All God's Dangers (81 page)

O
NE
white man come to my house one day and said, “Nate, do you know where I can get a family that can handle a one-horse farm? Maybe a man”—he didn't specify no color—“his wife, maybe two or three kids—”

Well, as God would have it, another white man had done come to see me before this one, said he was huntin a place to live. I told this white fellow, “Yes sir, Mr. So-and-so was here the other day askin me did I know where he could get a place.”

He happened to know the man I told him. Said, “Aw, hell, Nate, I don't want no damn white man on my place.”

That teached me fair that a white man always wants a nigger in preference to a white man to work on his place. How come that? How come it for God's sake? He don't want no damn white man on his place. He gets a nigger, that's his glory. He can do that nigger just like he wants to and that nigger better not say nothin against his rulins. “Nigger, just go out there and do what I tell you to do, and if I see fit to take all you got, I'll take it and get away with it.”

Well, a white man won't take that in this country off another white man. They go right up there toe to toe, and if it's a cussin frolic and a fallin out, why, let it come. So what does the white man do? He fishes around and gets himself a nigger and puts him on his place where he can control him any way he wants to, and that's the crop! Them secrets I know—I go by history. Of course, a man's got to look
ahead
and think and think strong who is his friend and who is his enemy. But you got to have sense enough to learn what you have went through in your past life, Negro. You ought to look back at it as well as forwards. Don't be a plumb rabbit for the world. You know how you been treated: why don't you open up the facts to yourself?

T
HEY
'
RE
yet callin this white man's country. It stinks in my nostrils every time I think about it. But these big dudes of the white race, they've never showed no care and respect for the poor white man. Well, how come that? They all white, why don't they hang together in every respect? How come they don't hang? One thing's certain and one thing's sure: color don't boot with the big white cats; they only lookin for money. O, it's plain as your hand. The poor white man and the poor black man is sittin in the same saddle today—big dudes done branched em off that way. The control of a man, the controllin power, is in the hands of the rich man. And the rich man is all in favor of the rich man. That class is standin together and the poor white man is out there on the colored list—I've caught that; ways and actions a heap of times speaks louder than words.

I've had the big white ones talk to me against the poor ones; I've had the poor white folks talk to me against the big ones. I know all about the rich white man; what he wants it's wrote all over his face. But I don't know how to take poor white people. There's some of em won't stand a nigger at all; and there's some will go along with him to an extent. But they seemed to have always thought they was a class above the Negro. And what are
they
? What are they? Dough-faces! Raw-gum chewers! There's been many a white man as well as Negro that's been undertrodded. But I just can't loosen up to em; I can't lead em in the lights of nothin. I have to take care. And I can't loosen up to some of my color because if I do lead em in the lights of what I know and what I've found out, when I know anything, every white man in the settlement is against me.

God's got some good people here and He's got some here aint fittin to go to hell, if I must explain. And you don't know none of em's ways unless you watch em. The Bible tells you to watch as well as pray.

M
OSLEY
weren't able to get nobody on his place, white or colored, and eventually he died. And when he died, his place fell in the hands of his wife and son—just had one boy. This boy, until a few months ago, had a industrious job up there about Opelika. Before old Mosley died, got to where he couldn't get him no hands, he bought him a tractor. This boy drove the tractor for his daddy and made the crops.
Last I heard, he got high enough to buy him another tractor; now he's got two tractors, his daddy's old tractor and the one he bought. And he works a part of the land on his off hours. Vernon works the biggest part of the place—rents it since the daddy been dead.

When the old man died—I'm goin to call myself what they call me—the
niggers
went up to his home where he was layin a corpse, before they carried him to the undertaker, payin respects to his wife and boy. His wife weren't a bad woman, she was just under his yoke all her married life. So, TJ and his wife and me and Josie went up there to look on his body, for God's sake. It weren't our part to slight the man's family for what he done. We colored people was doin everything here, and have always done it, to get along with the white people. And I reckon in many other sections of the land they doin that. We went up there to the death of him after they laid him out. Got on TJ's car one day—we was livin over there on Warren Jenks' place close to TJ's at that time. And this dead man Mosley and TJ had had a little trouble too. TJ never did live with Mosley but both of em lived in this settlement and they knowed each other. And one day Mosley tried to get TJ to take sides with him in a certain matter. He had a colored woman workin on halves with him up on his place. And when it come time to plow up his cotton to meet the government's orders, he wanted to plow up that colored woman's cotton and none of his. And he asked TJ's sympathy about it. TJ just told him he ought to go plow up his own cotton and leave that colored woman alone, and she a poor widow woman. But the white man wanted to switch the government over on her—plow up hers and let his stand and grow. His was a pet patch, he had fertilized it high, and if he lost he wanted that colored woman to lose in place of him. But she couldn't afford to lose and TJ told him that—he was crazy enough to ask TJ's sympathy and he gived TJ the devil when TJ spoke against him right to his head.

All right. We got on the car with TJ and his wife, me and Josie, went up there to view this man's body. And blessed God when we got up there to the house—there was three or four white men sittin out on the veranda, and when we got out of the car and walked in the yard, one of them fellows by the name of Thompson, the head mail rider through here, he wouldn't take time to see if we was headin up to the front door or what. He got up and told us, “Stop! Stop! You all get away from here and go around the back.”

Now, it's been the custom and the habit in this country for niggers to go around to the back door of white folks' houses. Some colored folks would go in, where they was workmens for the whites, workin there all the time, they'd go in the front door. But not just
any
Negro.

Josie got sort of fretted over how the white man was conductin us, and she turned around to leave. I had a mind to do that myself, but a death occasion in a family is a serious affair, and for God's sake and for the sake of the dead man's wife I decided to go round the back way. And I convinced Josie to do the same.

Wouldn't let us come in the front door and the man layin in there dead. Why, if I knowed a old dog wanted to go in there and see him I'd let him go in any door he wanted to, watch him in the house and take him to the bed where the corpse is layin; I'd catch hold of him and let him look—if he had sense enough to know what he was lookin at. Told us—he got up off the veranda where he was sittin right where you would come up to the front—“You all go around the back.” Wouldn't recognize us as folks. And we was showin sympathy for the family of the dead man. And honorin
him
enough to want to see his body.

So, we went on around the back, all four of us, me and my wife and TJ and his wife, went in the back door and come all the way through the house and into one of the front rooms. We looked at him layin there just as natural—and we passed on out back out the back way, went around and got on TJ's car and left.

Before this man died they sent him to the crazy-house. Stayed there awhile and he come back home, lingered there, got down and died. Some time before they sent him away, he confessed to be a Christian man, a Holiness man, and he joined the Holiness denomination. And, O, he talked to me bout servin the Lord and bein born again—but he eased up from them words and begin to be worried and shook up someway. Just before they sent him away he let into cussin and raisin sand, quit all that godly talk. And when he come home he was quiet. Then he died. I stayed on his place six long years and it was known that sugar wouldn't melt in his mouth. He got to where he couldn't get no colored people to live with him and no white ones neither. I was on his place but he didn't have anything to do with me because I didn't make no crops for him, just livin in the old house.

I made myself satisfied in mind and gived up the cotton plant; didn't grow nothin then but corn. The first year after me and Josie married, I planted less cotton than I ever did plant, come down to four acres. The year just before that I made eight good heavy bales of cotton, right by myself, excusin hirin some choppin. Rachel's little boys, three of em, come there every mornin to help me pick. When I got it all gathered and wound up, I was to the good about six hundred dollars, after my debts was all paid. Well, I married Josie then and I dropped right down to four acres, and that crop, Josie and her baby grand-chap, Mary Jane, done the biggest of the choppin. And in the fall, me and Josie gathered it and I hired it gathered together. I gived Josie fifty dollars out of that crop and then paid what I owed. My expenses wasn't so heavy because I had saved some money from that last big crop I made and put it into this one. Well, I decided I'd make one more crop, so I took four acres on halves with Vernon—he furnished the fertilize and the land, I furnished the labor. I was sharecroppin then, just like I done when I was startin off, just married to my first wife. At the present time I was workin with my son, on his land; that's exactly the way it runned for me. Well, that wound me up with cotton, the year I planted four acres with Vernon, on his place.

I aint planted no cotton since. When I cut down to four acres of cotton I commenced plantin corn to sell. I never did, after that, fail to plant a full one-horse crop, ten to twelve acres in corn. Sold it by the ton, too. Got anywhere from twenty to twenty-five dollars a ton. A heap of it used for stock, and a heap of it used for folks to eat. I'd sell it to Ventosa's mill down here at Tukabahchee City and to Mr. Emmet Wilcox's crush and feed, besides what I'd sell locally for folks to feed their mules on. I sold my sister's baby boy some, Henry Shaw—he goes in the name of Henry Shaw because he was raised by the Shaws but he's a Henry Jones. Lives out between here and Apafalya. I sold him corn, above a ton, once to my knowin.

The year I come down to four acres in cotton, I paid Vernon rent in corn. He needed it because he weren't raisin enough farm products to carry his business through—had cows, too, that needed that corn in winter. I told him, “Come over yonder to the back side of my cotton patch where my corn grows and get you as many loads
of corn as it'll take to make my rent.” He come over there and loaded up. And I got to keep the cash money I made off them four acres of cotton by payin him with corn. Then I quit foolin with cotton completely and I planted only corn.

I looked at this angle—I was caught between two opinions: new rulins is takin place and old ones is bein done away with. They mostly now buys all this shipped seed—they're treated and they come with a high percentage of weeds and they're high priced as the devil. You just plant em for two or three years out there, make no difference how good the results you gettin out of your cotton, it's workin you to death keepin them cockleburs out. And them cockleburs is in everybody's crop. You got to go to great expenses now to get a big crop made out there; you out of some money. Now they got a grass killin ointment; they got a cocklebur killin thing, weed killer and all. You got to go to all of that mess and keep that tractor goin; if you don't you aint goin to be able to get out of that crop what it cost you. I thought it over and I seed I was left out in the rain. People usin tractors to make a big enough crop to support themselves, and them things costin like they do, and I weren't in the knowledge of handlin a tractor and keepin the breakdowns off it, and not knowin how long I'd be able to just stand on my feet much less drive a tractor, I just walked along with the old mule like I had been and left off tractors till I got thoroughly disabled to handle a tractor. I knowed as much about mule farmin as ary man in this country. But when they brought in tractors, that lost me.