The Slaveys Dream

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 370, 2 June 1928, Page 22

The Slaveys Dream

(Written for THE SUN by EVELYN WHITELL.)

IN a green-shuttered wooden house, under the beating suns of Kansas, U.S.A., there lived a few years ago an oil coloured woman, one of the few remaining relics of the slave trade. As she told her story to me, I loeked once more thro’ the pages of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” that well-known book best understood by those -who, like myself, have visited the slave huts of Savannah, Georgia, and seen the whipp:ng-post and lash. With intense realism she described herself as the little piccaninny rolling in the heat of the sun and playing In the cornfields without a care, until, at an early age, she awoke to something different. Someone was missing from the slave hut: her father had been sold. She remembered her mother’s sorrow —cut off from her husband, not knowing where he had gone, not even alowed to say good-bye. Then, as the i years went on, the mother also was missing, sold into another part of the ' country and never seen again. She seemed to grow into a woman j over-night. Her mother’s work and responsibility were placed upon her • shoulders. She had only one relative left, the little brother she had care of since his birth. She wanted to save him from being sold. The little white boys in the house all went j to school: she wanted school for her little brother. She wanted him to read, as they did. The little white girls played the piano—she loved music—she would creep to the door and listen; then teach her little brother how to sing the tunes. But a change came quickly to her. One day all was in confusion. The family was disturbed, and kept her out of sight. She heard the firing of guns in the distance. A great fear entered her soul. Her master and mistress, were angry. Al night, when she went to bed, she put the clothes over her head and said the prayers her mother taught her, for protection. Then in a dream she saw men fighting, dressed in grey; but a voice spoke through the firing to her: “Fear nothing, little girl! These men have come to set you free.” Next night, when the stars shone brightly over Kansas plains and the moon was lifting above the clouds, she slipped out on the doorstep, disturbed by a noise not far away. It was a band of coloured men, taking horses from the stables, and led by George Ann, ths huge washer-woman known as the rebel slave —George Ann, who had held even her masters at bay by the strength of her gigantic body and powerful fists. Black as the ace of spades, it was her brag to coloured women that she was no white man’s darkie; and every piccaninny she brought forth was born of a coloured man. “Freedom is. coming,” they told the child, “and we’re going out to meet it.” Freedom? She stopped to think what It would mean. “It means you won’t have no more sore spots on your head and back ma honey,” laughed v George Ann.

She watched them all ride off across the plain on their master’s horses. She' heard the raising of windows and the call of the whites, now powerless to bring them back, and then she crept into her little hut to think of freedom. A few nights later, when there was no moon, the plain was crossed by other riders. Holding on to the mane of a bare-back horse, with her brother in front of her, the little slave girl made for freedom’s door. She had been told if she reached the tow T n she would have protection. There was but one way to go. The distance was too far to walk. She remembered that George Washington was. a sure-footed horse; that he knew his way to town in the dark as well as in the daylight. She trusted to his instinct, not knowing where he might be carrying her, until she heard the splash of water. She j knew then that they had reached the |:oad and were crossing the creek i where the white boys went to fish. They were more than half way to town land protection. ! She leaned forward on the sleeping | form of her little brother and dozed i until .daylight. She awoke to the belief that she was still dreaming: of j smoke and fire in the distance, and j lents and figures dressed in grey. It I seemed as if their faces turned directly towards her, and again she heard the words, “Fear nothing, little girl! These men are fighting for you.” “And then,’’ concluded the old woman, gazing out with a smile on the garden she now owned, “then—l got wages. Yes, marm, I learned to real like the little white girls, and my brother went to school, and sure enough to college. Then I got a husband and 16 piccaninnies of my own. Seems like I got everything but music. My! How I longed to play them good ole Glory Hallelujahs. “But my husband told me not to fret, we’d have the instrument even if we didn’t have the music. So he sure ’ do give me an organ for my Christmas ; gift.” “But why don’t you learn to play it?” I asked. “What’s the good of an instrument you don’t use? It’s like ' the man who bought a car for the ' sake of owning one, and spent his Sunday afternoons sitting in it and reading in the garage.” “Learn?” asked the old darkie, 1 throwing up her hands. “Why, chile, [ how could I learn? I’m over eighty!” “But if your wi-sh is strong enough , to learn,” I said, “even at eighty the j same power that took you over the ; prairie out of the darkness of slavery [ will stand by you again.” ; “Why, that’s right, honey,” she 1 said. So the slave’s dream of eighty years was realised. She began to take her , music lessons, and it was a proud day ' for every coloured relative, when, all ' starched frocks, bright bows, and perh fume, they turned into the little church D to see great-great-grandmother sit , down at the organ, and play her Glory 'Hallelujahs. Christchurch.