Slavery by Another Name (30 page)

had got en kil ed out there, and never could prove who did it. The

Cosbys are pret y bad folks. If a strange negro walked along the

road they would catch him up and put him on the chain gang." The

Turner farm was particularly notorious for sadistic in ictions upon

Turner farm was particularly notorious for sadistic in ictions upon

sexual y de ant black women. At one point, an African American

woman named Hazel Slaughter suddenly reappeared in Dadevil e

after a months-long disappearance. She showed other women in the

community how her stomach was scarred and raw from an at ack

by dogs used to track her down after an at empted escape from the

farm of Fletch Turner. In whispered tones, Slaughter said she had

run away after watching Turner's teenage son, Al en, use a spade to

beat to death another black prisoner, named Wil ie Ferral .

Bloodhounds were set on her track. They tore through the woods

behind her as she ed, nal y running her down miles from the

farm. Before guards caught up on horseback and began dragging

Slaughter back to service on the Turner farm, the dogs had torn the

clothes from her body and ripped open her stomach.

The account was more than plausible. Stories circulated in the

county months earlier that Al en Turner had kil ed a young black

woman on the farm named Sarah Oliver. Another black woman,

Cornelia Hammock, was arrested in Dadevil e and charged with

larceny on May 20, 1902, according to the rudimentary trial docket

erratical y maintained by the town's mayor. She pleaded innocent,

but was immediately declared guilty by the mayor and ned a total

of $16.40. Unable to pay the ne, Hammock was ordered to the

farm of Fletch Turner to work until November 1903—a total of

eighteen months. She survived only two days. No cause of death

was recorded. Her death was never investigated.35

"It is the general talk of the colored people in and about

Dadevil e," swore a local black leader a year after the kil ing. The

stories were "reported to colored people by other colored people

who have been there that these practices are carried on there al the

time…. Colored people believe it."36

Tal apoosa County had become the embodiment of the casual new

slavery ourishing across the South. White southerners had clearly

won the national debate over who would decide the future of the

country's black population. As southerners had insisted for more

country's black population. As southerners had insisted for more

than a decade, the nation's "Negro problem" would be dealt with

using the southern, white man's solution. None of the ostensible

al ies of black citizenship would act meaningful y to stop it.

From the perspective of most white Americans, the new racial

order had been a rmed formal y and informal y at the highest

levels of society. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling four years earlier

i n Plessy v. Ferguson, sanctioning "separate but equal" public

facilities for blacks and whites, sancti ed the wave of new

legislation and business practices requiring disparate treatment of

blacks and whites. The ruling's e ects went far beyond the courts

and legislative chambers. The open wil ingness of the highest court

to base its seminal ruling on claims that were so clearly false—that

train cars designated for blacks were no di erent from those of

whites—sent a profound message to al Americans. So long as

whites performed at least the bare rituals of due process and

cloaked their actions behind claims of equality, the crudest abuses

of blacks and violations of their protections under law would rarely

ever be chal enged.

The neo-slavery of the new century relied on a simple but

extraordinary ruse that the Supreme Court's ruling implicitly

endorsed. Men such as Franklin, Pruit , Kennedy, Berry, and Todd,

in places like Goodwater and Tal apoosa County, could safely force

a black man into servitude for months or years as long as they

pretended that the legal rights of those black men had not been

violated. The implications were as deeply absorbed by black

people as were the rhythms of farming in the era of old slavery.

This long era of false trials and arrests would taint the African

American view of legal processes and guarantees for generations to

come.

In the larger scheme of what was happening across the South, the

capture of John Davis was a routine, inconsequential event. John

Pace acquired a steady stream of mostly anonymous black men

throughout the year leading to the seizure of Davis. Pace and his

son-in-law Anderson Hardy bought Jack Melton in February 1901,

using the pretext of a fake warrant signed by James Kennedy

using the pretext of a fake warrant signed by James Kennedy

accusing Melton of the ubiquitous al egation of "violating a writ en

contract." In April of that year, Elbert Carmichael was seized. Then

came Ed Burroughs, on an al egation no one could later recol ect.

He was fol owed by Joe Hart and Otis Meyers. Just before

Hal oween—a month after Davis was kidnapped and sold—Pace

bought Lewis Asberry for $48.

Through the winter and approaching spring planting of 1901, the

seizures of black men continued steadily37 After the turn of the year

came Joe Pat erson, the de ant black man sold for $9.50 to

Anderson Hardy, who in turn resold him to Pace. Pat erson had

been arrested in Goodwater and convicted by "Judge" Jesse London,

the same storekeeper who "convicted" John Davis the previous fal .

On January 17, 1902, Franklin and Pruit were back at the Pace

farm o ering a young boy named W. S. Thompson, convicted at

Goodwater of carrying a concealed pistol. Pace paid $50 for him.

The so-cal ed witness to Thompson's signature on a contract

agreeing to work for Pace for one year to pay o his nes was

Lewis Asberry—the black man seized three months earlier. Ten

months later, Pace sold Thompson back to his mother.38

Near the end of February, Turner wrote a check to John G.

Dunbar, the Goodwater town marshal, against his account at

Tal apoosa County Bank in the amount of $40. On the memo line,

Turner scratched: "Cost of nes for 3 Negroes." In March, Robert

Franklin delivered to Pace a black man named Hil ery Brooks and

traded him for $35.

The seizure of black men on the back roads of the South was no

longer even a brazen act. Note Turke, a young black man from the

Tal apoosa County hamlet of Notasulga, held a job as a free worker

with Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad in Birmingham. After a visit

home, he was walking down a dirt road outside Dadevil e on the

way to catch a train back to Birmingham on a harshly cold day in

the middle of November 1902. Suddenly Burancas Cosby, the son of

W. D. Cosby, appeared on the road and tackled Turke without

W. D. Cosby, appeared on the road and tackled Turke without

provocation.39

"Where are you going?" Cosby shouted.

"To the depot," Turke replied.

"Do you want a job?"

"I already have one. I'm on my way to it."

"Where are you from?" Cosby asked.

Turke explained where he lived, who his family was, and even

rat led o the names of white people he knew, al in a vain e ort

to demonstrate that he was a black man who deserved not to be

molested or harmed. The result was only to convince Cosby that

Turke was a worker worth having.

"You are a very good nigger. You bet er stop over with me,"

Cosby proclaimed, pointing to his house up the road. Cosby

mounted his horse and continued on his way.

Turke knew bet er than to go to the white man's house. He

hurried toward the train station, stil miles away. Cosby, no doubt

uncertain of whether he could manhandle Turke in a one-on-one

struggle, stayed behind. But soon Cosby caught back up, this time

accompanied by a boisterous crowd of other white men.

"Turn around and go back with me," Cosby shouted.

Turke could do lit le else.

Cosby took him to the farm of his uncle, George Cosby, and

locked him inside a corncrib. The next morning, a black farmhand

named Luke unlocked the door and took Turke before George

Cosby.

"Hel o, young man, what are you doing here?" the elder Cosby

asked through the slats holding Turke and the bulging harvest of the

farm's corn crop.

"I don't know. They have got me here. I don't know what for."

"What are you going to do about it?" Cosby said.

"I don't know. I am a stranger here. They stopped me and got me

here. I cannot help myself," Turke said.

here. I cannot help myself," Turke said.

"Young man, didn't you know they would do things like that?

There are grand rascals about here. Do you want me to go your

bond?"

Turke was abbergasted. "I have not done anything for you to go

my bond."

Cosby, playing out the thin charade of a kind and reasonable

white man, told Turke that he should plead guilty to whatever

charge the white men claimed against him. "If they cal on you, you

plead guilty," Cosby said. "If you say you want me to go, I wil get

you out of this thing and work you."

"Plead guilty of what?" Turke asked. "I am guilty of one thing,

that is going on the public road, and I thought that was free for

everybody."

"You plead guilty and you wil get of light," Cosby reassured him.

"I am in a strange county," Turke replied. "But if you wil al ow

me a chance to write or telegraph home …"

"No, we don't want that at al , you go ahead and plead guilty—

whenever they get their hands on you they are going to do what

they like with you. You just plead guilty."

Turke nal y told the older white man that he and his son would

have to do whatever they chose—kil him or imprison him—but

that he would not plead guilty to a crime dreamt up by others. "Kil

me or do what you please," Turke said. "I propose to do what is

right."

As dark fel , Burancas Cosby and the gang of white men returned

and took Turke into the night. They dragged him outside a window

at the home of another white man who was a justice of the peace.

Turke never heard his name. Talking beneath the raised sash of the

window, the justice astonishingly said he wouldn't play along with

the ruse that night. "Men, I can't have anything to do with this

thing," the justice said. "I have had a lot of those things before me,

and I told you not to come before me any more with such things as

that."

The mob took Turke back to the log crib. The next day, they

The mob took Turke back to the log crib. The next day, they

returned, on horseback, buggies, and wagons, and took Turke to a

smal warehouse where another ostensible justice of the peace

waited. He dutiful y pronounced Turke guilty, though it wasn't clear

of what crime, and fined him $15 plus unspecified costs.

Turke had already been robbed by one of the white men of the

$5.41 and a pocketwatch he carried on the rst day of his

kidnapping. He had nothing with which to pay. George Cosby

appeared and proclaimed he had paid the ne. He took the silent

black man back to his farm and the corn-crib and its iron lock.

The system by which John Pace and Fletch Turner obtained black

men for their farms, sawmil s, and limestone quarry was more

re ned than the Cos-bys’ brutish tactics. The two men often spent

their days on the square in downtown Dadevil e, awaiting word via

telegraph of their various enterprises and the frequent arrival of

regular procurers of black labor, who arrived daily on the two train

runs stopping at the town depot.

Robert Franklin and Francis Pruit , the two men who seized John

Davis, were the county's most important traders in black men. At

forty-six years old, Franklin was the most atavistic of the half dozen

constables and deputies who were routinely on the prowl for black

men on behalf of Pace and Turner. In addition to his store, Franklin

was commissioned as a night watchman, paid $30 a month by the

town of Goodwater. He made easily as much again in the traf icking

of black laborers.40

Pruit , thirty-six years old, also worked as a night watchman in

Good-water and operated a livery stable as a sideline. He received

$42 a month to police the town and col ected a $2-per-family

annual tax for upkeep of the unpaved streets. Altogether, he eked