Slavery by Another Name (29 page)

with the Hardys was Joseph G. Smith, another guard, renting a bed,

and Mary Smith, a thirty-seven-year-old black women listed as a

servant. Hardy kept four black men aged twenty-eight to thirty-two

years locked in a cel nearby. Final y, there was the prisoner

Maurice Cunningham, an il iterate ten-year-old black "water

carrier," who spent his days sprinting from man to man on the farm

with a simple wooden bucket of water and dipper made from a

dried gourd.31

The last residence before reaching the big house where John Pace

lived was the home of James H. Todd, a guard on the plantation

who rented a room to Arther Berry, a forty-year-old overseer who

acted as Pace's whipping boss.

When Kennedy arrived at the main house on the plantation, he

listed the members of Pace's family in the same straightforward

fashion as he had at almost every other home on Red Ridge Road.

There was John, forty-six years old, his wife of twenty years, Mol ie,

and a sixteen-year-old son, Fulton—a studious boy who was already

working as a teacher in the nearby school for white children. Also

living in the home was Catherine, the black cook who had grown

up from slavery times with John Pace.

Beyond the inner circle of the blood-related family members,

converting the sordid particulars of the farm and its other

inhabitants onto the clinical grids of a census bureau enumeration

form wasn't simple. How, for instance, to categorize the rest of the

form wasn't simple. How, for instance, to categorize the rest of the

Pace farm population's relationship to John Pace, the head of

household? Or of the ve African Americans held in the crude cel

at Hardy's place? Kennedy could not cal them slaves—slavery was

abolished. The census bureau's old "Slave Schedules," listing

unnamed human chat el by sex and age, hadn't been used since

1860. Yet for al practical purposes that was what these black

workers were. Kennedy could not cal them "boarders," as paid

farmworkers living on a worksite were commonly cal ed on

government forms. That was the term used for Pace's various guards

rooming with nearby white families. In his rst pass through the

paperwork, Kennedy simply skipped the column altogether.

Beneath the names of the Pace family members, Kennedy rst

listed the eleven men then on the property who had been delivered

by the sheri s or other authentic police o cials of Tal apoosa or

Coosa county, ostensibly for commit ing misdemeanors. Most were

young, single, strong adults. Al of them were black. Most could

read and write at least a lit le. Henry McClain, twenty-two years

old, Mil edge Hunter, eighteen, Erwise Sherman, thirty, Harry

Montgomery, twenty-one, Jim Miles, thirty-two, Eman-ual Tripp, a

twenty-six-year-old Arkansas boy now very far from home.

Familiarity exempted no black man from the fates of the Pace farm:

Green Lockhart, aged twenty-four, was almost certainly a

descendant of slaves formerly owned by a white family of the same

name at the other end of Red Ridge.

Mixed in with the young men were other African Americans with

larger lives and responsibilities waiting for them elsewhere. Isom

Mosely and Alwest Hutchinson were both thirty-one years old and

married. Mosely had three children somewhere. Wil ie Ferrel ,

twenty-nine, had ten youngsters at home. Henry Wilson, at fty

years old the dean of these men and the father of nine children, had

owned a farm of his own at the time of his capture.

Each of them came under the labor and control of Pace through

at least a semblance of a formal judicial process, though the

legitimacy of al the misdemeanor arrests and convictions was

doubtful. Kennedy listed those men as "convicts." But in addition,

doubtful. Kennedy listed those men as "convicts." But in addition,

Pace was also holding seven other blacks. Augusta Wright, thirteen

years old, was listed as a housemaid. Two sets of brothers were

being worked in the elds: Archer Lewis, aged twelve, and Q. F.

Lewis, just ten. Luke Tinsley was thirteen, and Henry Tinsley was

ten. None had learned to read or write.

Pace had seized the Tinsley brothers as soon as they grew big

enough to pick cot on—to begin paying o a debt he claimed was

owed by their mother for a ne he paid on her behalf three years

earlier, in 1897.32 Luke, already bulking into the young frame of a

man, could swing a hoe as wel as almost any other laborer. Henry,

a smal boy with smooth dark black skin and chocolate hair,

skit ered across the eld to keep up with his brother and avoid the

gru shouts of the two adult African Americans overseeing the

children in the elds. Both adults were former slaves, now almost

certainly being held by force: P. Johnson, a forty- ve-year-old man

born in Virginia, and Josephine Dawson, a thirty- ve-year-old wife

and mother. On his second pass, Kennedy described the group being

held against their wil as "servants."

The largest elds of the Pace farm had long been cleared of forest

and tamed into productive cot on. But on the boundaries, and in

adjacent property he acquired in the 1890s, Pace's enterprises were

a crude blade cut ing into the raw of the land. His holdings

included huge swaths of vestigial forest, stil choked with the same

massive timber that greeted the rst frontier set lers. Removing the

towering stands of oak, hickory, and pine, excavating and burning

the tremendous root systems they left behind in the river's ancient

al uvial deposits, releveling the ground, ditching to drain the new

elds: these were the monumental tasks required to continue

expanding Pace's smal empire. The means and methods of turning

the land to production were hardly changed from the times of

Elisha Cot ingham nearly a century earlier—axes and cross-saws,

mules and slaves.

The economic incentives for Pace were twofold. Clearing the land

The economic incentives for Pace were twofold. Clearing the land

expanded the range of his cot on production. But more

immediately, there was a buzzing market for the lumber he could

produce in clearing the giant trees of the property. Sawmil s were

busy in every section of Tal apoosa County, and Pace needed a

constant ow of new laborers to perform the backbreaking tasks of

clearing the "new ground" and keeping the sawmil in near-

continuous operation.

When John Davis arrived at the Pace farm a year after the census

enumeration, few of the African Americans recorded by James

Kennedy had escaped. Some, like Davis, had been fraudulently

snared as they traveled country roads and sold to Pace by ad hoc

constables, for amounts ranging from $40 and $75. Others were

arrested in towns and formal y convicted in the county seat for

al egedly violating some pet y o ense, most often vagrancy. For

most, there was lit le or no record made of their al eged crimes,

when their "sentences" would expire, or in some cases, even who

they were. Davis was held with men cal ed "Tal asee" and "Gypsy,"

whose identities and origins were never clear to him. No o cial

records of their "arrests" were ever created.

Each was coerced into signing a contract like the one entered into

by John Davis—agreeing to be held essential y as a slave for

approximately a year, locked as "a convict" at night, chained during

the day if Pace desired it, and obligated to continue working past

the expiration of the contract for as long as Pace claimed was

necessary to pay for medical or any other extra expenses over the

term of the agreement—including the cost of recapture if the

prisoner tried to escape. Occasional y, a friend or relative of a Pace

prisoner would appear and purchase their freedom. In the case of

highly productive laborers, Pace nearly always asserted a basis for

keeping them far longer than the original term—often extending

from two years up to ten.

The simplest method of adding additional time to a man's

contract was to accuse him of another made-up charge. A typical

ploy was to claim that a black worker had violated his or her

contract by eating food they weren't entitled to, or rearresting them

contract by eating food they weren't entitled to, or rearresting them

as they departed at the end of the contract on a claim that they

were leaving with clothes that actual y belonged to Pace. Another

theatrical "trial" would be held before one of the various justices of

the peace. If one of the other white men was interested in obtaining

a particular African American, Pace routinely sold them for a

premium over what he had original y paid. In those cases, Pace

made a pro t in addition to the value of the year or more labor

received. The black worker was then compel ed to sign a new

contract with his buyer—usual y agreeing to work another year or

more to pay of his new "debt" to the white man.

To resist the system was more than foolhardy. Arther Berry, the

man Pace most often relied on to discipline his laborers, was like

most southern white men in his belief that black workers could

only be ful y productive if frequently subjected to physical

punishment. Berry's tool of choice was a three-inch-wide leather

strap. The whipping end was eighteen inches long, at ached to a

wooden handle. Berry or one of the other guards, ordered laborers

to lower their pants and lie on the ground while being whipped

with the strap on the but ocks, back, and legs. Those who resisted

were held down at the hands and feet by other laborers, often

stretched across a barrel or the stump of a tree. In the crude

environment of the farm's timber-cut ing operations, Berry would

whip with any available object if his strap was not handy, cut ing a

switch from a tree or using a sapling the size of a broom handle.33

Other whipping bosses on the farm were his brother, Jesse Berry,

and the thuggish guard James Todd.

One prisoner described in an a davit how the obedience of

laborers was enforced: "I was mistreated bad sometimes," said Joe

Pat erson, who became an object of particular cruelty. "Mr. Todd

whips the hardest. Sometimes Mr. Todd would tie [a convict's]

hands together and put them over the knee and put a stick in

between the legs and whip him with a big buggy trace, pul ed the

clothes down so he would be naked. Sometimes he would hit over

one hundred licks, sometimes fty, or seventy- ve times, sometimes

thirty—never less than thirty…. The whipping would take place in

thirty—never less than thirty…. The whipping would take place in

the eld or stockade, no doctor present and nobody to count the

licks, or time it."34

In another bit er echo of antebel um years, any e ort to escape

the slave farm risked not just the laborer who at empted to ee but

any black person he or she encountered. After a black man named

Dave Scot ran away, Pace tracked him down with dogs and then

arrested everyone on the property where he was taking refuge. Pace

ordered that Scot 's wife, four other family members, and two more

blacks found nearby be brought back for "harboring" the runaway

slave.

After being found guilty by James Kennedy, the half dozen

workers were sold to George Cosby, who held them in a stockade

surrounded by guard dogs and beat them regularly. When the

sentence of one of the workers , Lum Johnson, was about to expire,

he was rearrested and charged with stealing potatoes from another

nearby white farmer, Bob Patil o. Cosby took him back to his farm,

claiming he'd paid an $18 ne on his behalf. Johnson was forced to

sign another labor contract and returned to the stockade.

Nearly al the black residents of Tal apoosa and the surrounding

counties had heard stories about atrocities on the farms of Pace and

other forced labor enterprises in the area. Everyone knew black

men faced medieval-era punishments for any failure to work; black

women faced the double jeopardy of being required to submit both

to the cot on elds and kitchens, as wel as the beds of the white

men obtaining them.

A black neighbor near the farms named M. J. Scroggins said the

Cos-bys starved their forced laborers and were violent. "They would

feed the negroes on nothing but a lit le corn bread and syrup. Go

barefooted in cold weather, women and men," Scroggins said. "The

white people would be afraid to go by the Cosbys. Some people