His Day of Jubilee. A black family at the end of the American Civil War. (standard:Inspirational stories, 2841 words)
Author: Oscar A Rat	Added: Jul 21 2020	Views/Reads: 1493/993	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Day of Jubilee = 50 year anniversary of the end of The American Civil War.

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Lester's. She was so good at it that Master Lester took in laundry from 
town residents for her to do. 

Pa, he worked as a helper in one of the stables downtown. He was a slave
officially but, with his skills and knowledge of horseflesh, that made 
little difference. He was treated well. White folk often asked his 
advice and he even had white Joshua, a dumbie, working under him. 

I helped Ma Lester in keeping the house clean and Jennie helped with
some stuff. Slavery wasn't all that bad for us. Of course, our biggest 
fear was that me and Jennie would be sold. In those times a war, you 
just never knew. Nothing was certain for sure. Though the Lesters was 
doing pretty good right then, you just never knew. 

We did know the Lincolns was coming. Though none of us, outside'a Master
Lester, could read, the word was all over. Talk was that they was gonna 
kill all the slaves to keep the Lincolns from taking us up north. If 
not, that we was to be taken there and just a‘gived to rich northerners 
to work in factories. 

Things, as I remember, was getting bad in Macon. A lot of the rich
people was heading west, taking everything they had with them. 
Factories was closing. I didn't know, but thought farmers would stay. 
Where would they go? I mean, would they leave their land? Anyways, a 
lot of the others was a going. 

The Master and Mrs was kinda wealthy, as I recall, but not really rich.
They had us and maybe another half-dozen Negroes. Most was rented out 
for labor, though some of us was living on the few acres of land the 
Master owned. I was pretty young and couldn't count too good, so I'm 
not sure of the figures. 

Anyway, Mr. Lester worked as an accountant downtown somewhere, keeping
the books for some company. 

He saved up his money to buy Ma for old Grandma Lester and his wife.
Then, when he had a couple of good years, he bought Pa to help him out 
and be a breeder. Course, at the time I didn't know what a breeder was 
ceptin' to have kids. I didn't know it was to raise Jennie and me to 
sell. Then, whenever he could, the Master bought him another slave to 
rent out. 

As an adult, I can see it was probably a good investment ceptin' for
selling us kids, of course. I wouldn't have liked that part. But, then, 
he might have kept us to rent out? Again, who knows? We didn't got no 
say in it. 

Anyway, we had it pretty easy, specially after that loud and nasty
Grandma Lester passed away. She'd mostly ignore Jennie and me, but 
always gave Ma hell. 

Well, anyway, Ma and Pa lit into each other. Pa wanted to pack up and
leave, right that minute. Ma was more sensible. Sure, she was glad to 
not be a slave no more, but she knew it would be bad to just run around 
the countryside with no money or place to go. Every day, it seemed, 
we'd hear about the town hanging or shooting thieves, mostly but not 
always black ones, that was running around and stealing from citizens. 

The only other place they, either one of them, knew was where they grew
up, and those places was a lot worser than working for Master Lester. 
Finally, Ma got him to agree to a compromise. 

“You wait till tomorrow, when you get shuck of some of that excitement,
then see Mr. Lester about wages. We'll save our money, let things 
settle on the road awhile, then leave,” she insisted. 

So that's what we did. Master Lester didn't pay much and Pa didn't know
much about money, anyway.  He was probably gypped and didn't even know 
it. I didn't know anything about money either at that age and time. I 
knew it didn't build up very fast. Pa was always bitching about how 
slow the money grew. 

About the only things I remember about the next few years was that
Jennie and I had to take on more work ourselves as we grew older, and 
that we was, all'a us, treated better by the Lester family than before. 
Probably, I think now, because our whole family leaving would have hurt 
them real bad in the purse. Master Lester got himself down to only us 
and one other black woman. The rest done took off but she, like Mama, 
had more sense. 

I recall that there was a lot of Yankees around, though it didn't affect
us a whole lot. Master, now Mr, Lester still had his accounting job. Ma 
still took in and did laundry for mostly the same families, only she 
got paid for it. Pa still worked at that stable as a blacksmith. The 
Yankees didn't change much for us. It did change others, though. 

Most of the ex-slaves at the farms quit, from what I heard, specially
from the bigger ones. Those that was treated badly. With no one to work 
that land, crops rotted in the fields, what wasn't simply stole by 
people walking by. Those people was mostly broke and had to have 
something to eat. And it wasn't only Negroes, but also a lot of whites. 
Soldiers from our side was also wanderin' back an forth, looking for 
work. Many of them had kept their muskets from the war an wasn't too 
picky on using them. A deer, a cow, or a dog means no whit'a difference 
when you're hungry. 

When the Yankees won, all those Confederate soldiers was without no pay
coming in, and a long way from home with no way to get back exceptin' 
to walk. They was a stealing and robbing along the way. 

We, living in town, were pretty safe, though. Everyone in town had guns,
so it was the farmers that suffered. 

I heard things like the town government having troubles but, as a kid, I
don't remember any. Guess I wasn't too interested. 

Anyway, the next year didn't bring many crops and, not having much money
-- either us or the Lesters -- we didn't eat too good. A lot of the 
fields only grew weeds. From the back of Mr. Lester's land, I could 
stand on a rise and see the main road from Mobile to Hattiesburg. It 
seemed there was always strings of people walking and riding on wagons, 
some pushing little carts. They was a lot of them going both ways, 
probably looking for a good place to light. Nobody seemed to want to 
stay in one place. 

Me and Jennie, once we got big enough, had the job of trying to keep
looters off the fields of one of the local farmers, Mr. Travis's. I 
liked riding an old plow horse named "Emily" but Jennie didn't like 
that mule "Junior" she was given to ride. Least until she learned how 
to make it move. She was too small to get her legs around the bare back 
of a horse an a'hold on'ta it. Pa, he fixed up a little padded seat on 
top'a Junior. It also made her seem taller at'a distance to chase out 
thieves. 

We'd spend most of our time just riding back and forth in the fields,
wearing men's clothes and hats. Pa carved us some sticks to look like 
guns. It was usually enough to scare looters away, least from a'far. If 
they didn't leave, we'd go back and get Farmer Travis, with his real 
gun. It was easy work, sort'a like being moving scarecrows, but hard on 
your behind. They'd see us and leave Farmer Travis's fields alone. 
Still, looters was the big problem that I recall. 

We stayed until I was about fifteen, and the people on the road seemed
to get a lot fewer. By that time, some of the other farms was also 
doing better. One reason was most likely all that cheap labor. Mr. 
Travis had himself no problem getting good workers for only the cost of 
upkeep and a little tobacy' money. Some'a those travelers would be glad 
to sit and work a spell before going on. 

When we finally left, it was a sad occasion. All the women hugging and
the rest of us packing up a used buckboard wagon we'd bought for the 
occasion. 

With over fifty Union Dollars in his pocket, Pa was anxious to get going
while Ma seemed sorry to leave the familiar surroundings. Mr. Lester 
was pretty sad. I guess it was because he had to go back to living off 
his accounting pay. Of course, all his other ex-slaves had took off 
long a'fore. So we finally left Mobile, headed for Baton Rouge. 

Again, there was an argument. Pa wanted to go to New Orleans but Ma
figured the big city would be more expensive and maybe harder to find 
work. So we went west to Baton Rouge, or around there somewhere. I 
don't think we went to the city itself, though. My memory isn't so good 
no more, but I don't remember any big city until we got here to Texas. 

We passed a passel of farms, some running, a lot just bare or
weed-covered fields. I noticed plenty'a white folks walking along with 
us. It seems they lost everything in the war. The states wanted taxes 
to fix things up agin' and people just didn't have any cash money to 
pay them. Some lost farms, others their jobs. So we was a mixed mob as 
we traveled the roads through Louisiana. 

I was old enough to understand that our original fifty dollars went
down, a penny and a nickel at a time. Now, we was the ones stealing 
from the working farms, and I could see other kids riding horses and 
mules to stop us. The trouble was that at a distance you didn't know if 
it was a kid or an adult with a real gun what could knock you on your 
ass. 

There was also gangs of white men on the road. We had to hide our money
because some was thieves, while others was lawmen. Guess we looked 
pretty lean, cause they usually left us alone. 

Some of the travelers had real fancy horses and wagons. There was enough
of them that the thieves left our family be. It was still scary, 
though, to have to ride by them, watching the hoodlums stare as though 
wondering if it was worth their while to stop us. 

Pa would sort of try to shrink away when we passed gangs of thieves and
lawmen. It was hard to tell which was which and sometimes they was the 
same brigands. 

There was also Bluecoats on the road. Once in a while some would ride
by, lording it over the rest a us. They either sat straight in their 
saddles or laughed and joked, according to whether they was an officer 
in charge or not. We liked to follow behind them, knowing the thieves 
would be gone at least for a while. 

*** 

Well, we walked and rode all the way through Louisiana, stealing food
when we had to, paying when we could. We made it to Texas, tired a the 
whole thing by that time. 

Both Pa and Ma wanted to settle down. We figured we'd have to probably
try for farm work, though none of knew a whole lot about farming. There 
was still more people than jobs, though the farther west we went, the 
less crowded the roads was. 

Outside Beaumont, we heard about and found some Yankee thing about
giving land to ex-slaves. Texas was also a friendlier place. It had 
been a Reb state in the war, but still had a lot of scalawags in it. It 
was one of the states that voted on slavery, which won by a small bit. 
Alabama had been a dyed-in-the-wool Reb state. 

The Federals had this program to give us land for nothing. We just had
to build a house and live there. One thing Texas has is one hell of a 
lot of land. Scrub land, but still it growed some things. 

Ma an Pa got some that way and we settled down. At first, we joined with
another couple of Negro families and worked together. I remember I was 
mad cause me and Jennie had to go to school. It was our first time in 
one, since Alabama didn't allow slaves to learn to read or write. 

We was older than most of the Texans in our classes in school, and big
enough to kick ass if they messed with us. We learned and the farm done 
fairly good. First Jennie got herself married to this Texan named 
Harry, then I met my Mary and, in turn, got me hitched. 

The rest is history. We stayed home and raised families, who in turn
raised more little pickaninnies, hee-hee, an the clan multiplied. The 
War is long forgotten, ceptin' by me and Jennie. Yes, she's still 
around. Now everyone's worried about the Mex's instead. 

It weren't easy, but we survived to the Day of Jubilee. 

The end.


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