Been in the Storm So Long (54 page)

That the withdrawal of women from the labor force was frequently made at the insistence of the men reflected a determination by many husbands and fathers to reinforce their position as the head of the family in accordance with the accepted norms of the dominant society. The place for the woman was in the home, attending to the business of the home. “When I married my wife,” a Tennessee freedman told his employer, in rejecting his request for her services, “I married her to wait on me and she has got all she can do right here for me and the children.” Like many outside observers, Laura Towne, a northern white teacher in the Sea Islands, explained such developments as a natural reaction to the dominant place she had assumed black women had occupied in the slave household. In wishing to “rule their wives,” the men could thus hardly be blamed for exercising “an inestimable privilege” of freedom. “In slavery the woman was far more important, and was in every way held higher than the man. It was the woman’s house, the children were entirely hers, etc., etc.” Since emancipation, however, Laura Towne had observed the frequency with which black leaders urged black men “to get the women into their proper place—never to tell them anything of their concerns, etc., etc.; and the notion of being bigger than women generally, is just now inflating the conceit of the males to an amazing degree.”
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If the spectacle of black marriages amused former masters and mistresses, the inclination of black women “to play the lady” did not, particularly when it made it more difficult for white women to do so. On a Mississippi plantation, where the black women suddenly refused to work, the employer (who had been their former master) ordered them to resume their positions in the field or leave the premises. They left. What whites contemptuously called “playing the lady” occasionally took the form of black women cavorting about town in the cast-off finery of their last mistress. Despite these much-publicized examples, however, most black women charged with “playing the lady” had simply opted to spend more time in their own households and made labor arrangements that would permit them to do so. A Georgia planter, for example, managed to hire four “good hands,” only to discover that their wives had no intention of cooking for him, at least not until they had discussed the matter with him. Aware of his inability to hire a cook, the women took advantage of their bargaining position and exacted promises to pay them “their own price” and, equally important, to permit them to divide the housework and cooking among themselves. Presumably, this arrangement would have given each of them ample time to meet her own domestic responsibilities. Such experiences, not at all uncommon, revealed that many black women, rather than withdraw from work altogether, used the threat quite successfully to obtain better terms from an employer.
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Few black leaders, clergymen, or editors would have disputed the “plain counsels” offered by a Freedmen’s Bureau officer to the emancipated black woman about her proper role in the home. Before marriage, she should learn to knit, sew, mend clothes, bake bread, keep a clean house, cultivate a garden, and read and write, while at the same time remaining
“a true woman”—that is, protecting her chastity. After marriage, she would be expected to take proper care of her person, to appear always clean, neat, and tidy, and to look “as pretty as possible.” That was simply another way of saying that black women should aspire to be like their white counterparts and abide by the conventional wisdom and experience of mid-nineteenth-century American society. Not all black women, however, willingly assented to such a narrow definition of their roles, few of them had the means to become “ladies” of leisure, and some did not look upon white women as the most desirable models to imitate; indeed, their previous experiences with white “ladies” had not necessarily filled them with awe, admiration, or even respect. Whatever black men might have preferred, most black women could not afford to withdraw from outside labor after emancipation; many continued to work in the fields alongside their men, while others moved into the towns in the hope of obtaining more remunerative employment.
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Out of economic necessity and the experience of slavery, black women fashioned a place for themselves in the post-emancipation family and community. Invariably, it would be a more important position than that occupied by their white counterparts. If fewer black women labored in the fields, they often cared for the family garden plot, worked as washerwomen or wet nurses, and performed other jobs that were necessary to supplement the family income. If they deferred to the men and absented themselves from the political discussions, they might still guard the rifles stacked outside the meeting places. And in the waning years of Reconstruction, when whites threatened to regain power, black women in Charleston were sighted “carrying axes or hatchets in their hands hanging down at their sides, their aprons or dresses half-concealing the weapons.” Exhorting a large audience to defend the work of Reconstruction, a black clergyman would warn of “80,000 black men in the State who can use Winchesters and 200,000 black women who can light a torch and use a knife.”
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No matter how they manifested their freedom, black men and women found themselves in a better position to defend their marital fidelity, to maintain their family ties, and to control their own children. That in itself ensured an enhanced dignity and pride as a family that slavery had so often compromised. But nothing could erase the still vivid memories of the fear and experience of forced separation from loved ones and the innumerable tragedies and complications which such separations, as well as the day-to-day indignities of slave life, had inflicted upon their families. More than the memories of those years remained to haunt them. Near Norfolk, Virginia, a long-separated couple found each other near the end of the war. “Twas like a stroke of death to me,” the woman said afterwards. “We threw ourselves into each others arms and cried. His wife looked on and was jealous, but she needn’t have been. My husband is so kind, I shouldn’t leave him if he hadn’t had another wife, and of course I shouldn’t now. Yes, my husband’s very kind, but I ain’t happy.” The momentary reunion had been painful for both of them. Reflecting back upon her first marriage, the days
a mule. “He told me never to go by any name except Banner. That was all the mule they ever give me.” Midway through the war, Federal officials expressed some consternation over the number of contrabands who gave them false names. “Perhaps, after all, no false motive influences them,” a white missionary teacher tried to explain, “as they may bear many names in a lifetime.” Still, she found herself repeatedly frustrated in trying to ascertain the full names of the freedmen and freedwomen she encountered. “They are Judith or John, and nothing more.” Not at all hesitant about adopting or revealing surnames were scores of ex-slaves who considered this step necessary to demonstrate and ensure their newly won freedom. “No man thought he was perfectly free,” the overseer on a Louisiana plantation observed, “unless he had changed his name and taken a family name. Precious few of ’em ever took that of their old masters.” If any doubts remained about the validity of emancipation, some freed slaves came up with the ingenious idea that a new name might be a useful device to retain their freedom and avoid re-enslavement. “When us black folks got set free,” Alice Wilkins recalled, “us’n change our names, so effen the white folks get together and change their minds and don’t let us be free any more, then they have a hard time finding us.”
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The notion that blacks marked their emancipation by repudiating their slave names distorts the significance those names had assumed for large numbers of slaves, particularly the ways in which they often reflected a deeply felt familial consciousness. Although some freedmen quickly dropped the whimsical names their masters had bestowed on them, nearly everyone else retained his or her previous given name. This had been their sole identity during bondage, often the only remaining link to parents from whom they had been separated and who had initially named them. No matter how harsh a bondage they had endured, few freed slaves revealed any desire to obliterate their entire past or family heritage, and those whose given names or surnames reflected kinship ties tended to guard them zealously. Many freedmen, on the other hand, adopted surnames for the first time, often choosing a name that would set them off as a discrete family, some began to use openly the surnames they had assumed as slaves, and still others slightly altered their names to symbolize their right to do so. Once they knew of their freedom, Lee Guidon recollected, “a heap of people say they was going to name their selves over. They named their selves big names.… Some of the names was Abraham an’ some called their selves Lincum. Any big name ’ceptin’ their master’s name. It was the fashion.” If that was “the fashion,” Lee Guidon’s father decided to be the exception—he kept the name of his master, because “fine folks raise us an’ we goiner hold to our own names.”
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If freedmen retained or adopted their master’s surname, this did not necessarily reflect any deep affection for him or the conditions of bondage on that plantation. In many instances, the name of the ex-slave’s parents or grandparents was the same as that of the master, and that alone was sufficient reason to hold on to it. Martin Jackson, who had been a slave on
the Fitzpatrick plantation in Texas, thought many years later that taking the master’s name after emancipation had reflected expediency more than anything else. “This was done more because it was the logical thing to do and the easiest way to be identified than it was through affection for the master. Also, the government seemed to be in a almighty hurry to have us get names. We had to register as someone, so we could be citizens.” When forced to choose his own surname, however, Jackson thought about all the slaves who would assume the name Fitzpatrick. “I made up my mind I’d find me a different one. One of my grandfathers in Africa was called Jeaceo, and so I decided to be Jackson.”
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The freedman who took the name of an earlier owner, perhaps the first owner he could recall, often made that choice out of a sense of historical identity, continuity, and family pride—the reputation of the particular master notwithstanding. The idea was not to honor a previous master but to sustain some identification with the freedman’s family of origin.

After emancipation, Aleck Gillison adopted the surname of a previous master who had sold him; so did Jim Henry’s father, who had once belonged to the Patrick Henry family of Virginia; Isaac Thomas, the slave of I. D. Thomas, a Texas planter, returned to his old home in Florida, where he “find out he people and git he real name, and dat am Beckett.” Similarly, Anson Harp had belonged to Tom Harp, a Mississippi planter, before being separated from his parents and sold to James Henry Hammond, a prominent South Carolina planter. After the war, he refused to take the name of Hammond, “ ’cause too many of his slaves do,” and decided to keep the name of his old master. That was “the one my daddy and mammy had,” he explained, though he never saw them again after their forced separation.
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In adopting surnames, as in other manifestations of their new freedom, the ex-slaves defied any easy categorization. If, for a variety of reasons, some took the names of old or recent masters, many openly repudiated such names. “That’s my ole rebel master’s title,” a young South Carolina black protested after he used the name of Middleton in a freedmen’s school. “Him’s nothing to me now. I don’t belong to he no longer, an’ I don’t see no use in being called for him.” While enrolling a freedman in the Union Army, a recruiting officer in Tennessee demanded that he take a surname and suggested that of his previous master. The proposal struck the young black man with obvious dismay. “No, suh,” he replied emphatically.
“I’se had nuff o’ ole massa.”
In some instances, Federal officials expedited the naming process by furnishing the names themselves, and invariably the name would be the same as that of the freedman’s most recent master. But
they had spent together, and the forced separation, she could only say, “White folk’s got a heap to answer for the way they’ve done to colored folks! So much they wont never
pray
it away!”
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C
OMPARED TO THE MANY
acute problems facing the freedman, the question of his name might have seemed the least consequential. But the newly freed slaves thought otherwise, sharing a concern with names and naming voiced nearly a century later by Ralph Ellison.