The Barn in Salem Village by Paul V. Suffriti

Author:Paul V. Suffriti
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Co.

Chapter Seven

I stood among a group of black women in the middle of a large tobacco field. My eyes were fixed on one peculiar woman with a baby boy in a sack attached to her back and she was singing a song while her baby slept. When the women finished planting the hundreds of suckling they returned to their community of shacks. An older woman sat in a chair under a partially covered porch and yelled out the name Mabel. The woman walked toward her and handed her the baby. The older woman was the baby’s grandmother and she held him in front of her face then kissed his forehead. I heard her say I love you Michael as she rocked him gently in her arms. Mabel began to prepare the family meal and a little girl, seven or eight years old, helped her cut vegetables. Her husband was with other black men clearing land to grow more tobacco. The men worked the longest day on the plantation and labored from sunrise to sunset with one break during the middle of the day.

A huge towering black man walked toward the shack where the old woman sat with Michael. He said hi Mama and picked up Michael. He spun him around in the air and the sound of laughter came from his tiny voice. He walked through the doorway holding him in his arms and gave Mabel a kiss on her lips. She put her arms around his massive body and barely came up to his chest, his name was Samson. His father gave him the name because he was an abnormally large baby at birth. He spoke with a soft tender voice and was a gentle giant who kept his personal resentment against the white bosses to himself. His Mama was very vocal with words of anger toward the plantation owner. Her husband Willie was often whipped for his repeated cursing toward the owner and white bosses who constantly berated and beat the black men.

When Samson was eight years old a white boss took his older sister from their shack. He stood there and watched the man drag her outside and put her in a wagon. She screamed as the wagon pulled away, but no one helped her. She was brought back hours later and pushed off the wagon. Samson knelt next to her and held her in his arms as she wept. Willie came home that evening and learned what a white man had done to his daughter. The anger inside him raged into a hateful state of mind.

The next day Willie was working in the field when one of the white bosses approached him. The man told him that his little girl was a woman in bed. He beat the man to near death and other slaves in the field stopped working and watched. Willie and the slaves who cheered him on were taken away and tied to the whipping posts.

The men were beaten until the blood ran

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