How I Got Over: |
by Henry Hardee |
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HOW I GOT OVER: The Images of and sexual roles of Black Male Slaves on the Plantation. 1600-1900
"Until the lion writes his own story, the tale of the hunt will always be glorified by the hunter."-- FACILITATOR: (turn the lights out) I would like everyone to help bring this group reading alive by adding your voices to it. You are no longer yourselves. You are in a special symbolic male space. Just for the next ten minutes you are going to be the collective voices of black male slaves from about 1500 to 1900 telling their story. You are the thousands of black bruthers that nobody has heard about because they couldn’t write their stories down and there was no griot to remember them on the plantation. You will experience something that you don’t really get in history books, you will hear how black men felt about not being able to be fathers, husbands; hear about how envious white men were of their “able-bodies” (that knew how to keep the sparks flying in the bedroom) and how they craved their “barbecued meat.” Everybody has a number on their script. All you have to do is read when it is your turn. Speaker 1: We are storytellers. We carry the old ways and the new ways. We carry the old pain and the new pain that having black and brown skin brings--uh huh, and we know better days lay ahead for us.--[sing in a up-tempo gospel beat ala Aretha Franklin on her "Amazing Grace" album in 1972 ]-- "My soul looks back and wonder how I got over!" Speaker 2: It is somewhere between 1600 and 1900. We are in a house where only men live that is made out of ugly colored brown brick. Black on Black love is all up in the house. It is in a slave quarters that is 144 to 672 square feet on the buckras (another name for Euro-European whites) plantation. We have been made to do something he calls work that will help him make something called money. Speaker 3: In heaven (West Africa) the things he has us doing for him was not called work, it was called worship and was what we did to praise and pay back the Gods and our ancestors for giving us a place to stay, food on our table, clothes on our back and let us wake up every morning in our right minds. Speaker 10: "Slaveholders, from the beginning of the rise of slavery in the South, recognized the fact that most plantations consisted primarily of young, black men. The gender imbalance that had resulted from the market for male slaves was one that greatly hurt slave plantations." 1 Speaker 4: We are chilling. Our bellies are full of stew that was whipped up from leftover rice, coon (raccoon),corn, beans and some other stuff from our garden that we keep in the root cellar in front of the hearth--Hmm, brother No. 6 put his foot in it. Some of us had to unbutton and unzip our jeans because we ate so much! We cringe when we have to eat the moo and oink scraps that buckra gives us to eat. We have not found a way to prepare it in a way that it tastes good to us maybe--if we dipped it in some flour and cooked it in a pot full of the hot fat of pigs it would give it some eye POPPING flavor! The only way we will eat buckra's food is if we are about to starve. Speaker 5: We work in a gang. We all get along together. We don't even argue over who is going to wash the dishes that the buckra says comes from China. We don't like eating off his plates because he has eaten off of them. We like to eat off of and drink from the bowls and cups that we make ourselves (colonoware). There is something about it that makes the food taste better. Speaker 6: We wear blue beads and copper rings to tell buckra that we are kings and that he should lighten up on us before our warriors come from across the waters, find us and kick his butt . He doesn't understand how it feels to be a king one day and a slave the next. It makes our blood boil when he treats us with disr-e-s-p-e-c-t but we rely on the three C’s: cool, calm and collected that we learned in heaven to keep us from losing control of ourselves. Speaker 7: We still remember heaven (West Africa). We still remember home (West Africa). When we play music by scraping an iron rod against the jawbone of a horse, blowing into a harmonica, bowing the fiddle, beating the drum and singing ; the memories come back to us just like it was yesterday--"My soul looks back and wonders how I got over." Speaker 8: We remember being alive before we were born. [Referring to the Kongo cosmogram] We remember not being on this earth at all. We remember being with our creator up in the sky Speaker 9: I was there at the beginning of the world. I watched the Creator grab his crotch, hurl lightning and preach a hellified sermon out into nothingness and the solar system began to take form. Speaker 10: I was Adam( Ht: 5'11", Wt: 190-toned lbs, Eyes: Black, Hair: Black) who got thrown out of Eden for being weak and not being able to resist listening to the sensuous voice of my fine woman Eve and gave in to eating the forbidden fruit which the Creator had made me swear on a stack of Bibles that I wouldn't do. I didn't realize that when I gave into her I was passing down this weakness for sistuhs to generations of black men to come and it will mark them for the rest of their lives like a plague and would be one the main reason black men don't listen to what black women say. Speaker 4:
[Philippians 2: 5-7] Speaker 9: My body was feared. I was the mustached, goateed face, lean and mean and woolly headed, seal brown Jesus hanging from the cross because some people didn't understand me , what I was all about or the scriptures I spit out like poetry and could not forgive my mother for making up that immaculate conception mess about her getting pregnant without sleeping with a man. Speaker 2: My body was a big black, strong dollar sign when the old time buckras (Europeans) and snotty black folks that lived next door to us (Muslims) started going through financial changes and decided they had to make some money so they could change the way they were living (Europeans) and wanted to appear to be living large (Muslims). They did not care about taking me out of heaven (West Africa), taking me away from my Creator and ancestors, taking me away from the family I loved so much. When I cried about not being able to put my arms around my little ones and gently rock them to sleep and not being able to rub my woman’s stretch marks in the moonlight-they didn’t give two cents about how I felt or my tears. Those old time buckras had been broke so long they didn't care what they did to other people. So many nights I felt like cursing them and crushing them all to pieces. Speaker 5: "...the Commercial Revolution...The Renaissance provided a new kind of freedom-the freedom to pursue those ends that would be most beneficial to the soul and body. It developed into such a passionate search that it resulted in the destruction of the rights of others...it was freedom to destroy freedom, the freedom of some to exploit the rights of others."2 Speaker 4: The Middle Passage was not a fun filled cruise to the Caribbean. The grief of losing our wives, new born children, sons about to be circumcised and become men, daughters about to give birth to sons that would become tribal chiefs hurt the hearts of so many of my brothers that they jumped overboard because they couldn't stand being so far away from their loved ones. When the sharks bit into them they did not even scream because their bodies had been numbed by heartache--"How I Got Over, how I got over, my soooo-ooo-ooul looks back and wonders how I got over!" Speaker 3: "The voyage to Americas, popularly referred to as the 'Middle Passage' was a veritable nightmare. Overcrowding was common. There are records of ships as small as 90 tons carrying a complement of 390 slaves in addition to crew and provision...there was hardly standing, lying, or sitting room. Chained together by twos, hands and feet, slaves had no room in which to move about and no freedom to exercise their bodies even the slightest.3 Speaker 9: I wonder if the people back in heaven missed me as much as I missed them. Losing your family is the worst feeling in the world. Did they think that I had just dropped out of sight or vanished in the middle of the night because of something they said or did to me? Did they think my going away was their fault? Speaker 6: Do they wonder what happened to me? Have they stopped looking for me, did they even try to find me? Do they still love me? Am I still a part of them as they are still a part of me? Morning after morning, after morning I wonder if they want me to come back-- "How I got over"- (clap.) Speaker 1: They tried their damnest to humiliate me on that big wooden whale (slave ship.) Whenever I tried to say something the buckras told me to shut up but I kept on talking because I didn't know what they were saying. There was no place where I could go to the bathroom without everybody seeing me doing my business. When I pounded out the rhythm of the drum to talk to the Creator they hit me in the head like that was going to knock how to drum out of my head. I kept on beating, b-b-b-beating a smooth funky, tribal upbeat rhythm which was a prayer to the Creator to come and take me home. Speaker 6: Where is this place? What is this place? I am 6" with black woolly hair and brown eyes. I am standing naked to the world on a big white block that makes me tower over the people standing below me. I have to look down at them and they have to look up at me. I see them looking at my physically fit, healthy body: my caramel skin, strong chin, the earring dangling from my ear; my privates overflowing with testosterone, the bulges of my biceps, the veins in my powerful legs, my tight buttocks and my big feet like I was a gift from God. Speaker 7: Cold shivers went through me when a man stepped up ,took whiffs of my funk and said, "I'm going to buy him-he shouldn't cost any more than $500!" I gulped as I swallowed my pride and let him touch me. I saw a woman hiding behind the man (who smelt me) peek at me. Her mouth tells the white men that she is repulsed by the sight of me—“he is a brute” but I know better I can feel her eyes raping my chocolate goodies. I find out when we get to the place where they live her bedroom is the first place I sleep in that night. She tells me with her eyes how much she likes my full raspberry-apple lips and how I am her fantasy because her husband is a two minute man. Speaker 10: "The black man has been viewed as a fearsome sexual competitor throughout history, a man whose sexual desires was subject to spiral out of control at any moment and thus required strict controlling to secure the safety of those nearby. Slavery told white men that Black Men would mess with anything, but the object of his true lust was his white woman, at which his oversized penis strained towards all his life.4 Speaker 1: "Further, Black men were viewed as one of the most disgusting creatures of the planet but, that surely did not stop White women from going to the male slave quarters. And if you think White women were not out their having sex with the male slaves, I have a bridge I can sell to you really cheap. Regarding White people-- they were always curious." 5 Speaker 8: They nicknamed me "Buck", said that I was an animal--the "African Stallion!" Buckra wrote my biography, summed up my life in the five D's: dumb, deprived dangerous, deviant and disturbed.6 He feared me because he knew the hardness of my body meant that I had a mental and physical toughness that gave me the strength and courage to endure him calling me evil, sinful, black and a demon. He feared me more than anything else in the world because of what I had in my jeans. Speaker 1: I was the only black male stereotype that was sexual. I was a black threat to white womanhood and more importantly, to white male dominance. 7 Speaker 2: Being in this new place was a bad dream for me, it couldn't be real! I thought one of my dead ancestor's was playing a trick on me because I wouldn't do something they came into my hut and told me to do one night. The white man who bought me walked around like he had a halo around his head but he was the devil using his hands like a pitchfork to poke into my flesh. When he looked at me he didn’t see a man, he saw Cash! Cash! Cash! and I could feel that he had spent his days and nights thinking up ways to nickel and dime me while he made dollars and cents off of using me. Speaker 3: There was no way I could earn respect in this new place. The funny looking white people who told me to call them "Massa" and "overseer" were out of their minds. They were tedious and trifling. I worked hard. Carried water, raised crops and mended fences. I broke cotton picking records and they still weren't satisfied. Every drop of my sweat was putting cash money in their bank accounts and the more they heard that cash register ringing up $ the worse they treated me. I was the best thing that ever happened to them white clowns but they couldn't see that. In 1860 I help them make 5,387,000 bales of cotton. When they started talking out of the side of their necks and said that I wasn't doing my share of the work and had been taking days off I knew they had gone off their rockers. Speaker 4: Stomping around and looking grumpy they hit me over the head with the words of their God that was written in something that they called a "B-i-b-l-e." It was a book of lies that said I was lazy and that if I didn't straighten up and fly right I was going to be punished in the after world in worse ways than the lash-"How I got over, how I got over, my soul looks back and wonders how I got over, hmm!" Speaker 5: It was not like I didn't love my woman and my children but I couldn't do anything for them. I could not be a father; I could not be a husband because I was property-- we were all property-- belonging to someone else. What could I give them? I couldn't even give them my name. I couldn't protect them. I hurt inside knowing that I couldn't stop the Massa from beating my wife and could not stop him from selling off my babies whenever he felt like it. Speaker 6: I don't have control over anything that happened to me and mine and that was heart wrenching. You don't know how much that tore me up inside. It hurt me that I wasn't allowed to see my children coming into the world and had to watch them run around half-naked or buck naked and hungry. You don't know how many times I wanted to put my big hands around Massa’s neck and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze the life out of him when I saw my woman go into his room at night and let him do his dirty business on her. You don't know how many times I wanted to claw up my fingers and thrust my hand through his chest and rip his heart out for doing that to me. Speaker 7: "As the distinguished historian Orlando Patterson argued, slavery prevented a black man from being either a father or a husband; he could off the mother and the child no security, no status, no name, no identity.' The male slave was placed in an impossible situation.8 Speaker 8:
I loves me some black woman. Speaker 9: 5' 9", Hair: Black, Wt: 160 ripped lbs, address: plantation. I couldn't find me anybody to marry on the place so I had to stay by myself. When I got them physical needs that needed to be satisfied I had to sneak around to take care of them. There were many men like me. I had to walk to other plantations and do it on the down low with other men's women. I don't rightly know if I had any children cause if I was doing it with somebody else's woman how could I be sure that the child was mine --it was not like I could get a DNA test. Speaker 10: I was always in a "Momma's baby, daddy's maybe" situation. I planted my seed whenever and wherever I could, went with as many women as I could to satisfy my biological need to leave some kids in the world after I pass on. Speaker 4: "For those many slave men who were unattached impregnating as many women as possible would have been the most rational reproductive strategy."10 Speaker 8 :
I loves me some black woman. Speaker 7: I loves me some black woman she captures my heart and spirit and that feeling she gives to me makes me shine bright as any gem. I don't know why the white man thinks I want his. Speaker 10: He is always accusing me of wanting his woman and calling me a brute. He fears the gracefulness, power, darkness and athleticism of my body. He is afraid that he is going to come home one day and find me in the bed with his wife and daughter who he thinks are powerless and can't fight the urge to taste my brown sugar. He got this image in his mind that I am aggressive, hostile and uncontrollable but he is the one. Speaker 2: "This stereotype describes black male slaves as dishonorable brutes with maniacal desires that need to be kept in check with whippings, torture and killing. They have psychological ramifications. Seeing the victim as the aggressor and as the ‘the white man's burden' is a classic instance of projection: at once in a denial of ones own perversity and violence and a perfect excuse for them." 12 Speaker 1: I am not the white man's burden he is mine. Speaker 3: I am not the white man's burden he is mine. He has been a thorn in my side since he came and took my out of heaven (West Africa.) He had been the cross that I have had to bear. Speaker 6: I was the demon Speaker 5: "The Afro-American male as demon represents the evil side of violence, the violence of dread; the violence that Euro-American males do not dare to admit is a core part of their psychic being."13 Speaker 9: I was a phallic symbol. My phallic mystique was not just about my actual organ but a state of mind that was given to me by the Creator that made me act natural, spontaneous, fun to be with, childlike, expressive, rhythmic, loving and know how to enjoy life. Speaker 1: He did not like the rhythms of my body. He did not like the rhythmic way that I talked and the way I used my hands and made gestures with my body to get my points across. Speaker 2: He did not like me beating my drum because it primal beats created erotic energy that talked about my red blooded and virile sexual prowess that his woman knew he couldn't deliver. Speaker 3: He did not like the cool way that I walked because it expressed my masculinity. Speaker 4: White men were obsessed with my body and the pleasures that it could give that they started lynching me because they didn't have the skills to give those thrills. Speaker 5: Homicide, assault, rape, attempted rape, robbery and theft and insulting him were the reasons that they used to sooth their consciences when they put me through their animalistic cruelty called lynching. Speaker 6: “After they stripped his clothes off they chained him to a tree and stacked kerosene-soaked wood high around him. Before pouring some kerosene on him they cut off his ears, fingers and genitals and skinned his face...”--How I got over, how I got over... Speaker 7: “While some people violently stabbed his body with knives whose blades glinted in the sun others watched with satisfaction as they lit up his flesh..”.--How I got over, how I got over... Speaker 8: “As the flames rose his eyes bulged out of their sockets. The only sounds that came from the victim’s lips, even as his blood sizzled in the fire were, Oh my God! Oh, Jesus."--How I got over, how I got over..." Speaker 9: “Before his body even cooled, his heart and liver were removed and cut into several pieces and his bones were crushed into small particles...” Speaker 10: “The crowd fought over these souvenirs. After the lynching, one of the participants reportedly took a slice of his heart to give to the governor”--"How I got over, how I got over, my soul looks back and wonders how I got over.14 Speaker 4: I have been the human sacrifice of lynch mobs. I was despised. They hated me because they knew I was better than them. Speaker 8: They did not crucify me on a cross but burned it while they put a rope around my neck, listened to hear my neck break and see my feet stop kicking--"Oh my God! Oh, Jesus." Speaker 7: "The brutally sacrificed Negro was the ultimate Christ figure of the narrative of aversion-Christ the scapegoat-spat upon, mocked, spiked, tortured, and accursed… Speaker 10: In expelling "the Negro," all that was most evil and sinful and black and iniquitous and transgressing would be sent away: for "the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited" (Leviticus 16:21) 15 Speaker 2: We knew that our lynched brothers were not dead but in the afterlife. We knew they had left their bodies long before they were torched and were in spirit bodies looking down on them crazy white folks who took charred pieces of their bodies home to smell and salivate over like the lynched men’ ears, eyes, fingers, hearts, livers and genitals were the barbecued meat they were going to have for dinner.16 Speaker 1: Those of us who were alive laughed at the ones who felt on the skeletons to see if anything was left of our brothers’ groins. - How I got over-(clap.) Speaker 6: "What basically happened during Ku Klux Klan lynching in 1871 was a black man who went against the obvious "rule" for blacks had his penis nailed to a block and set on fire. He was given a knife in which he could either cut off his penis or it would be burned off by fire. This type of treatment was typical for blacks in the South after the Emancipation." 17 Speaker 5: How I got over... Speaker 9 : My soul looks back and wonders... Speaker 4: How I got over (clap). Speaker 10: How I got over... Speaker 6: How I got over... Speaker 2: My my my soul... Speaker 8: "...my my my..." Speaker 1: "My my my..." Speaker 3: "My, soul looks back and wonders How I got over-(clap). FOOTNOTES 1. Charles Joyner. “Slavery In The Antebellum South” Down by The Riverside. Retrieved from http://www.coloradocollege.edu/Dept/HY/HY243Ruiz/Research/Antebellum.html On May 5, 2006 2. John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss. Jr., "From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans." (2000). Alfred A. Knopf: New York. pg.35. 3. Ibid, pg. 44. 4. “How Slavery Affects Sex in USA Today”. Retrieved from youngafrican.com/yaforum/post.asp?...&Topic_ID=572&FORUM_ID=2 on May 5, 2006. Please note site is no longer available. 5. Joyner. pg. 2 6. Kathleen Marchioro, "From Sambo to Brute: The Social Construction of African American Masculinity." Retrieved from http://www/siue.edu/SOCIOLOGY/journal/marchioro.htm. 2001 The Edwardsville Journal of Sociology, Volume 1. On May 9, 2006. pg. 4. 7. Ibid, pg. 5. 8. Orlando Patterson, "Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries. (1998). Civitas Counterpoint: Washington, D.C. pg. 35. 9. Ibid, pg. 36. 10. Ibid, pg. 43. 11. Ibid, pg. 36. 12. Ibid, pg. 242. 13. Ibid, pg. 243. 14. “The Lynching of Mr. Sam Hose” Our Georgia History. Retrieved from http://www.ourgeorgiahistory.com/chronpop/933. On May 9, 2006, Sam Hose was a black man who was falsely accused of killing his white employer, and raping his employer's wife. 15. Patterson, pg. 222. 16. Patterson, pgs 198-202 17. Quote of William H. Stallings in an article @http://blogs.setonhill.edu/JohnSpurlock/005126.html. downloaded March 12, 2007. OTHER SOURCES 1. Patrica Samford, "The Archaeology of African-American Slavery and Material Culture." The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 53, Issue 1 (Jan., 1996), pgs. 87 - 114. |