Jubilee Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  And So We Sing of Jubilee

  Sis Hetta’s Child

  Death is a mystery that only the squinch owl knows

  Along the Big Road in Egypt’s land . . .

  “Flee as a bird to your mountain”

  Brother Zeke: “I am a poor way-faring stranger”

  Grimes: “Cotton is king!”

  Marse John’s dinner party

  Cook in the Big House

  Randall Ware

  Springtime is sallet time

  Wedding in the Big House and love in the cornfields

  Fourth of July celebration

  She has the letter “R” branded on her face

  Harvest time

  “There’s a star in the East on Christmas morn”

  Freedom is a secret word I dare not say

  Get a man to buy my time out

  Put on men’s clothes and a man’s old cap

  Seventy-five lashes on her naked back

  “Mine eyes have seen the Glory”

  “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave”

  This pot is boiling over and the fat is in the fire

  The Vernal Equinox of 1861

  Don’t make them come and get you! Volunteer!

  We’ll be back home before breakfast is over

  They made us sing “Dixie”

  Chickamauga—River of Death

  Can you forge?

  Down with the shackle and up with the star!

  Shall be forever free

  Mister Lincoln is our Moses

  Action at Olustee

  Pensive on her dead gazing

  Confederate specie

  General Sherman is in Georgia

  What’s that I smell?

  “We’ll hang Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree”

  A noise like thunder . . . a cloud of dust

  The honor of this house . . .

  My name is Innis Brown

  What you waiting here for?

  One more Christmas on the old home place

  “Forty years in the wilderness”

  Two weeks in the wagon

  Bound for Alabama

  Wiregrass country in the Alabama bottoms

  Forty acres and a mule

  New land and higher ground

  Brand-new house with windows from the mill

  Bad luck and hard times

  Ku Klux Klan don’t like no Koons

  Keep the niggers from the polls and we’ll return to White Home Rule!

  Burned out and running for our lives twice in a row

  Don’t look like free schools and land reform is ever coming

  Where’s the money coming from?

  I reckon I can be a granny in a pinch

  We got new neighbors now

  Freedom don’t mean nothing, him allus driving and whupping me to work!

  The blackest man I ever did see

  What will happen to poor colored folks now?

  Howdy and goodbye, honey-boy!

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Second Mariner Books edition 2016

  Copyright © 1966 by Margaret Walker Alexander

  Foreword copyright © 2016 by Nikki Giovanni

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  www.hmhco.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 978-0-544-81212-3 (pbk.)

  Cover illustration © Jeffrey Fisher

  eISBN 978-0-544-81219-2

  v1.0816

  This book is dedicated to all the members of my family with all my love. It is especially for my mother, my husband, my sisters, and brother because they helped to make it possible. It is for my four children that they may know something of their heritage. And it is to the memory of my grandmothers: my maternal great-grandmother, Margaret Duggans Ware Brown, whose story this is; my maternal grandmother, Elvira Ware Dozier, who told me this story; and my paternal grandmother, Margaret Walker.

  Jubilee

  We are climbing Jacob’s ladder,

  We are climbing Jacob’s ladder,

  We are climbing Jacob’s ladder,

  for the year of Jubilee!

  Every round goes higher, higher,

  Every round goes higher, higher,

  Every round goes higher, higher,

  to the year of Jubilee.

  Do you think I’ll make a soldier?

  Do you think I’ll make a soldier?

  Do you think I’ll make a soldier?

  in the year of Jubilee?

  Traditional Negro Spiritual

  FOREWORD

  And So We Sing of Jubilee

  COMMON SENSE SAYS a couple of Europeans with rifles didn’t one day sail off to the African coast and begin the Slave Trade. We know from what we can see that the trade in people, for whatever reason, and most especially the trade in women and children, goes on even today. We can call it prostitution or child labor or whatever we wish to make it sound all right or at least different but it is still slavery. We know various African peoples sold various African peoples for various reasons. Some of these folk were going to find themselves on auction blocks, being bid upon by Europeans, put down into Cape Coast Castle or over to Gorée Island until there was a “cargo” taken on the Middle Passage to what would become America. We know these people were packed head to toe, head to toe one on top of the other, so that whatever came out of the one on top fell on the one below. We understand that the, let’s call them “purchasers,” understood if they didn’t bring the people up, there would be no living cargo. We can see that on the third or fourth day these people were brought on deck. They were splashed with seawater then, as one might drive an automobile from the garage to the street and back to keep the tires in shape, made to hop from foot to foot to keep the muscles from deteriorating. On the first “on deck” the people could look out and see the land. It’s only natural that some jumped overboard to swim back “home.” It’s totally illogical that we think Africans could not or did not swim. We also know that the waters held sharks, which would soon learn if they followed the ships they would be fed across the Atlantic. (Even today when I hear of a shark attack I think, Had we not been carried from our homeland, the sharks maybe would not have made their way across the Atlantic. But that might be a different story.) We all know the result of those who were steadied on board. The people were corralled and put back down. We have to understand, on the fifth or sixth day when the people were brought up they could no longer see the land but they could see the clouds over the land. Clouds over water and clouds over land are different, so the people might still have an idea of where they were and could imagine where they might be going. Still, some jumped overboard, some attacked, some were killed, and some died. All ended in the water. But we definitely know from the ship captains’ logs that the tenth day was going to be the most dangerous day. On that day when the people came up they could see nothing familiar. Not land or clouds, not the bend of the Earth. The tenth day was the day every white man and woman on board, and there were women on these ships, had to be armed. They knew the people would furiously fight and they knew they had to fight back. We all know the result. The people who were put back down had decisions to make.

  There was probably an old black woman who was purchased cheaply. Someone probably laughed at the purchase: “She’s so old. What you gonna do with her?”
But he purchased her anyway. “You never know.” Now this purchase was going to pay off. Down in that darkness with defeat all around this woman knew she needed to do something to save her people. She did not speak the language of most of the folk tethered with her. They were after all from different communities. Much as if someone had herded parts of the German, French, Portuguese, and Spanish communities into a boat. They had a different language and different ways of looking at things. But they all knew they were defeated. She had to find a way to lift them together. The only thing she had was a moan. And she moaned. That moan would become a Spiritual; that Spiritual would become Jazz; which would become Blues then Rhythm and Blues then Rap. That moan would define not only a people but the nation to which they were sailing. That moan would make those people decide that they should, that they could, live.

  When they arrived on these shores they were once again put on an auction block. It can never be a wonder that blacks go so easily onstage to sing or dance or make silly jokes. Or are so comfortably patient while waiting to be drafted by the NFL or NBA. We have been on auction blocks all of our existence. The people were sold to various communities where they worked to build the communities and the homes in which they would live. They worked to build churches in which they could worship and they learned to worship a man who was crucified on a hill with two thieves. He said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” The people learned to forgive those who sold and bought them. The people learned to forgive those who came into a church and killed nine of them. The people learned to believe that to take pain is more honorable than the evil to inflict it. The people learned to love. They accepted and invented names and they heard those who had purchased them call for Liberty-Justice-Equality. They knew if this land was to be worth anything, they would have to be included. If this land were to be made whole, everyone would have to be included. The America that we know, the possibility, could only be with the faith of these people in the words they helped make come true. While we take pride in the persistence of Booker T. Washington and Mary McCleod Bethune, we also imagine that fourteen-year-old African boy, who realized his uncle was going to sell him, squeezing that peanut so tightly. It is easy to understand, as he stood on the auction block and was sold, put down and was afraid, survived to stand yet again, that he held on to that peanut. We can see him being marched to a community in Virginia and kissing the ground upon which he would labor for the remainder of his life. While kissing that ground he rested that peanut into it and Virginia became the Peanut Capital of the World, though it hardly gave a nod to George Washington Carver. We can see that young mother having her infant snatched from her being carried off to be sold. We can see her grandmother putting an okra seed in her hand as she is carried off. This young woman would be made to breed on the ship and give birth on this land. She held on to that okra seed until she could plant it. We watched these people learn to love despite it all.

  While we marvel at the genius of W.E.B. Du Bois, while we all sing the great songs of Nat “King” Cole and Marvin Gaye and Shake Shake Shake with Little Richard, while we honor the words of Martin Luther King Jr. and hang our heads at the timidity of Barack Obama, we look deeply into our hearts to remember the folk in the dark days of travel and the sad days of segregation and recognize the faith those people had as they stepped off that ship and redefined themselves. They knew they could not return to the place from which they were sold; they understood the only way forward is a redefinition of this land to which they came. Whether by choice (not likely) or by force, the black woman gave birth to a new people. Those who would never have known each other came together to birth that which had not existed. When we think of Space, when we begin to understand the Martian, we know we must send a black woman on that ship. She is the one who will weather the journey; she will find a song. When she arrives on Mars she will be the one who will greet the life form there and should it be nice and friendly perhaps find a way to mate with it. From her body once again will come a new or at least an unidentified life form. She will nourish it and sing to it and tell it her history. She will give it the strength to go forward in love. She will teach it freedom. She will teach it patience. She will teach it stories of a God to worship.

  She will say: We are Jubilations and we will be the future. She will sing For My People stories that keep hope in our hearts. She knows that the true Jubilee will be the day that Earth embraces this universe granting love and freedom to all. And so we celebrate: Jubilee.

  Nikki Giovanni

  Poet

  I

  Sis Hetta’s Child

  THE ANTE-BELLUM YEARS

  Swing low, sweet chariot,

  Coming for to carry me home . . .

  1

  Death is a mystery that only the squinch owl knows

  “MAY LIZA, HOW COME you so restless and uneasy? You must be restless in your mind.”

  “I is. I is. That old screech owl is making me nervous.”

  “Wellum, ’tain’t no use in your gitting so upsot bout that bird hollering. It ain’t the sign of no woman nohow. It always means a man.”

  “It’s the sign of death.”

  Grandpa Tom, the stable boy, and May Liza, Marster’s upstairs house girl, were sitting on the steps of their cabins in the slave Quarters. It was not yet dusk-dark. An early twilight hung over the valley, and along the creek bank fog rose. The hot Spring day was ending with the promise of a long and miserable night. A hushed quiet hung over the Quarters. There were no children playing ring games before the cabins. The hardened dirt-clay road, more like a narrow path before their doors, was full of people smoking corncob pipes and chewing tobacco in silence. Out on the horizon a full moon was rising. All eyes were on the cabin of Sis Hetta, where she lay on her deathbed sinking fast.

  Inside Sis Hetta’s cabin the night was sticky hot. A cloying, sweetish, almost sickening smell of Cape jessamine, honeysuckle, and magnolias clung heavily to the humid night air. Caline, a middle-aged brown-skin woman with a head of crinkly brown hair tied in a knot on her neck, imposing eyes, and the unruffled air of importance and dignity that one associated with house servants, stood beside the sickbed and fanned Sis Hetta with a large palmetto fan. Caline knew Hetta was dying. As soon as supper was over in the Big House, Caline came to see what she could do. Aunt Sally, cook in the Big House, couldn’t get away with Caline but she sent word, “Tell em I’ll be along terreckly.” Fanning Sis Hetta in the hot night seemed all there was left to do for her, and so Caline kept fanning and thinking: Sis Hetta was a right young woman, younger than Caline, and she got with all those younguns fast as she could breed them. Caline had no children. She had never known why. Maybe it was something Old Marster made them do to her when she was a young girl and first started working in the Big House. Maybe it was the saltpeter. Anyway, Caline was glad. Slaves were better off, like herself, when they had no children to be sold away, to die, and to keep on having till they killed you, like Hetta was dying now.

  Out on the Big Road, May Liza and Grandpa Tom could barely discern a man in the distance. As he drew nearer they could see he was riding a small child on his shoulders.

  “Brother Zeke,” breathed May Liza.

  “Yeah,” and Grandpa Tom took his pipe out of his mouth and spat.

  “That’s Sis Hetta’s last child she had for Marster, Zeke’s riding on his shoulder.”

  “How you know?”

  “I hear tell they done sent clean over to Marster’s other plantation cause Hetta wants to look at her youngun.”

  “Be her last look, I reckon.”

  “Yeah, I reckon so.”

  Now in the tricky light of the half-night they saw a figure wearing long trailing skirts of a woman. She was walking slowly at a short distance behind Brother Ezekiel.

  “Mammy Sukey’s coming too.”

  “You know she ain’t leaving that gal out of her sight. That’s Marster’s youngun they give her to raise.”

  “Marster don’t care no
thing bout that youngun. Mammy Sukey’s got her cause Jake won’t leave her be in peace with him and Hetta. They say he pinch that gal when she wasn’t nothing but a suckling baby.”

  “Wellum ’twarn’t no use in that. Jake knowed Hetta been having Marster’s younguns long as they can remember.”

  “Reckon how he knowed?”

  Hetta was twenty-nine years old, although this was a fact she could not verify. After having given birth to fifteen children, all single births, she was waiting for death in childbed. Her thin bony fingers clutched nervously at the ragged quilt that covered her. Evidently her mind wandered back over happier and earlier days, for her quick beady eyes, glittering with fever, sometimes lighted up, and although she was nearly speechless, Caline fancied she heard the sick woman muttering words. Hetta was a woman who had never talked much.

  Another black woman, small, and birdlike in her movements, moved in and out the cabin carrying china washbowls and pitchers of hot water; moving blood-soaked rags and clothing, watching the face of the sick woman to whom she had fed laudanum to ease the pain of these last three days. Granny Ticey was deeply dejected. She moved to keep her hands busy and occupy her mind. She had always been proud of her reputation of rarely losing her patients. Babies she lost, but mothers seldom. She had been uneasy all week about Hetta. It wasn’t the first time this heavy breeding woman, whose babies came too fast, tearing her flesh in shreds, had had a hard and complicated time. She did not like either the looks or the actions of Hetta and she told Jake and Marster, or at least tried to communicate her fears to them. Of course it was true there wasn’t anything too much she had to base her fear on. Hetta was sick every day this last time. Toward the end she rarely left her bed. She was bloated and swollen beyond recognition. But Jake said nothing, as usual, and Marster only laughed. Eight days ago when Granny Ticey saw the quarter moon dripping blood she knew it was an evil omen. When Jake came for her and said Hetta’s time had come she did not want to go, because she knew nothing was right. But she went and she stayed, and now grim and wordless she watched the night lengthen its shadows outside Sis Hetta’s door.