Alex Haley - Roots - The Saga of an American Family

“Soun’ like de Yankees ain’t leavin’ nothin’! Dem white mens swears dey’s burnin’ de fiel’s, de big houses, de barns! Dey’s killin’ de mules an’ cookin’ de cows an’ everythin’ else dey can eat! Whatever dey ain’t burnin’ an’ eatin’ dey’s jes’ ruinin’, plus stealin’ anythin’ dey can tote off! An’ dey says it’s niggers all out in de woods an’ roads thick as ants dat done lef ’ dey massas an’ plantations to follow dem Yankees ’til dat Gen’l Sherman hisself beggin’ ’em to go back where dey come fum!”

Then not long after the Yankees’ triumphal march had reached the sea, Tom breathlessly reported “Charleston done fell!” . . . and next “Gen’l Grant done took Richmon’!” . . . and finally in April of 1865, Gen’l Lee done surrendered de whole ’Federacy Army! De South done give up!”

The jubilance in the slave row was beyond any measure now as they poured out across the big-house front yard and up the entry lane to reach the big road to join the hundreds already there, milling about, leaping and springing up and down, whooping, shouting, singing, preaching, praying. “Free, Lawd, free!” . . . “Thank Gawd A’mighty, free at las’!”

But then within a few days the spirit of celebration plunged into deep grief and mourning with the shattering news of the assassination of President Lincoln. “ Eeeeeeevil! ” shrieked Matilda as the family wept around her, among the millions like them who had revered the fallen President as their Moses.

Then in May, as it was happening all across the defeated South, Massa Murray summoned all of his slaves into the front yard that faced the big house. When they were all assembled in a line, they found it hard to look levelly at the drawn, shocked faces of the massa, the weeping Missis Murray, and the Ol’ George Johnsons, who, too, were white. In an anguished voice then, Massa Murray read slowly from the paper in his hand that the South had lost the war. Finding it very hard not to choke up before the black family standing there on the earth before him, he said, “I guess it means y’all as free as us. You can go if you want to, stay on if you want, an’ whoever stays, we’ll try to pay you something—”

The black Murrays began leaping, singing, praying, screaming anew, “We’s free!” . . . “Free at las’!” ... “Thank you, Jesus!” The wild celebration’s sounds carried through the opened door of the small cabin where Lilly Sue’s son, Uriah, now eight years of age, had laid for weeks suffering a delirium of fever. “Freedom! Freedom!” Hearing it, Uriah came boiling up off his cot, his nightshirt flapping; he raced first for the pigpen shouting, “Ol’ pigs quit gruntin’, you’s free!” He coursed to the barn, “Ol’ cows, quit givin’ milk, you’s free!” The boy raced to the chickens next, “Ol’ hens quit layin’, you’s free!—and so’s ME!”

But that night, with their celebration having ended in their sheer exhaustion, Tom Murray assembled his large family within the barn to discuss what they should do now that this long-awaited “freedom” had arrived. “Freedom ain’t gwine feed us, it just let us ’cide what we wants to do to eat,” said Tom. “We ain’t got much money, and ’sides me blacksmithin’ an’ Mammy cookin’, de only workin’ we knows is in de fiel’s,” he appraised their dilemma.

Matilda reported that Massa Murray had asked her to urge them all to consider his offer to parcel out the plantation, and he would go halves with anyone interested in sharecropping. There was a heated debate. Several of the family’s adults wished to leave as quickly as possible. Matilda protested, “I wants dis family to stay togedder. Now ’bout dis talk o’ movin’, s’pose we did an’ y’all’s pappy Chicken George git back, an’ nobody couldn’t even tell him whichaway we’d gone!”

Quiet fell when Tom made it clear he wished to speak. “Gwine tell y’all how come we can’t leave yet—it’s ’cause we jes’ ain’t noways ready. Whenever we git ourselves ready, I’ll be de firs’ one to want to go.” Most were finally convinced that Tom talked “good sense,” and the family meeting broke up.

Taking Irene by the hand, Tom went walking with her in the moonlight toward the fields. Vaulting lightly over a fence, he took long strides, made a right-angle turn, and paced off a square, then striding back toward the rail fence, he said, “Irene, that’s going to be ours!” She echoed him, softly. “Ours.”

Within a week, the family’s separate units were each working their fields. A morning when Tom had left his blacksmith shop to help his brothers, he recognized a lone rider along the road as the former Cavalry Major Cates, his uniform tattered and his horse spavined. Cates also recognized Tom, and riding near the fence, he reined up. “Hey, nigger, bring me a dipperful of your water!” he called. Tom looked at the nearby water bucket, then he studied Cates’ face for a long moment before moving to the bucket. He filled the dipper and walked to hand it to Cates. “Things is changed now, Mr. Cates,” Tom spoke evenly. “The only reason I brought you this water is because I’d bring any thirsty man a drink, not because you hollered. I jes’ want you to know that.”

Cates handed back the dipper. “Git me another one, nigger.”

Tom took the dipper and dropped it back into the bucket and walked off, never once looking back.

But when another rider came galloping and hallooing along the road with a battered black derby distinguishable above a faded green scarf, those out in the fields erupted into a mass footrace back toward the old slave row. “Mammy, he’s back! He’s back!” When the horse reached the yard, Chicken George’s sons hauled him off onto their shoulders and went trooping with him to the weeping Matilda.

“What you bellerin’ fo’, woman?” he demanded in mock indignation, hugging her as if he would never let go, but finally he did, yelling to his family to assemble and be quiet. “Tell y’all later ’bout all de places I been an’ things I done since we las’ seen one’nother,” hollered Chicken George. “But right now I got to ’quaint you wid where we’s all gwine togedder!” In pindrop quiet and with his born sense of drama, Chicken George told them now that he had found for them all a western Tennessee settlement whose white people anxiously awaited their arrival to help build a town.

“Lemme tell y’all sump’n! De lan’ where we goin’ so black an’ rich, you plant a pig’s tail an’ a hog’ll grow ... you can’t hardly sleep nights for de watermelons growin’ so fas’ dey cracks open like firecrackers! I’m tellin’ you it’s possums layin’ under ’simmon trees too fat to move, wid de ’simmon sugar drippin’ down on ’em thick as ’lasses . . . !”

The family never let him finish in their wild excitement. As some went dashing off to boast to others on adjacent plantations, Tom began planning that afternoon how to alter a farm wagon into a covered “Rockaway,” of which about ten could move all of the units of the family to this new place. But by that sundown a dozen other heads of newly freed families had come—not asking, but demanding that their families, too, were going—they were black Holts, Fitzpatricks, Perms, Taylors, Wrights, Lakes, Mac-Gregors, and others, from local Alamance County plantations.

Amid the next two months of feverish activity, the men built the “Rockaways.” “The women butchered, cooked, canned, and smoked foodstuffs for travel and selecting what other vital things to take. Old Chicken George strode about, supervising every activity, loving his hero role. Tom Murray was thronged with volunteered assistance from yet more newly freed families, and with assurances that they would swiftly obtain their own wagons to become their family’s “Rockaways.” Finally he announced that all who wished could go—but that there must be but one “Rockaway” per family unit. When at last twenty-eight wagons were packed and ready to roll on the following sunup, in a strange calm sense of sadness, the freed people went about gently touching the familiar things, washpots, the fenceposts, knowing that it was for the last time.