Alex Haley - Roots - The Saga of an American Family

For days, the black Murrays had caught only glimpses of the white Murrays. Matilda wept, “Lawd, I hates to think what dey’s goin’ through, I swears I does!”

Tom Murray had retired for the night within his wagon when he heard the light knocking at the tailgate. Somehow he knew who was there even before he opened the end flap. Ol’ George Johnson stood there, his face working with emotion, his hands wringing his hat. “Tom—like a word with you, if you got time—”

Climbing down from the wagon, Tom Murray followed Ol’ George Johnson off a way in the moonlight. When finally Ol’ George stopped, he was so choked with embarrassment and emotion that he could hardly talk. “Me and Martha been talkin’ ... jes’ seem like y’all the only folks we got. Tom, we been wonderin’ if y’all let us go along where you goin’?”

It was awhile before Tom spoke. “If it was jes’ my family, I could tell you right now. But it’s a lot mo’. I jes’ have to talk it over wid’em all. I let you know—”

Tom went to each other wagon, knocking gently, calling out the men. Gathering them, he told them what happened. There was a moment of heavy quiet. Tom Murray offered, “He was ’bout de bes’ oberseer for us I ever heard of ’cause he wasn’t no real oberseer at all, he worked wid us shoulder to shoulder.”

There was sharp opposition from some, some of it antiwhite. But after a while someone spoke quietly, “He can’t help it if he white—” Finally, a vote was taken, and a majority said that the Johnsons could go.

One day’s delay was necessary to build a “Rockaway” for Ol’ George and Martha. Then the next sunup, a single-file caravan of twenty-nine covered “Rockaways” went creaking and groaning off the Murray place into the dawn. Ahead of the wagons rode the derbied and scarfed sixty-seven-year-old Chicken George, carrying his old one-eyed fighting rooster atop his horse “Old Bob.” Behind him, Tom Murray drove the first wagon, with Irene beside him, and behind them, goggle-eyed in excitement, were their children, the youngest of them the two-year-old Cynthia. And after twenty-seven more wagons whose front seats held black or mulatto men and their wives, finally the anchor wagon’s seat held Ol’ George and Martha Johnson, who soon were peering to see clearly through the haze of dust raised by all the hoofs and wheels moving ahead of them toward what Chicken George had sworn would prove to be the promised land.

“Dis it?” asked Tom.

“De promised lan’?” asked Matilda.

“Where dem pigs an’ watermelons poppin’ out’n de groun’?” asked one of the children, as Chicken George reined his horse to a halt.

Ahead of them was a clearing in the woods with a few wooden storefronts at the intersection of the rutted road they were on and another one crossing it at right angles. Three white men—one sitting on a nail keg, another in a rocker, the third propped on the back legs of a stool with his back to a clapboard wall and his feet on a hitching post—nudged one another and nodded at the line of dusty wagons and their passengers. A couple of white boys rolling a hoop stopped in their tracks and stared, the hoop rolling on beyond them into the middle of the road, where it twirled a few times and fell. An elderly black man sweeping off a stoop looked at them impassively for a long moment and then broke into a small, slow smile. A large dog that was scratching himself beside a rain barrel paused, leg in the air, to cock his head at them, then went back to scratching.

“I done tol’ y’all dis here a new settlement,” said Chicken George, talking fast. “Dey’s only a hundred or so white folks livin’ roun’ here yet, an’ even wid jes’ our fifteen wagons lef’ after all dem dat dropped off to settle on de way here, we’s jes’ ’bout gon’ double de pop’lation. We’s gittin’ in on de groun’ flo’ of a growin’ town.”

“Well, ain’t nothin’ it can do but grow, dat’s sho’,” said L’il George without smiling.

“Jes wait’ll y’all sees de prime farmlan’ dey got,” said his father brightly, rubbing his hands with anticipation.

“Prob’ly swamp,” muttered Ashford, wisely not loud enough for Chicken George to hear.

But it was prime—rich and loamy, thirty acres of it for every family, scattered on checkerboard plots from the outskirts of town all the way to the white-owned farms that already occupied the best land in Lauderdale County, on the banks of the Hatchie River six miles to the north. Many of the white farms were as large as all of their property put together, but thirty acres was thirty more than any of them had ever owned before, and they had their hands full with that.

Still living in their cramped wagons, the families began grubbing up stumps and clearing brush the next morning. Soon the furrows had been plowed and their first crops planted—mostly cotton, some corn, with plots for vegetables and a patch for flowers. As they set about the next task of sawing down trees and splitting logs to build their cabins, Chicken George circulated from one farm to another on his horse, volunteering his advice on construction and trumpeting how he had changed their lives. Even among Henning’s white settlers he boasted about how those he had brought with him were going to help the town grow and prosper, not failing to mention that his middle son Tom would soon be opening the area’s first blacksmith shop.

One day soon afterward, three white men rode up to Tom’s plot as he and his sons were mixing a load of mud with hog bristles to chink the walls of his half-built cabin.

“Which one of you is the blacksmith?” one called from his horse.

Sure that his first customers had arrived even before he could get set up for business, Tom stepped out proudly.

“We hear you’re figurin’ to open a blacksmith shop here in town,” one said.

“Yassuh. Been lookin’ fo’ de bes’ spot to build it. Was thinkin’ maybe dat empty lot nex’ to de sawmill if ’n nobody else got his eye on it.”

The three men exchanged glances. “Well, boy,” the second man went on, “no need of wasting time, we’ll get right to the point. You can blacksmith, that’s fine. But if you want to do it in this town, you’ll have to work for a white man that owns the shop. Had you figured on that?”

Such a rage flooded up in Tom that nearly a minute passed before he could trust himself to speak. “Nawsuh, I ain’t,” he said slowly. “Me an’ my family’s free peoples now, we’s jes’ lookin’ to make our livin’s like anybody else, by workin’ hard at what we knows to do.” He looked directly into the men’s eyes. “If I cain’t own what I do wid my own hands, den dis ain’t no place fo’ us.”

The third white man said, “If that’s the way you feel, I ’speck you’re going to be ridin’ a long way in this state, boy.”

“Well, we’s used to travelin’,” said Tom. “Ain’t wantin’ to cause no trouble nowhere, but I got to be a man. I just wisht I could o’ knowed how y’all felt here so my family wouldn’t of troubled y’all by stoppin’ atall.”

“Well, think about it, boy,” said the second white man. “It’s up to you.”

“You people got to learn not to let all this freedom talk go to your heads,” said the first man.

Turning their horses around without another word, they rode off.

When the news went flashing among the farm plots, the heads of each family came hurrying to see Tom.

“Son,” said Chicken George, “you’s knowed all yo’ life how white folks is. Cain’t you jes’ start out dey way? Den good as you blacksmiths, won’t take hardly no time to git ’em to turn roun’.”