Can I See Your I. D.?

by Chris Barton

  SLAVE OWNER?

  ELLEN CRAFT

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1848

  CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

  At twenty-two, you cannot read or write.

  A week ago in Macon, Georgia, before this plan came into the heads of you and your husband and consumed you like fever, that did not matter. Of course you couldn’t read or write, Ellen—no matter how lightskinned, you were a slave. Anyone who taught you to put pen to paper or make out the words on a page would have been breaking the law. Ellen Craft could not read or write, and that was that. The same went for your William.

  But here near the wharf in Charleston, your illiteracy is another matter entirely. What is expected of you could not be more different than it was a week ago. In the eyes of those around you, you are not a seamstress or a slave. You are not even a Negro, not even a woman at all.

  You are “Mr. Johnson”—a Southern gentleman. Which is to say, a white Southern gentleman. And a white Southern gentleman who cannot read or write would stick out like a field slave who cannot find the opening of a cotton sack.

  Needless to say, you and your accompanying “slave”—William—do not wish to stick out. At least, not in that way. That’s why the plan the two of you cooked up includes a thorough disguise. Along with your trousers, top hat, green spectacles, and handkerchief tied beneath your apparently aching jaw, you’re sporting a sling for your poor, rheumatic writing arm.

  Such a young man, and in such sad shape—not much more than an invalid, really. How fortunate that William is here to attend to you, to assist you on your thousand-mile journey to seek help for your rheumatism from your physician uncle in Philadelphia, a city that just happens to be located in the free state of Pennsylvania.

  Your masquerade has held up this past day and a half, from Macon to Savannah by train, and then by steamboat to Charleston. Now you just need to get your steamer tickets for the Charleston-to-Philadelphia leg, and you’ll be out of the South—and out of slavery—for good.

  But there is a hitch in your plan: Now that winter is here, you learn, the steamboat doesn’t run that direct route. You’ll need to follow a patchwork path by steamer and rail. Fine—you wouldn’t have gotten this far if you weren’t able to adapt. You hand over the fare, and the ticket man hands over the tickets.

  Situations such as this pose one particular danger, but you wouldn’t have put your right arm in this sling if the thought hadn’t already occurred to you: Where along the way might you be expected to sign your name?

  And the answer is: Here.

  Now.

  You pay your one-dollar duty on your piece of human property, but now you need to sign the registry stating that you are taking your slave to the North. Indicating your weakened arm, you ask the customs officer if he would be so kind as to sign your name for you. He reacts as if he’s been burned.

  He rises and shakes his head and jams his hands down into his pockets. “I shan’t do it,” he insists.

  Everybody knows what becomes of slaves once they’ve seen life up North—it spoils them, and even if they don’t escape, even if they do return home, they poison other slaves’ minds with Northern nonsense about freedom. And this customs man certainly cannot condone that.

  He’s causing a scene in the middle of the day, and that’s the last thing you need. You aren’t yet 300 miles from Macon—near enough that reward-seekers might already be on the lookout for you and William in this very office. Any disturbance raises the risk of getting caught, and surely the first thing they would do is separate you from your coconspirator—forever. How can you resolve this situation and quiet things down without abandoning your disguise of a man just barely hanging on?

  A young Southern military man comes to your rescue. You met this fellow yesterday, traveled with him again this morning, and aren’t likely ever to forget him. Witnessing your civil treatment of William, this military fellow lectured you about the need to keep a slave in his place, to “storm at him like thunder, and make him tremble like a leaf.” And at least in his current drunken state, your receipt of his advice qualifies you as one of his best friends.

  “I know his kin like a book,” he tells the customs man. The steamboat captain overhears, and the word of this military man and yourself—two distinguished white men—is good enough for him. He accepts that this Mr. Johnson is indeed the owner of this slave.

  Soon, you and William are on board.

  Later, before you get off the boat in Wilmington, you cross the captain’s path again, and he recalls the scene back at the customs office.

  “They make it a rule to be very strict at Charleston,” he explains. “If they were not very careful, any damned abolitionist might take off a lot of valuable niggers.”

  “I suppose so,” you reply.

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1848

  CHESTER, VIRGINIA

  They think you’re asleep.

  This older man and his daughters boarded the train just south of here, in Petersburg. While William rides elsewhere with other Negroes, these kind travelers have joined you in the private compartment at the end of this carriage. They take pity on you. There are two couches, and they help you get situated on one of them. The young ladies offer their shawls to serve as your pillow.

  “Papa, he seems to be a very nice young gentleman,” one of them says.

  “Oh, dear me,” says the other, “I never felt so much for a gentleman in my life.”

  You keep your reaction to yourself. You know how quickly their kindness would vanish if they discovered how different you are from the person you appear to be.

  And yet . . .

  The color of your skin is genuine. There was no need to lighten it for your journey. In the eyes of your owners, it is your Negro blood that dictates your fate. But to these travelers who do not know your true story, it is your color that determines who you are.

  And that color is white.

  In some ways, it has been a blessing—your current bid for freedom depends on it, and as the lives of human chattel go, your light skin has made yours relatively privileged. Even your manner of speech indicates a life spent in the shade of the house rather than in the heat of the fields. But your whiteness has caused you pain too. When you were eleven years old, it got you torn apart from your mother, Maria.

  That separation was a punishment for your undeniable resemblance to your mother’s master, James P. Smith. Your familiar features and fair skin—lighter even than Maria’s—were an ever-present reminder of things Mrs. Smith did not wish to remember: The master’s indulgence. Her own humiliation. Your mother’s rape.

  Mrs. Smith’s cruelty to you became routine. When her daughter was married, Mrs. Smith rid herself of that reminder by giving you away as a wedding present. You went with your new owners to Macon, thirteen miles away from Maria.

  But at least you managed to remain close to your mother—your William was nowhere near as fortunate. His father and mother, then a sister and a brother were all sold off separately. He has not seen them since.

  You and William have no children—and you will not bear any if they cannot be born free. You will not risk seeing them sold away from you, or having them witness either of you on the auction block. You insist on freedom before children.

  This mutual desire for a family inspired you and William to concoct your bold plan for escape. It came together in just four days and was steeped from the very beginning in the understanding that your light skin and privileged speech alone were not enough. A white woman traveling with a colored man—slave or not—would have drawn unwanted attention.

  Hence the disguise, which William was able to acquire thanks to his own status. As a carpenter hired out around Macon by his owner—and with a second job as a waiter—he had both the opportunity and the spending money to buy this hat, this cloak, these spectacles, and whatnot. He picked them up here and there, so as not to make any single merchant suspicious. The trousers, you made yourself.

  The money William saved has
paid for your transportation as well. But you could never have boarded that first train in Macon if the two of you hadn’t gained your owners’ trust. More to the point, you gained their permission to spend a few days away before Christmas to visit your ailing aunt twelve miles off.

  During the sleepless night before you left, William cut your long hair. You donned the sling for your arm and the one covering your smooth, hairless chin, with a poultice in each for added effect. The handkerchief beneath your jaw gives you good reason not to talk much, and on top of that, you’ve been perfectly willing to discourage conversation by pretending to be deaf.

  Your invalid’s getup makes it easier for other travelers to see what they are inclined to see instead of what you actually are. To them it is more plausible that this gentleman in his early twenties would be afflicted with the rheumatism (and deafness, and heaven knows what else) than that a woman would be so improper as to dress as a man or that a slave would be so clever as to attempt such a deception.

  Still, each time you prepare to step onto the platform or wharf, you must steel yourself. Who knows what unwanted attention the sight of you and William together might attract? Who knows who might be waiting?

  The train is approaching Richmond now—time to sit up and hope for the best. Before he exits your compartment, the older gentleman hands you a card with some writing on it. He tells you it’s a can’t-miss recipe for a rheumatism cure.

  You thank him, and you take it, and without a glance—without spending even a moment risking that you’re “reading” it upside down—you put it in your vest pocket. There is no such thing as being too careful.

  SUNDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1848

  BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

  Earlier this evening, your train from Washington pulled into the hodgepodge of buildings that make up Baltimore’s station. This will be your fifth straight night of little or no sleep.

  There’s the danger that in your fatigue you’ll slip up. That you’ll say the wrong thing, give yourself away. You long for sleep, but there’s a danger there as well. What potential threat might you miss while you doze? And so you force yourself to stay awake.

  Baltimore is the last major slave city between you and freedom. It’s the last best chance slave catchers have to nab runaways before they get to Pennsylvania.

  If you and William get caught, how many ticks of the clock will you have together before you are pulled apart for all time? Whatever is left of your lives after that will surely be made unbearable. But unbearable compared to what? To life as a slave, as a belonging of someone else? Unbearable compared to this selfimposed childlessness? Compared to knowing that you had a plan to liberate yourselves but could not muster the courage to carry it out?

  This whole business has had scared you to death from the beginning, but the thought of staying behind scared you something worse.

  You’ve had other fears as well—perhaps not so different from those of other travelers, but magnified by your situation. Pickpockets, for instance. The work of a light-fingered thief in busy places such as this could leave you and William destitute and at even greater risk. So you have kept your own pockets empty while William carries your money. Who would think to pick a slave’s pockets?

  William has just helped you to your train car, gotten you situated, and left for his own car when he returns, quite unexpectedly. There is a railroad officer, he says, who wants to speak with Mr. Johnson.

  Doesn’t the railroad officer know that poor Mr. Johnson just wants to get to Philadelphia? Still, you go with William to the bustling office. The situation, whatever it is, does not sound good. It sounds like another opportunity for your plot to be discovered and for you and William to be removed from each other. You are so tired—can you summon the cleverness and clarity that the moment requires?

  “Do you wish to see me, sir?” you ask.

  Indeed he does. “It is against our rules, sir, to allow any person to take a slave out of Baltimore into Philadelphia, unless he can satisfy us that he has a right to take him along.”

  Well?

  Ellen?

  You speak to him with a forcefulness never before possible for you in a conversation with a white man.

  “Why is that?” you demand.

  He explains: What if this slave does not really belong to you? What if the slave’s rightful owner later comes along? The railroad would have to pay the slave owner for his lost property.

  The increasingly attentive crowd is on your side—that is, on the side of this young Southern gentleman who obviously has enough problems as it is without the Baltimore & Ohio railroad piling on another.

  Don’t you know anyone in Baltimore who can vouch for you? asks the B&O man.

  Excitement and fear throb in your veins.

  “No,” you tell him. “I bought tickets in Charleston to pass us through to Philadelphia, and therefore you have no right to detain us here.”

  “Well, sir,” the officer insists, “right or no right, we shan’t let you go.”

  A bell rings. It is time for your train to pull out. And under this new pressure, your adversary begins to waver.

  “I really don’t know what to do,” he confesses. He is not prepared to detain you. But what will happen to him if he’s wrong?

  He caves.

  “Let this gentleman and slave pass,” he tells a clerk. “As he is not well, it is a pity to stop him here. We will let him go.”

  Moments later, you are back in your car, and William is making his way back to his own. God willing, before the sun comes up, you will be on free soil.

  LATER THAT NIGHT

  HAVRE DE GRACE, MARYLAND

  In your weariness, the sudden shuffling about of people and their belongings is disorienting. It’s around midnight, maybe seventy miles shy of Philadelphia, and they’re getting you and the rest of the first-class passengers off the train.

  Where is William? Why isn’t he here to help you this time?

  They’re guiding you all toward a ferry to cross the Susquehanna River.

  Where is William?

  On the other side, they say, awaits the train that will take you to Philadelphia. But where is William?

  It’s cold. It’s raining. Is it still Christmas Eve, or is it now Christmas Day?

  Where is William?

  You ask the conductor about your slave. But your disguise has worked too well. This Northerner clearly sides with the abolitionists—he has no sympathy for your human-owning kind.

  “I haven’t seen anything of him in some time,” he tells you. “I have no doubt he has run away and is in Philadelphia, free, long before now.”

  You know this cannot be. You plead with the conductor to help you.

  “I am no slave hunter,” the conductor replies.

  You’re on your own.

  If you get off this train, there’s no getting back on. You have no money.

  Is he captured? Has he been killed? Where is William?

  Where is your William?

  Where is he?

  WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?

  ELLEN CRAFT’S TERROR in Havre de Grace was real but short-lived. She was reunited with her husband on the other side of the Susquehanna that night—he had fallen asleep in the luggage car. They celebrated their first day of freedom in Philadelphia on Christmas Day. The circumstances of their escape made the Crafts celebrities among abolitionists in the Northeast but, threatened by slave hunters, they soon moved to England. There, they had five children, got formal educations, gave lectures about their experiences, and wrote their story as Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom. Proceeds from the book allowed William Craft to buy his mother and a sister out of slavery; later, Ellen’s mother moved across the Atlantic to join the Crafts. After the Civil War, Ellen and William returned to Georgia and opened a school for former slaves, whom they taught to read, write, and pursue trades such as carpentry and sewing. Ellen died in 1897, William in 1900.

  BLACK MAN? WHITE MAN?

  JOHN HOWARD GRIFFIN


  1935, TOURS, FRANCE

  You are a fifteen-year-old Texas boy in France for the first time. You have arrived weeks before the dorm opens at your boarding school, and you don’t have enough money to rent a room. You do not speak French.

  1943, SOLOMON ISLANDS

  Your mission on this remote island is simple. Your job is to secure the natives’ cooperation with the Allies in case fighting with the Japanese flares up again. You’re learning the islanders’ language, and you’re learning their customs, but you rely on a five-year-old to guide you through the jungle.

  1947

  MANSFIELD, TEXAS

  You are unpacking your bags here at your parents’ new home, feeling around for where things go. It took years for that exploding shell in the South Pacific to finish doing its damage to you, but now it’s done. You have finally lost the last of your eyesight. You cannot see a thing.

  LATE NOVEMBER 1959

  MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA

  You once were blind, but now you see. You were black, but now you’re white.

  Your blindness miraculously ended after a decade of darkness. Your blackness began just this month, and it was no miracle. It was deliberate.

  You set out on an assignment for Sepia magazine—a white man crisscrossing Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama with artificially darkened skin. It’s not that there’s a shortage of writers with God-given pigment and God-given talent. No, there are plenty of Negro writers capable of detailing the torments and indignities of daily life in a land where civil rights are still a revolutionary concept.