay with the old family. And I stayed. I signed
a contract that is, I made my mark for one year. The Captain was
to give me $3.50 a week, and furnish me a little house on the
plantation a one room log cabin similar to those used by his other
laborers.
During that year I married Mandy. For several years Mandy had
been the house servant for the Captain, his wife, his son and
his three daughters, and they all seemed to think a good deal
of her. As an evidence of their regard they gave us a suit of
furniture, which cost about $25, and we set up housekeeping in
one of the Captain's two¬ room shanties. I thought I was the
biggest man in Georgia. Mandy still kept her place in the "Big
House" after our marriage. We did so well for the first year
that I renewed my contract for the second year, and for the third,
fourth and fifth year I did the same thing. Before the end of
the fifth year the Captain had died, and his son, who had married
some two or three years before, took charge of the plantation.
Also, for two or three years, this son had been serving at Atlanta
in some big office to which he had been elected I think it was
in the Legislature or something of that sort anyhow, all the people
called him Senator. At the end of the fifth year the Senator suggested
that I sign up a contract for ten years; then, he said, we wouldn't
have to fix up papers every
year. I asked my wife about it; she consented; and so I made a
ten year contract.
Not long afterward the Senator had a long, low shanty built on
his place. A great big chimney, with a wide, open fireplace, was
built at one end of it, and on each side of the house, running
lengthwise, there was a row of frames or stalls just large enough
to hold a single mattress. The places for these mattresses were
fixed one above the other, so that there was a double row of these
stalls or pens on each side. They looked for all the world like
stalls for horses. Since then I have seen cabooses similarly arranged
as sleeping quarters for railroad laborers. Nobody seemed to know
what the Senator was fixing for. All doubts were put aside one
bright day in April when about forty able bodied negroes, bound
in iron chains, and some of them handcuffed, were brought out
to the Senator's farm in three big wagons. They were quartered
in the long, low shanty, and it was afterward called the stockade.
This was the beginning of the Senator's convict camp. These men
were prisoners who had been leased by the Senator from the State
of Georgia at about $200 each per year, the State agreeing to
pay for guards and physicians, for necessary inspection, for inquests,
all rewards for escaped convicts, the cost of litigation and all
other incidental camp expenses. When I saw these men in shackles,
and the guards with their guns, I was scared nearly to death I
felt like running away, but I didn't know where to go. And if
there had been any place to go to, I would have had to leave my
wife and child behind We free laborers held a meeting. We all
wanted to quit We sent a man to tell the Senator about it Word
came back that we were all under contract for ten years and that
the Senator would I hold us to the letter of the contract, or
put us in chains and lock us up¬i the same as the other prisoners.
It was made plain to us by some white people we talked to that
in the contracts we had signed we had all agreed to be locked
up in a stockade at night or at any other time that our employer
saw fit; further, we learned that we could not lawfully break
our contract for any reason and go and hire ourselves to somebody
else without the consent of our employer, and, more than that,
if we got mad and ran away, we could be run down by bloodhounds,
arrested without process of law, and be returned to our employer,
who, according to the contract, might beat us brutally or administer
any other kind of punishment that he thought proper. In other
words, we had sold ourselves into slavery and what could we do
about it? The white folks had all the courts, all the guns, all
the hounds, all the railroads, all the telegraph wires, all the
newspapers, all the money, and nearly all the land and we had
only our ignorance, our poverty and our empty hands. We decided
that the best thing to do was to shut our mouths, say nothing,
and go back to work And most of us worked side by side with those
convicts during the remainder of the ten years.
But this first batch of convicts was only the beginning. Within
six months another stockade was built, and twenty or thirty other
convicts were brought to the plantation, among them six or eight
women! The Senator had bought an additional thousand acres of
land, and to his already large cotton plantation he added two
great big saw mills and went into the lumber business. Within
two years the Senator had in all nearly 200 negroes working on
his plantation about half of them free laborers, so called, and
about half of them convicts. The only difference between the free
laborers and the others was that the free laborers could come
and go as they pleased, at night that is, they were not locked
up at night, and were not, as a general thing, whipped for slight
offenses. The troubles of the free laborers began at the close
of the ten year period To a man, they all wanted to quit when
the time was up. To a man, they all refused to sign new contracts
even for one year, not to say anything of ten years. And just
when we thought that our bondage was at an end we found that it
had really just begun. Two or three years before, or about a year
and a half after the Senator had started his camp, he had established
a large store, which was called the commissary. All of us free
laborers were compelled to buy our supplies food, clothing, etc.
from that store. We never used any money in our dealings with
the commissary, only tickets or orders, and we had a general settlement
once each year, in October. In this store we were charged all
sorts of high prices for goods, because every year we would come
out in debt to our employer. If not that, we seldom had more than
$5 or $10 coming to us and that for a whole yea's work Well, at
the close of the tenth year, when we kicked and meant to leave
the Senator, he said to some of us with a smile ( and I never
will forget that smile I can see it now):
"Boys, I'm sorry you're going to leave me. I hope you will
do well in your new places so well that you will be able to pay
me the little balances which most of you owe me."
Word was sent out for all of us to meet him at the commissary
at 2 o'clock. There he told us that, after we had signed what
he called a written acknowledgment of our debts, we might go and
look for new places. The storekeeper took us one by one and read
to us statements of our accounts. According to the books there
was no man of us who owed the Senator less than $100; some of
us were put down for as much as $200. I owed $165, according to
the bookkeeper. These debts were not accumulated during one year,
but ran back for three and four years, so we were told in spite
of the fact that we understood that we had had a full settlement
at the end of each year. But no one of us would have dared to
dispute a white man's word oh, no; not in those days. Besides,
we fellows didn't care anything about the amounts we were after
getting away; and we had been told that we might go, if we signed
the acknowledgments. We would have signed anything, just to get
away. So we stepped up, we did, and made our marks. That same
night we were rounded up by a constable and ten or twelve white
men, who aided him, and we were locked up, every one of us, in
one of the Senator's stockades. The next morning it was explained
to us by the two guards appointed to watch us that, in the papers
we had signed the day before, we had not only made acknowledgment
of our indebtedness, but that we had also agreed to work for the
Senator until the debts were paid by hard labor. And from that
day forward we were treated just like convicts. Really we had
made ourselves lifetime slaves, or peons, as the laws called us.
But, call it slavery, peonage, or what not, the truth is we lived
in a hell on earth what time we spent in the Senator's peon camp.
I lived in that camp, as a peon, for nearly three years. My wife
fared better than I did, as did the wives of some of the other
negroes, because the white men about the camp used these unfortunate
creatures as their mistresses. When I was first put in the stockade
my wife was still kept for a while in the "Big House,"
but my little boy, who was only nine years old, was given away
to a negro family across the river in South Carolina, and I never
saw or heard of him after that When I left the camp my wife had
had two children for some one of the white bosses, and she was
living in fairly good shape in a little house off to herself.
But the poor negro women who were not in the class with my wife
fared about as bad as the helpless negro men. Most of the time
the women who were peons or convicts were compelled to wear men's
clothes. Sometimes, when I have seen them dressed like men, and
plowing or hoeing or hauling logs or working at the blacksmith's
trade, just the same as men, my heart would bleed and my blood
would boil, but I was powerless to raise a hand It would have
meant death on the spot to have said a word Of the first six women
brought to the camp, two of them gave birth to children after
they had been there more than twelve months and the babies had
white men for their fathers!
The stockades in which we slept were, I believe, the filthiest
places in the world They were cesspools of nastiness. During the
thirteen years that I was there I am willing to swear that a mattress
was never moved after it had been brought there, except to turn
it over once or twice a month No sheets were used, only dark colored
blankets. Most of the men slept every night in the clothing that
they had worked in all day. Some of the worst characters were
made to sleep in chains. The doors were locked and barred each
night, and tallow candles were the only lights allowed Really
the stockades were but little more than cow lots, horse stables
or hog pens. Strange to say, not a great number of these people
died while I was there, tho a great many came away maimed and
bruised and, in some cases, disabled for life. As far as I remember
only about ten died during the last ten years that I was there,
two of these being killed outright by the guards for trivial offenses.
It was a hard school that peon camp was, but I learned more there
in a few short months by contact with those poor fellows from
the outside world than ever I had known before. Most of what I
learned was evil, and I now know that I should have been better
off without the knowledge, but much of what I learned was helpful
to me. Barring two or three severe and brutal whippings which
I received, I got along very well, all things considered; but
the system is damnable. A favorite way of whipping a man was to
strap him down to a log, flat on his back, and spank him fifty
or sixty times on his bare feet with a shingle or a huge piece
of plank. When the man would get up with sore and blistered feet
and an aching body, if he could not then keep up with the other
men at work he would be strapped to the log again, this time face
downward, and would be lashed with a buggy trace on his bare back
When a woman had to be whipped it was usually done in private,
tho they would be compelled to fall down across a barrel or something
of the kind and receive the licks on their backsides.
The working day on a peon farm begins with sunrise and ends when
the sun goes down; or, in other words, the average peon works
from ten to twelve hours each day, with one hour( from 12 o'clock
to 1 o'clock) for dinner. Hot or cold, sun or rain, this is the
rule. As to their meals, the laborers are divided up into squads
or companies, just the same as soldiers in a great military camp
would be. Two or three men in each stockade are appointed as cooks.
From thirty to forty men report to each cook. In the warm months
(or eight or nine months out of the year) the cooking is done
on the outside, just behind the stockades; in the cold months
the cooking is done inside the stockades. Each peon is provided
with a great big tin cup, a flat tin pan and two big tin spoons.
No knives or forks are ever seen, except those used by the cooks.
At meal time the peons pass in single file before the cooks, and
hold out their pans and cups to receive their allowances. Cow
peas ( red or white, which when boiled turn black), fat bacon
and old fashioned Georgia corn bread; baked in pones from one
to two and three inches thick, make up the chief articles of food
Black coffee, black molasses and brown sugar are also used abundantly.
Once in a great while, on Sundays, biscuits would be made, but
they would always be made from the kind of flour called "shorts."
As a rule, breakfast consisted of coffee, fried bacon, corn bread,
and sometimes molasses -and one "helping" of each was
all that was allowed. Peas, boiled with huge hunks of fat bacon,
and a hoe cake, as big as a man's hand, usually answered for dinner.
Sometimes this dinner bill of fare gave place to bacon and greens
(collard or turnip) and pot liquor. Tho we raised corn, potatoes
and other vegetables, we never got a chance at such things unless
we could steal them and cook them secretly. Supper consisted of
coffee, fried bacon and molasses. But, altho the food was limited
to certain I things, I am sure we all got a plenty of the things
allowed As coarse as these things were, we kept, as a rule, fat
and sleek and as strong as mules. And that, too, in spite of the
fact that we had no special arrangements for taking regular baths,
and no very great effort was made to keep us regularly in clean
clothes. No tables were used or allowed In summer we would sit
down on the ground and eat our meals, and in winter we would sit
around inside the filthy stockades. Each man was his own dish
washer that is to say, each man was responsible for the care of
his pan and cup and spoons. My dishes got washed about once a
week!
To day, I am told, there are six or seven of these private camps
in Georgia that is to say, camps where most of the convicts are
leased from the State of Georgia. But there are hundreds and hundreds
of farms all over the State where negroes, and in some cases poor
white folks, are held in bondage on the ground that they are working
out debts, or where the contracts which they have made hold them
in a kind of perpetual bondage, because under those contracts,
they may
not quit one employer and hire out to another, except by and with
the knowledge and consent of the former employer. One of the usual
ways to secure laborers for a large peonage camp is for the proprietor
to send out an agent to the little courts in the towns and villages,
and where a man charged with some petty offense has no friends
or money the agent will urge him to plead guilty, with the understanding
that the agent will pay his fine, and in that way save him from
the disgrace of being sent to jail or the chain gang For this
high favor the man must sign beforehand a paper signifying his
willingness to go to the farm and work out the amount of the fine
imposed When he reaches the farm he has to be fed and clothed,
to be sure, and these things are charged up to his account By
the time he has worked out his first debt another is hanging over
his head, and so on and so on, by a sort of endless chain for
an indefinite period, as in every case the indebtedness is arbitrarily
arranged by the employer. In many cases it is very evident that
the court officials are in collusion with the proprietors or agents,
and that they divide the "graft" among themselves. As
an example of this dickering among the whites, every year many
convicts were brought to the Senator's camp from a certain county
in South Georgia, 'way down in the turpentine district The majority
of these men were charged with adultery, which is an offense against
the laws of the great and sovereign State of Georgia! Upon inquiry
I learned that down in that county a number of negro lewd women
were employed by certain white men to entice negro men into their
houses; and then, on certain nights, at a given signal, when all
was in readiness, raids would be made by the officers upon these
houses, and the men would be arrested and charged with living
in adultery. Nine out of ten of these men, so arrested and so
charged, would find their way ultimately to some convict camp,
and, as I said, many of them found their way every year to the
Senator's camp while I was there. The low down women were never
punished in any way. On the contrary, I was told that they always
seemed to stand in high favor with the sheriffs, constables and
other officers. There can be no room to doubt that they assisted
very materially in furnishing laborers for the prison pens of
Georgia, and the belief was general among the men that they were
regularly paid for their work. I could tell more, but I’ve
said enough to make anybody's heart sick. I am glad that the Federal
authorities are taking a hand in breaking up this great and terrible
iniquity. It is, I know, widespread throughout Georgia and many
other Southern States. Since Judge Speer fired into the gang last
November at Savannah, I notice that arrests have been made of
seven men in three different sections of the State all charged
with holding men in peonage. Somewhere, somehow, a beginning of
the end should be made. But I didn't tell you how I got out I
didn't get out -they put me out.
When I had served as a peon for nearly three years and you remember
that they claimed that I owed them only $165 when I had served
for nearly three years, one of the bosses came to me and said
that my time was up. He happened to be the one who was said to
be living with my wife. He gave me a new suit of overalls, which
cost about seventy five cents, took me in a buggy and carried
me across the Broad River into South Carolina, set me down and
told me to "git." I didn't have a cent of money, and
I wasn't feeling well, but somehow I managed to get a move on
me. I begged my way to Columbia. In two or three days I ran across
a man looking for laborers to carry to Birmingham, and I joined
his gang. I have been here in the Birmingham district since they
released me, and I reckon I'll die either in a coal mine or an
iron furnace. It don't make much difference which Either is better
than a Georgia peon camp. And a Georgia peon camp is hell itself!
South Carolina