Remembering Slavery by Ira Berlin

Author:Ira Berlin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2011-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

My father took me away from my mother when at age of six weeks old and gave me to my grandmother, who was real old at the time. Jus’ befo’ she died she gave me back to my father, who was my mammy’s master. He was a old batchelor and run saloon and he was white, but my mammy was a Negro. He was mean to me.

Finally my father let his sister take me and raise me with her chillen. She was good to me, but befo’ he let her have me he willed I must wear a bell till I was 21 year old, strapped ’round my shoulders with the bell ’bout three feet from my head in steel frame. That was for punishment for bein’ born into the world a son of a white man and my mammy, a Negro slave. I wears this frame with the bell where I couldn’t reach the clapper, day and night. I never knowed what it was to lay down in bed and get a good night’s sleep till I was ’bout 17 year old, when my father died and my missy took the bell offen me.

Befo’ my father gave me to his sister, I was tied and strapped to a tree and whipped like a beast by my father, till I was unconscious, and then left strapped to a tree all night in cold and rainy weather. My father was very mean. He and he sister brung me to Texas, to North Zulch, when I ’bout 12 year old. He brung my mammy, too, and made her come and be his mistress one night every week. He would have kilt every one of his slaves rather than see us go free, ’specially me and my mammy.

My missy was purty good to me, when my father wasn’t right ’round. But he wouldn’t let her give me anything to et but cornbread and water and little sweet ’taters, and jus’ ’nough of that to keep me alive. I was allus hongry. My mammy had a boy called Frank Adds and a girl called Marie Adds, what she give birth to by her cullud husban’, but I never got to play with them. Missy worked me on the farm and there was ’bout 100 acres and fifteen slaves to work ’em. The overseer waked us ’bout three in the mornin’ and then he worked us jus’ long as we could see. If we didn’t get ’round fast ’nough, he chain us to a tree at night with nothin’ to eat, and nex’ day, if we didn’t go on the run he hit us 39 licks with a belt what was ’bout three feet long an’ four inches wide.

I wore the bell night and day, and my father would chain me to a tree till I nearly died from the cold and bein’ so hongry. My father didn’t ’lieve in church and my missy ’lieved there a Lord, but I wouldn’t have ’lieved her if she try larn me ’bout ’ligion, ’cause my father tell me I wasn’t any more than a damn mule.

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