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104 Contempt 7 In addition to family disruption, physical abuse, and regimentation ,therewereothermeansbywhichwhitepeopledemonstrated contempt for slaves. Some of these, occurring alone, might have seemed relatively insignificant; cumulatively, however, their effects could be devastating. Armaci Adams, after telling her interviewers her name and her place of birth, immediately pointed out that she did not know her date of birth. “Dey never give me my age,” she lamented. “White folks kept hit an’ never give it ter me.” Similarly, Arthur Greene claimed that in “dem days . . . none us slaves knowed our ’zact age. Old white folks wouldn’t tell niggers jes’ how old dey was.” This was one way by which slaves were made to feel they were “niggers”—a group undeserving the respect due to fully human beings. Lorenzo Ivy believed this form of disrespect arose from a crass financial motive. “I don’ know jes’ zackly how old I am . . . ,” he explained. “De white folks was ’spose to keep de ages of de slaves in order to know when dey was ’spose to start payin’ taxes on ’em. Guess you kin see now why dey warn’ so anxious ’bout keepin’ close tract of de ages of niggers” (Interviews, 1, 123, 151). Disrespect began at almost the instant a child was born. During the Civil War Yankee soldiers in Virginia made an enslaved woman show them her three-day-old infant and asked what the baby’s name was: “Ant Kiziah tole ’em dat Missus ain’t got round to namin’ it yet.” Not even the naming of their own child was the parents’ prerogative, if the mistress (or master) decreed otherwise (Interviews, 314).1 Little white children learned early that if they tormented a black child, they could probably get away with it. Fannie Berry Contempt 105 recalled that “white boys . . . used to pester de life outa [her younger brother]. Had a dog named Bowser, dey used to sick on him [i.e., goad the dog to attack the child]. De dog would jump an’ pull onto his shirt an’ make him cry an’ roll over. . . . ’Couse Miss Sarah Ann [Berry’s mistress] didn’t know it an’ I tole her. She scolded dem boys but dat didn’t stop ’em.” Even a white child, so well-disposed that he would sometimes share his school lessons with a slave child, might later turn on that same child and whip him—to compensate for having himself been punished by his schoolmaster earlier in the day (Interviews, 46, 301). Slave children were subject to the whims of their master, who might sometimes use them for his own obscure satisfactions, then terrify them with an act of unpredictable vehemence. Elizabeth Sparks’s husband, for example, told her about how, when he was a “pickinnany,” his bachelor master used to play with the little black children, egging them on to “run an’ grab ’is laig so’s he couldn’t hardly walk.” Having thus become entangled among the children, the master then thought the best way to free himself was to pull out his gun and shoot it over the children’s heads. “He didn’t shoot ’em; he jes’ shoot in the air an’ [the little boy] was so sceared he ran home an’ got in his mammy’s bed. . . . Ol’ Massa,” Elizabeth Sparks continued, “he, jes’ come on up ter the cabin an’ say, ‘Mammy, whah dat boy?’ She say, ‘In dah undah the bed. Yer done scared ’im to deaf!’ . . . Boy say, ‘Yer shot me, master, yer shot me!’ Master say, ‘ . . . I ain’t shot yer. I jes’ shot an’ scared yer. Heh! Heh! Heh!’ Yessir, my ol’ husband sayed he sure was scared that day” (Interviews, 277). Callous disregard of slaves’ feelings extended into their adult lives. Heavy, unwieldy agricultural tools were supplied to field hands, with no heed for the fatigue that the superfluous weight of these instruments entailed upon the laborers. The “old slave-time hoes . . . [were] broad like a shovel,” Allen Crawford remembered; “dey make ’em heavy.” This was not sheer willfulness on the masters’ part. A light hoe would have been easier for a slave to break if she or he wanted to sabotage the master’s production , and a heavy hoe might more surely dig below the weeds’ roots than a lighter one. “Dey make ’em heavy so dey fall hard,” Crawford acknowledged , “but de bigges’ trouble was liftin’ dem up.” Not only were these hoes much more tiring to use than they needed to be...

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