Slavery by Another Name

by Douglas A. Blackmon

  arrested in towns and formal y convicted in the county seat for

  al egedly violating some pet y o ense, most often vagrancy. For

  most, there was lit le or no record made of their al eged crimes,

  when their "sentences" would expire, or in some cases, even who

  they were. Davis was held with men cal ed "Tal asee" and "Gypsy,"

  whose identities and origins were never clear to him. No o cial

  records of their "arrests" were ever created.

  Each was coerced into signing a contract like the one entered into

  by John Davis—agreeing to be held essential y as a slave for

  approximately a year, locked as "a convict" at night, chained during

  the day if Pace desired it, and obligated to continue working past

  the expiration of the contract for as long as Pace claimed was

  necessary to pay for medical or any other extra expenses over the

  term of the agreement—including the cost of recapture if the

  prisoner tried to escape. Occasional y, a friend or relative of a Pace

  prisoner would appear and purchase their freedom. In the case of

  highly productive laborers, Pace nearly always asserted a basis for

  keeping them far longer than the original term—often extending

  from two years up to ten.

  The simplest method of adding additional time to a man's

  contract was to accuse him of another made-up charge. A typical

  ploy was to claim that a black worker had violated his or her

  contract by eating food they weren't entitled to, or rearresting them

  contract by eating food they weren't entitled to, or rearresting them

  as they departed at the end of the contract on a claim that they

  were leaving with clothes that actual y belonged to Pace. Another

  theatrical "trial" would be held before one of the various justices of

  the peace. If one of the other white men was interested in obtaining

  a particular African American, Pace routinely sold them for a

  premium over what he had original y paid. In those cases, Pace

  made a pro t in addition to the value of the year or more labor

  received. The black worker was then compel ed to sign a new

  contract with his buyer—usual y agreeing to work another year or

  more to pay of his new "debt" to the white man.

  To resist the system was more than foolhardy. Arther Berry, the

  man Pace most often relied on to discipline his laborers, was like

  most southern white men in his belief that black workers could

  only be ful y productive if frequently subjected to physical

  punishment. Berry's tool of choice was a three-inch-wide leather

  strap. The whipping end was eighteen inches long, at ached to a

  wooden handle. Berry or one of the other guards, ordered laborers

  to lower their pants and lie on the ground while being whipped

  with the strap on the but ocks, back, and legs. Those who resisted

  were held down at the hands and feet by other laborers, often

  stretched across a barrel or the stump of a tree. In the crude

  environment of the farm's timber-cut ing operations, Berry would

  whip with any available object if his strap was not handy, cut ing a

  switch from a tree or using a sapling the size of a broom handle.33

  Other whipping bosses on the farm were his brother, Jesse Berry,

  and the thuggish guard James Todd.

  One prisoner described in an a davit how the obedience of

  laborers was enforced: "I was mistreated bad sometimes," said Joe

  Pat erson, who became an object of particular cruelty. "Mr. Todd

  whips the hardest. Sometimes Mr. Todd would tie [a convict's]

  hands together and put them over the knee and put a stick in

  between the legs and whip him with a big buggy trace, pul ed the

  clothes down so he would be naked. Sometimes he would hit over

  one hundred licks, sometimes fty, or seventy- ve times, sometimes

  thirty—never less than thirty…. The whipping would take place in

  thirty—never less than thirty…. The whipping would take place in

  the eld or stockade, no doctor present and nobody to count the

  licks, or time it."34

  In another bit er echo of antebel um years, any e ort to escape

  the slave farm risked not just the laborer who at empted to ee but

  any black person he or she encountered. After a black man named

  Dave Scot ran away, Pace tracked him down with dogs and then

  arrested everyone on the property where he was taking refuge. Pace

  ordered that Scot 's wife, four other family members, and two more

  blacks found nearby be brought back for "harboring" the runaway

  slave.

  After being found guilty by James Kennedy, the half dozen

  workers were sold to George Cosby, who held them in a stockade

  surrounded by guard dogs and beat them regularly. When the

  sentence of one of the workers , Lum Johnson, was about to expire,

  he was rearrested and charged with stealing potatoes from another

  nearby white farmer, Bob Patil o. Cosby took him back to his farm,

  claiming he'd paid an $18 ne on his behalf. Johnson was forced to

  sign another labor contract and returned to the stockade.

  Nearly al the black residents of Tal apoosa and the surrounding

  counties had heard stories about atrocities on the farms of Pace and

  other forced labor enterprises in the area. Everyone knew black

  men faced medieval-era punishments for any failure to work; black

  women faced the double jeopardy of being required to submit both

  to the cot on elds and kitchens, as wel as the beds of the white

  men obtaining them.

  A black neighbor near the farms named M. J. Scroggins said the

  Cos-bys starved their forced laborers and were violent. "They would

  feed the negroes on nothing but a lit le corn bread and syrup. Go

  barefooted in cold weather, women and men," Scroggins said. "The

  white people would be afraid to go by the Cosbys. Some people

  had got en kil ed out there, and never could prove who did it. The

  Cosbys are pret y bad folks. If a strange negro walked along the

  road they would catch him up and put him on the chain gang." The

  Turner farm was particularly notorious for sadistic in ictions upon

  Turner farm was particularly notorious for sadistic in ictions upon

  sexual y de ant black women. At one point, an African American

  woman named Hazel Slaughter suddenly reappeared in Dadevil e

  after a months-long disappearance. She showed other women in the

  community how her stomach was scarred and raw from an at ack

  by dogs used to track her down after an at empted escape from the

  farm of Fletch Turner. In whispered tones, Slaughter said she had

  run away after watching Turner's teenage son, Al en, use a spade to

  beat to death another black prisoner, named Wil ie Ferral .

  Bloodhounds were set on her track. They tore through the woods

  behind her as she ed, nal y running her down miles from the

  farm. Before guards caught up on horseback and began dragging

  Slaughter back to service on the Turner farm, the dogs had torn the

  clothes from her body and ripped open her stomach.

  The account was more than plausible. Stories circulated in the

  county months earlier that Al en Turner had kil ed a young black

  woman on the farm named Sarah Ol
iver. Another black woman,

  Cornelia Hammock, was arrested in Dadevil e and charged with

  larceny on May 20, 1902, according to the rudimentary trial docket

  erratical y maintained by the town's mayor. She pleaded innocent,

  but was immediately declared guilty by the mayor and ned a total

  of $16.40. Unable to pay the ne, Hammock was ordered to the

  farm of Fletch Turner to work until November 1903—a total of

  eighteen months. She survived only two days. No cause of death

  was recorded. Her death was never investigated.35

  "It is the general talk of the colored people in and about

  Dadevil e," swore a local black leader a year after the kil ing. The

  stories were "reported to colored people by other colored people

  who have been there that these practices are carried on there al the

  time…. Colored people believe it."36

  Tal apoosa County had become the embodiment of the casual new

  slavery ourishing across the South. White southerners had clearly

  won the national debate over who would decide the future of the

  country's black population. As southerners had insisted for more

  country's black population. As southerners had insisted for more

  than a decade, the nation's "Negro problem" would be dealt with

  using the southern, white man's solution. None of the ostensible

  al ies of black citizenship would act meaningful y to stop it.

  From the perspective of most white Americans, the new racial

  order had been a rmed formal y and informal y at the highest

  levels of society. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling four years earlier

  i n Plessy v. Ferguson, sanctioning "separate but equal" public

  facilities for blacks and whites, sancti ed the wave of new

  legislation and business practices requiring disparate treatment of

  blacks and whites. The ruling's e ects went far beyond the courts

  and legislative chambers. The open wil ingness of the highest court

  to base its seminal ruling on claims that were so clearly false—that

  train cars designated for blacks were no di erent from those of

  whites—sent a profound message to al Americans. So long as

  whites performed at least the bare rituals of due process and

  cloaked their actions behind claims of equality, the crudest abuses

  of blacks and violations of their protections under law would rarely

  ever be chal enged.

  The neo-slavery of the new century relied on a simple but

  extraordinary ruse that the Supreme Court's ruling implicitly

  endorsed. Men such as Franklin, Pruit , Kennedy, Berry, and Todd,

  in places like Goodwater and Tal apoosa County, could safely force

  a black man into servitude for months or years as long as they

  pretended that the legal rights of those black men had not been

  violated. The implications were as deeply absorbed by black

  people as were the rhythms of farming in the era of old slavery.

  This long era of false trials and arrests would taint the African

  American view of legal processes and guarantees for generations to

  come.

  In the larger scheme of what was happening across the South, the

  capture of John Davis was a routine, inconsequential event. John

  Pace acquired a steady stream of mostly anonymous black men

  throughout the year leading to the seizure of Davis. Pace and his

  son-in-law Anderson Hardy bought Jack Melton in February 1901,

  using the pretext of a fake warrant signed by James Kennedy

  using the pretext of a fake warrant signed by James Kennedy

  accusing Melton of the ubiquitous al egation of "violating a writ en

  contract." In April of that year, Elbert Carmichael was seized. Then

  came Ed Burroughs, on an al egation no one could later recol ect.

  He was fol owed by Joe Hart and Otis Meyers. Just before

  Hal oween—a month after Davis was kidnapped and sold—Pace

  bought Lewis Asberry for $48.

  Through the winter and approaching spring planting of 1901, the

  seizures of black men continued steadily37 After the turn of the year

  came Joe Pat erson, the de ant black man sold for $9.50 to

  Anderson Hardy, who in turn resold him to Pace. Pat erson had

  been arrested in Goodwater and convicted by "Judge" Jesse London,

  the same storekeeper who "convicted" John Davis the previous fal .

  On January 17, 1902, Franklin and Pruit were back at the Pace

  farm o ering a young boy named W. S. Thompson, convicted at

  Goodwater of carrying a concealed pistol. Pace paid $50 for him.

  The so-cal ed witness to Thompson's signature on a contract

  agreeing to work for Pace for one year to pay o his nes was

  Lewis Asberry—the black man seized three months earlier. Ten

  months later, Pace sold Thompson back to his mother.38

  Near the end of February, Turner wrote a check to John G.

  Dunbar, the Goodwater town marshal, against his account at

  Tal apoosa County Bank in the amount of $40. On the memo line,

  Turner scratched: "Cost of nes for 3 Negroes." In March, Robert

  Franklin delivered to Pace a black man named Hil ery Brooks and

  traded him for $35.

  The seizure of black men on the back roads of the South was no

  longer even a brazen act. Note Turke, a young black man from the

  Tal apoosa County hamlet of Notasulga, held a job as a free worker

  with Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad in Birmingham. After a visit

  home, he was walking down a dirt road outside Dadevil e on the

  way to catch a train back to Birmingham on a harshly cold day in

  the middle of November 1902. Suddenly Burancas Cosby, the son of

  W. D. Cosby, appeared on the road and tackled Turke without

  W. D. Cosby, appeared on the road and tackled Turke without

  provocation.39

  "Where are you going?" Cosby shouted.

  "To the depot," Turke replied.

  "Do you want a job?"

  "I already have one. I'm on my way to it."

  "Where are you from?" Cosby asked.

  Turke explained where he lived, who his family was, and even

  rat led o the names of white people he knew, al in a vain e ort

  to demonstrate that he was a black man who deserved not to be

  molested or harmed. The result was only to convince Cosby that

  Turke was a worker worth having.

  "You are a very good nigger. You bet er stop over with me,"

  Cosby proclaimed, pointing to his house up the road. Cosby

  mounted his horse and continued on his way.

  Turke knew bet er than to go to the white man's house. He

  hurried toward the train station, stil miles away. Cosby, no doubt

  uncertain of whether he could manhandle Turke in a one-on-one

  struggle, stayed behind. But soon Cosby caught back up, this time

  accompanied by a boisterous crowd of other white men.

  "Turn around and go back with me," Cosby shouted.

  Turke could do lit le else.

  Cosby took him to the farm of his uncle, George Cosby, and

  locked him inside a corncrib. The next morning, a black farmhand

  named Luke unlocked the door and took Turke before George

  Cosby.

  "Hel o, young man, what are you doing here?" the elder Cosby

  asked through the slats holding Turke and the bulging harvest of the

  farm's corn crop.

  "I don'
t know. They have got me here. I don't know what for."

  "What are you going to do about it?" Cosby said.

  "I don't know. I am a stranger here. They stopped me and got me

  here. I cannot help myself," Turke said.

  here. I cannot help myself," Turke said.

  "Young man, didn't you know they would do things like that?

  There are grand rascals about here. Do you want me to go your

  bond?"

  Turke was abbergasted. "I have not done anything for you to go

  my bond."

  Cosby, playing out the thin charade of a kind and reasonable

  white man, told Turke that he should plead guilty to whatever

  charge the white men claimed against him. "If they cal on you, you

  plead guilty," Cosby said. "If you say you want me to go, I wil get

  you out of this thing and work you."

  "Plead guilty of what?" Turke asked. "I am guilty of one thing,

  that is going on the public road, and I thought that was free for

  everybody."

  "You plead guilty and you wil get of light," Cosby reassured him.

  "I am in a strange county," Turke replied. "But if you wil al ow

  me a chance to write or telegraph home …"

  "No, we don't want that at al , you go ahead and plead guilty—

  whenever they get their hands on you they are going to do what

  they like with you. You just plead guilty."

  Turke nal y told the older white man that he and his son would

  have to do whatever they chose—kil him or imprison him—but

  that he would not plead guilty to a crime dreamt up by others. "Kil

  me or do what you please," Turke said. "I propose to do what is

  right."

  As dark fel , Burancas Cosby and the gang of white men returned

  and took Turke into the night. They dragged him outside a window

  at the home of another white man who was a justice of the peace.

  Turke never heard his name. Talking beneath the raised sash of the

  window, the justice astonishingly said he wouldn't play along with

  the ruse that night. "Men, I can't have anything to do with this

  thing," the justice said. "I have had a lot of those things before me,

  and I told you not to come before me any more with such things as

  that."

  The mob took Turke back to the log crib. The next day, they

  The mob took Turke back to the log crib. The next day, they

  returned, on horseback, buggies, and wagons, and took Turke to a

  smal warehouse where another ostensible justice of the peace