A Female Slave Fights Off Her Master- A True Slave Narrative

The Federal Writers Project was a make-work initiative by the Federal Government under Roosevelt during the Great Depression. It’s purpose was to give employment to out-of-work writers. Among its various projects, one of the most notable was its Slave Narrative Collection which interviewed surviving former slaves. It resulted in over 2,000 interviews and close to 10,000 pages of materials.

For those who are interested most of the audio recordings have been digitized by the Library of Congress and the majority of the writer material has been archived by Project Guttenburg. A link to which is here. The narrative below was given to a researcher in 1936 in Alabama, but unfortunately her identity has been lost to time.

“In them times white men went out with colored gals and women bold. Any time they saw one and wanted her, she had to go with him, and his wife didn't say nothin’ 'bout it. Not only the men, but the women went with colored men too. That's why so many women slave owners wouldn't marry, 'cause they was goin’ with one of their slaves. These things that have been goin’ on now ain't new, they've been happenin’. That's why I say you just as well should leave 'em alone because they gwine to do what they want to anyhow….

 

“My young marster wanted to go with me, and 'cause I wouldn't go with him, he pretended I had done somethin’ and beat me. I fought him back because he had no right to beat me for not goin’ with him. His mother got mad at me for fightin’ him back and I told her why he had beat me. Well then she sent me to the courthouse to be whipped for fightin’ him. They had stocks there where most people would send their slaves to be whipped. These stocks were in the shape of a cross, and they would strap your clothes up around your waist and have nothin’ but your naked part out to whip. They didn't care who saw your nakedness . Anyway they beat me that day until I couldn't sit down. When I went to bed I had to lie on my stomach to sleep. After they finished whippin’ me, I told them they needn't think they had done somethin’ by stripping me in front of all them folk 'cause they had also stripped their mama's and sisters. God had made us all, and he had made us just alike.

“They never carried me back home after that; they put me in the Nigger Traders Office to be sold. About two days later I was sold to a man at McBean. When I got to his place everyone told me there how mean he was and that his wife was still meaner. She was jealous if needed because I was light; she said she didn't know what her husband wanted to bring that half white nigger there for, and if he didn't get rid of me pretty quick she was goin’ to leave. Well he didn't get rid of me and she left about a month after I got there. When he saw she wasn't goin’ to come back 'til after I was gone, he took me back to the Niggers Trader's Office.

 

“As long as you warn't sold, your marster was 'sponsible for you, so whenever they put on the market you had to praise yourself in order to be sold right away. If you didn't praise yourself you got a beatin’. I didn't stay in the market long. A 'dissipated’ woman bought me and I done laundry work for her and other 'dissipated women’ to pay my board 'til freedom come. They was all very nice to me.

“Whenever you want sold your folk never knowed about it 'til afterwards, sometimes they never saw you again. They didn't even know who you was sold to or where they was carryin’ you, unless you could write back and tell 'em.

“The market was in the middle of Broad and Center Streets. They made a scaffold whenever they was goin’ to sell anybody, and would put the person up on this so everybody could see 'em good. Then they would sell 'em to the highest bidder. Everybody wanted women who would have children fast. They would always ask you if you were a good breeder, and if so they would buy you at your word, but if you already had too many chillun, they would say you warn't much good. If you hadn't ever had any chillun, your marster would tell 'em you was strong, healthy, and a fast worker. You had to have somethin’ about you to be sold. Now sometimes, if you was a real pretty young gaak, somebody would buy you without knowin’ anything's 'bout you, just for yourself. Before my old marster died, he had a pretty gal he was goin’ with and he wouldn't let her work nowhere but in the house, and his wife nor nobody else didn't say nothin’ 'bout it; but they knowed better. She had three chillun for him and when he died his brother come and got the gal and the chillun.

“One white lady that lived near us at McBean slipped in a colored gal's room and cut her baby's head clean off 'cause it belonged to her husband. He beat her 'bout it and started to kill her, but she begged so I reckon he got to feelin’ sorry for her. But he kept goin’ with the colored gal and they had more chillun.

 For more fun try books by Rex Hurst

 

Write-On-SC Writers Resource

Recently I’ve become co-host to a radio show on 100.7 The Point called Write-On-SC which interviews various writers around the state and discusses with the nuances of their individual genres and the difficulties of writing. Below are podcasts for the different shows. Hope you enjoy. 

Read Like a Writer: The act of analyzing what you read for benefit of improving your craft. With author Mary Sturgill 

https://writeonsc.simplecast.fm/6b909e8c 

Genre Basics: The ins and outs of writing in the Mystery genre. With author Peggy Cwiakala (chi-CO-la): https://writeonsc.simplecast.fm/ffd2a940 

Research for Historical Fiction part 1: How much is too much in historical fiction? How much historical reality is necessary? With Author Bonnie Standard:  https://writeonsc.simplecast.fm/16e0e50a

Research for Historical Fiction part 2: How much is too much in historical fiction? How much historical reality is necessary? With Mike Long:   https://writeonsc.simplecast.fm/f163a754 

     For more fun try books by Rex Hurst

The Last Love Note of Marie-Antoinette

As we all recall Marie-Antoinette was the last queen of France before the leftist uprising of the French Revolution. The most famous anecdote about her being that when she was told that the poor have no bread to eat, she replied, “Then let them eat cake instead.” Thus proving how out of touch and ignorant she was with the common people of France. Whether she actually said this or it was a wonderful piece of propaganda is up for debate at this point. 

However, what isn’t up for debate was that her husband was incredibly shy around women and disinterested in sex (apparently they didn’t consummate the marriage until four years after the ceremony). The royal personage preferred to dabble in cuckoo clocks than diddle his wife.

Thus the young girl took on a string of lovers. One of whom was a Swedish diplomat by the name of Axel Fersen, as we see in a letter from the Comte de Creutz to King Gustave III of Sweden.

Axel Fersen

“April 10, 1780

I must confide in your majesty that the young count de Fersen has so charmed the Queen that people have started whispering. I swear that I’m unable NOT to believe that she has a crush on him; I’ve seen too many signs to doubt it.

The young count has acted admirably by his discretion and above all by his decision to go off to America.”

Years later, Fersen joined a French expeditionary force and fought valiantly in the Revolutionary War. Marie-Antoinette was sentenced to death in 1793. Fersen then wrote to his sister, pouring out this love.

“August 24, 1793

If I could still do something, could try to free her. I would suffer less. Not being able to do anything, what’s so horrid…. My greatest happiness would be to die for her, but that happiness is denied me….”

After much activity and bribing Fersen managed to get a note smuggled into Marie-Antoinette’s prison cell. It read,

“Adieu. My heart is completely yours.”

But alas, the note arrived one day after she lost her head in the guillotine, unaware of this last token of love.

                    For more fun try books by Rex Hurst

On Waiting For the Flood That Never Came

The sky is falling. The sky is falling.

I'm no chicken little, but even I bought into the hype that hurricane Florence was gonna knock down my house. Living in Columbia, SC, we get about 4 to 5 warnings a year and 90% of the time it has turned out bogus or just a heavy rain. Granted the last time it actually hit, I was caught completely off guard, but this time it was the complete opposite.

Hurricane Florence was on the warpath and the price of coffins was gonna rise! - to paraphrase Mark Twain. To listen to the news all of the other floods and hurricanes would be a glob of spit in the ocean, compared to this event, it was a typhoon, locked in a box of tsunamis, covered in explosive diarrhea. I was urged from all sides to batten down the hatches and squirrel away enough food to last the apocalypse.

I had one thing going for me. My live-in girlfriend was off on a cruise around the Caribbean with friends of her, this reducing my need to bring in enough supplies for two. My cat, Boo Radley, would be out of luck, as I refuse to pack in more food for the little glutton. If supplies ran low, he would have to make do stealing scraps from my plate. An activity he is already well versed in.

To add to the hysteria, schools began closing with an alarming rate. Not just public schools, but private ones like my own institution, which is prone to staying open until the first meteor hits the ground. All of these closed rather rapidly on advice of the State’s governor. The state militia was then called out and a general state of panic set in. The I-26 was shut down for traffic to the coast and turned into a lanes heading west for the refugees to escape the assault.

What they told me was going on.

Having learned from my previous mistake, I went on all gut-busting adventure to find food to horde when God’s wrath finally materialized in my little town. Bottled water had already been drained from the local supermarkets, even the dollar stores and gas stations were empty. The stereotype of the slow-moving southerner didn’t play out here, they most damn fast when the smell disaster in the air.

Thus I concentrated on grabbing what I could from the closest store to my house and bunkering down for the duration. The problem, of course, is that a lot of non-perishable foods are all dehydrated and terrible or packed with preservatives or canned in some syrupy solution, so I got some snacks to go along with it. Actually it was a lot of snacks, salty and sweet. All the goodness of the corn-syrupy  rainbow. There was some fruit and stuff, but that might go bad and there was a chance I could be stuck alone in my home for awhile.

The time came. The dread rainfall was imminent and then… nothing. Nothing but some grey clouds and a light sprinkling of rain. The next day, nada again. New reports showed devistations all along the coast, but it was the brightest day of the year in my town. The day after that, bright skies and happiness. I settled down for several days of  an unexpected pleasant vacation, spending the time reading, writing, eating junk food, watching films, looking at the devastation elsewhere and playing video games. It was great. Little did I know a storm of a different nature was on the horizon.

What I actually saw. 

The problems came when my girlfriend reemerged on the scene. Our agreement was that if the city was wrapped in the throes of a tidal wave, then she and her friends would remain down in Florida until the storm blew over. When the roads proved to be clear, she showed up at my doorstep, where I was parked on the couch, surrounded by fast-food wrappers, and replaying Fallout 4.

“Where’s all the water?” she asked.

“I got Mountain Dew.”

“I don’t like Mountain Dew.”

“More for me then, huh?”

“Why didn’t you get water?”

“Everyplace was out of water.”

“But you should have gotten some for me?”

“Why?”

“In case we got flooded in.”

“If we were gonna get flooded in, you were supposed to stay away.”

“That’s not the point. You should’ve been prepared if I did come through.”

“Why the hell would you drive into a hurricane?”

“But what if I did? Don’t you care about me?”

“Sure, but I thought you were smart enough to stay out of the rain.”

“So you’re saying I’m stupid?”

“If you deliberately drove into that fucking hurricane you were.” 

“But I didn’t.”

“I guess not.”

“So you still should’ve gotten prepared in case I did.”

“Why?”

“Because it would’ve been nice to know you cared.”

“Ah, shut up!”

And on and on it went like this, like a record skipping back on itself.  She insists that she was right, that some mythical what-if scenario is more important that the cold hard reality that stocking up on extra food her was unnecessary. What is with people? If a person need reassurance, how about me just being happy to see them being enough. Do you really need all sorts of useless physical tokens to believe?

I guess so.

  For more fun try books by Rex Hurst

Weird Stuff From My Comic Collection II

Continuing with my series about odd and/or rare comics that I have discovered, this week I present new odd and/or rare comics from the yearly cull of my collection. The problem with having a reading addiction is that you inevitably collect a lot of books and, as my house is not the Tardis, space eventually runs out. Thus, I need to go through twice a year and remove tomes that I know I will never have the desire to glance through again. As I get older, this chore becomes easier and easier.

As I previously stated, there are a number of comics which you might be hard pressed to find… at least at a reasonable rate. Understand that these comics are rare, but not valuable. The reason they are rare is because there is no demand for them so they’ve never been reproduced. Lack of interest caused them to be tossed into a dollar bin and eventually were picked up by my greedy fingers.

Aarrgh

Written and drawn by Ken Struck, apparently there is a number one to this comic and a number three as well, but I’ve never seen a physical copy. This is listed as a mini-comic even though it’s actually larger than your average comic and printed on very heavy stock paper. But it was the strangeness of the piece which attracted me to it.

This comic was part of the next generation (newave) of underground cartoonists in the 1980s. He had some of his Tootles cartoons (pictured below) published in Weirdo magazine, which was edited by Peter Bagge at the time. After that came these few mini-comics and then nothing.

The art is not the best but the stories are hysterical. The man knew how to add the flavor of humor to any situation, whether domestic or bizarre. I remember passing this one around to my friends in High School and us all having a good laugh. And I’m genuinely sorry I can’t find any more material published from this author.

Tales of Jerry

Created by Jane J. Oliver, the subtitle on the first few issues of this indie comic was “The Stoned Vampire”. This might be the very definition of an underground comic. It’s in black and white and consists of series of stories around the titular Jerry from all across time- from the Renaissance to the Modern Era.

It is incredibly difficult to find information on this comic. Each issue had an average of five to seven stories. The first few issues were completely drawn by Oliver. However, as time went on, more and more illustrators drew individual stories to the comic. Starting in 1978, only ten issues were produced, averaging about one a year. The original author died in 1992 and her wish was for the comic to continue, but no one seems to have picked up the torch.

While the art is rough in places and certainly is not Marvel level professionalism, it has heart. The title is a labor of love and the joy of it’s creation is obvious in every line on every page.

I own about five issues of this series and, considering that each issue averaged about 2,500 copies, I’m probably lucky to have any. Whenever I looked for more, either it comes up nil, are issues I already own, or are way overpriced. I mean, I would like to buy it, but I’m not paying $40 for one underground comic, no matter how rare. It’s a pity someone hasn’t collected them all and put it out as a print on demand. Hell, they might even be in the public domain by now. I would but I only have half the story.

Dagar the Invincible

 I literally grabbed this one at random at the Soda City Comic Con. After my usual feeding frenzy, I was stripped of nearly all cash and weighed down by bags and bags of comics. I was about to leave, but that one final dollar was burning in my pocket. On the way out, the last (or first if you’re coming in) comic vendor had a sale box on beat-up Gold Key comics and I snagged one. Why not?

Most of Gold Key comics were crappy spin-off series, leeching off of the popularity from established names in television, cartoon, and film series. They produced comics like Daffy Duck, Happy Days, Tennessee Tuxedo, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. A little aside, in 1967 they also reprinted in English a little known Japanese manga called Kimba the White Lion. Many many people noticed striking similarities between the adventures of that character and Disney’s The Lion King. You can read the whole flap here if you want.

Back to Dagar the Invincible. Don’t feel ashamed if you’ve never heard of him. His run only lasted about 18 issues, but with a few minor stories appearing in several other books. He was part of Gold Key’s original series. Some went onto minor fame others didn’t. Ever hear of Magnus Robot Fighter, Turok Son of Stone, Doctor Solar, The Occult Files of Dr. Spektor? Probably not, well they’re also titles of Gold Key.

This series was somewhat unique in the comic book world of the early 70s in that it was a “sword and sorcery” title before Marvel licensed out Conan and started a boom of the genre. This is a fun read. The character really doesn’t rise above the big, brawny thug who cleaves through all his adversaries (mostly monsters, supernatural foes, and the occasional wizard). He travels around finding a new city or town each story and has no friends. It’s very decent if you’re just looking for some old school, uncomplicated, barbarian rage fun.

  For more fun try books by Rex Hurst

Weird Stuff From My Comic Collection

As an obsessive reader, I have picked up all sorts of oddities over the years. If you spot me at comic cons or book sales, I am the guy at the 50 cent bins digging furiously for bits and pieces of obscure treasure (another man’s trash). After a con, my friends would rush in bragging of their finds saying,

“Hey look, I got this signed Matt Wagner print for only $50.”

And I’d throw up and armload of merchandise and retort, “Hey look, for that same 50, I got a hundred comics.”

This would cause them to back away and be reduced to tears.

And I would rub the salt in the wound by saying, 
"Oh yeah! Suck on these balls, bitch!" 

Inevitably, as they are so inexpensive, I end up with a lot of odd selections. I’m not saying that everything I got was great, but they were different and I’ve always gravitated towards different. So for those who are interested, here are a few pieces that I’ve picked up over the years.

Mr. T and the T Force

As you can see from the photo (sorry about the glare), my copy is still sealed in its bag with the collectable trading card intact - meaning that it’s worth like… a lot of money. And if you look closely, yes, it was drawn by comic legend Neal Adams of Green Lantern/Green Arrow, early X-Men, Batman, and Superman vs. Muhammad Ali fame.

This was produced by NOW comics which, like Malibu and Eternity, sustained itself for a time by acquiring licenses and producing comics based on previously profitable venues: Titles like The Real Ghostbusters, Speed Racer, The Green Hornet, & Married… with Children. But, like many smaller publishers, they went broke in the mid 1990s and for the same reasons. The readership base had graduated and needed to spend money on things like rent, over-saturation of the market, a decline in comic quality overall, and too many gimmicks in comics. For instance, the first three issues all had variant covers, die cut covers, trading cards sealed in, etc. This is aimed at the obsessive hoarder, not someone who wants to read a good story.

Actual product. It was just Captain Crunch with Mr. T slapped on the cover.

This was produced in 1993, which was an odd time to produce a new product around Mr. T. Sure, he was popular in the 80s. He was on a hit show, The A-Team, had a cartoon, even had his own breakfast cereal. However, all that had waned significantly by the early 90s and he had essentially become a punchline. Still, the comic lasted for awhile. The exact number is up in the air. Some claim there were 14 issues, but only 10 are listed in My Comic Shop, while 7 is the max number in Mile High Comics. Even Wikipedia is uncertain as to the number.

If you’re actually interested in reading them, the entire run (however many that is) is out there and can be picked up cheaply. The art is decent, but the story reads like a poor-man’s Luke Cage. “I’ma clobber this fool!” or “I pity the fool that don’ care for his community.” Caveat Emptor. 

Common Types of Barflyze

This is perhaps one of the earliest purchases in my collection. Apparently this is an underground classic, but the comic shop near my house where I grew up had a whole bunch of them in a box. So naturally, I grabbed one back in the day.

Basil Wolverton, for those who don’t know, was an American artist who got into comics when they first popped up. In fact he drew one of Marvel’s (then called Timely) first superhero stories- Rock Man. But he really popped into prominence by winning a Li’l Abner contest, co-sponsored by Life magazine, to finally depict Leena the Hyena- a long standing character from the strip who was said to be revolting in appearance, but had yet to be seen. Out of 500,000 entries, Wolverton won. He then went on to draw for Mad and various other minor magazines.

This book was his last publication while alive. In fact, it might’ve been published posthumously- accounts vary on it. It is a simply, but humorous collection of single panel illustrations, making fun of drinking culture. As you can see from the various examples, Wolverton has a unique, grotesque style, which was unfortunately repressed often in his career. No one has come close in mimicking his style or his sense of humor. 

The World is His Parish: The Story of Pope Pius XII

Published in either 1953 or 1954, by the Catechetical Guild Educational Society (An organization that still seems to be around, but not publishing in the United States), this book presents the life story of Pope Pius XII, the 260^th Pope of the Catholic Church. Birth name was Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli (say that ten times fast) and was an outspoken critic of race-based crime and communism. In fact, according to Wikipedia, he “issued the Decree against Communism, declaring that Catholics who profess Communist doctrine are to be excommunicated as apostates from the Christian faith. In turn, the Church experienced severe persecution and mass deportations of Catholic clergy in the Eastern Bloc”.

He was the pope in residence during WWII and often was criticized for seeming to do nothing during the fascist takeover by Mussolini and Nazi atrocities (the Church was officially neutral), but in fact he funneled quite a bit of money to the German resistance- which is why so many priests ended up in various concentration camps.

The man himself, Pope Pius the XII. I think the author did a decent likeness

Enough with the seriousness. This was published during the great comic book proliferation of America, where many parent groups were “concerned” over this vile ten cent plague and the evil Wertham wrote his book Seduction of the Innocent which eventually ended up setting the medium back decades. In response to “violent” crime books a number of spiritually uplifting publishers cropped up to educated the younger generation. This is one such example.

The art almost looks like early Jack Kirby, but isn’t. It’s a generic style of the time and the action is bizarre. Most of his life revolved around boring liturgical   doctrines, many of which were put aside by Vatican II. Therefore, action scenes were invented to give the appearance of something happening in order to draw in the young people. However, the hilarity of some drunken loser, ready to fight, being stopped and brought to tears by a cardinal is ridiculous.
  For more fun try books by Rex Hurst

A Story of Native American Homosexuality

Many of you might not be familiar with the name John Tanner (and I’m not talking about the famous Mormon here). Around the 18^th century his family were pioneers in vast wildlands of Kentucky, when he was abducted by two Chippewa Indians. He was sold into slavery, battered about and abused in other ways for about two years before being sold again to an Ottawa tribeswoman who inducted him into the ways of the culture. He stayed with them for several decades, taking on a wife of the tribe, until civilization came a calling.

The fur trade started to run into full swing in the Canadian area, which meant a shortage of game and other necessities for the tribe. The War of 1812 added more men into the territory and Tanner worked as an interpreter. During that time he wrote a very popular book about his life, A Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner, from which he have gleaned today’s excerpt.

As we all know, many Native American tribes had a different perspective on cross-dressing and homosexuality than other cultures. In a sense, once they donned the woman’s clothes those men were treated as women and forced to do womanly chores- cooking, cleaning, making clothes, marrying older men, etc. John Tanner describes an encounter with one such person.

John Tanner

“Some time in the course of this winter, there came to our lodge one of the sons of the celebrated Ojibbeway chielf, called Wesh-ko-bug (the sweet), who lived at Leech Lake. This man was one of those who make themselves women, and are called women by the Indians. There are several of this sort among most, if not all Indian tribes. They are commonly called A-go-kwa. This creature called Ozaw-wen-dib (the yellow head) was now fifty years old and had lived with many husbands. I do not know whether she had seen me or only heard of me, and with the hope of living with me, she offered herself to me. But not being discouraged with one refusal, she repeated her disgusting advances until I was almost driven from the lodge.

“Old Net-no-kwa was perfectly acquainted with her character and only laughed at the embarrassment and shame which I evinced whenever she addressed me. She seemed rather to countenance and encourage the Yellow Head in remaining at our lodge. The latter was very expert in the various employments of the women, to which all her time was given.

“At length, despairing of success in her addresses to me, or being too much pinched by hunger, which was commonly felt in our lodge, she disappeared and was absent three or four days. When she came back loaded with dry meat, she stated sge had found the band of Wa-ge-to-tah-gun and that the chief had sent by her an invitation for us to join him. He had heard of the niggardly condition of Waw-zhe-kwaw-maisk-koon towards us and had sent the A-go-kwa to say to me,

“ ‘My nephew, I do not wish you to stay there to look at the meat another kills but is to mean to give you. Come to me and neither you nor my sister shall want anything that it is in my power to give to you.’

“I was glad enough of this invitation and started immediately. At first encampment, as I was doing something by the fire, I heard the A-go-kwa at no great distance in the woods, whistling to call me. Approaching the place, I found she had her eyes on game of some kind, and presently I discovered a moose. I shot him twice in succession and twice he fell at the report of the gun but it is probable I shot too high, for at last he escaped. The old woman reproved me severely for this, telling me she feared I should never become a good hunter. But before night the next day, we arrived at Wa-ge-to-te’s lodge where we are as much as we wished.

“Here also I found myself relieved from the persecutions of the A-go-kwa, which had become intolerable. Wa-ge-to-te, who had two wives, married her. This introduction of a new intimate into the family of Wa-ge-to-te’s occasioned some laughter and produced some ludicrous incidents, but was attended with less uneasiness and quarreling than would have been the bringing in of a new wife of the female sex.”

  For more fun try books by Rex Hurst