January 1, 1833 has no real historical significance attached to it other than a personal historic significance attached to this author. My mother would be born a little over a hundred years later. If she would have been born during that period then I probably wouldn’t be writing this because Boss Whipdataz likes his slave’s hands picking cotton or strumming banjo’s. Any deviation meant you could end up with a bunch of folks standing over top of you singing “He’s In A Better Place Now.” So I wanted to write an article about New Years Day and I started wondering about how our ancestors who were in bondage spent this day. You got to figure that there wasn’t going to be that much drinking because the last thing you wanted to do was throw back a couple and then go out and smack the Massa across the lips. Oh you didn’t know.. there are more than a few stories of drunk slaves smacking the sweet Alabama tebakee taste out of the massa’s mouth. The first line of the story usually goes.. “Old Jimbo went right up to the Massa, swung his hand all the way around to his back and “SMACKED” the sweet Alabama tebakee taste out of his mouth!!” The rest of the story is about what they did to Jimbo afterwards. The last line in the story usually ends with… “and everybody who saw him do it… them too.” So yeah it probably wasn’t going to be that much drinking. Come to find out, what we now celebrate as a holiday bringing in a new year of prosperity and happiness, to our ancestors it was known as Heartbreak Day.
Runaway Child.. Running Wild…
The term “Heartbreak Day” was penned by a black abolitionist named William Nell. Besides being an abolitionist, he was also a publisher and the first African American to work for the federal government. Now he wasn’t some big time bureaucrat ordering white folks around, that wasn’t going to happen, even in the anti-slavery north. He worked in the Post Office. Back in the 1800’s working in the Post Office was saying something. Anywho, besides his professional life he also aided an organization called the “Committee Of Violence.. whoops.. I mean “Committee of Vigilance.” I don’t know why when I saw that I thought about violence.. I mean around this time there was a federal law called the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, where the massa’s would send people up north to round up escaped men and women to bring them back down south so they could learn the true meaning of “you got me faqued up!!” If they needed a Committee of Violence that would have been the perfect time for it. Usually once a slave owner got a runaway back, there was going to be the standard azz whooping in front of everybody and then the meeting between Boss Whipdataz and Massa Rellywhyte. That meeting was to determine whether they should sell you to the sugar plantation owners in the Caribbean whose motto was “Don’t you dare get blood on my shoes..,” or if they should keep you as an example to everyone else of what happens when they got to go up there and bring you back..
Whipdataz: “Boy it’s raining on my cotton fields. Go out there and make it stop or else!!”
Runaway: “Boss I don’t know how to make it stop… please..”
Whipdataz: “Didn’t your runaway friends in Nu Yoke tell you how to make it stop?”
Runaway: “No boss, they don’t know how to make it stop either…”
Whipdataz: “Oh… you got runaway friends in Nu Yoke? You planning on going back up there huh? Go get my whip…
Yep… when you get back… plan on stripping down to yo very naked one everyday and tying yourself to the tree for your daily azz whooping. Anywho, so Nell worked for the Committee of Vigilance which was illegal under the Fugitive Slave Act. The organization paved the way for runaways to come up north and then into Canada. Nell died of a stroke in 1874 in Nashua, New Hampshire. He was 58 years old. The home he onced owned is now on the National Historic Landmark Register and is located on Beacon Hill in Boston, Massachusetts.
Yo Name Is Julius Caesar
So New Years Day was known as “Heartbreak Day” by our ancestors. It was also called “Hiring Day” by some. Traditionally back then, New Years Day was the day most debts were collected and settled. A lot of black folks were auctioned off on that day. Some were put under contract, which meant they would be rented out starting in January and ending at some other specified date. The transactions took place between families, businesses or contacts. It wasn’t unusual to see people be handed off at the courthouse, in town squares or even on the side of the road. Massa: “Bobo go with this man..” Bobo: “Massa, I don’t even know this man..” Massa: “SMACK!! SMACK!!” Bobo: “You say this man right heh massa? Yeh suh massa..” Man: “He’s a good one…”
In 1842 a slave by the name of Lewis Clark gave this account. ” Of all the days slaves hate, New Year’s Day is the worst. On New Year’s Day we went to the auction house to be hired out for one year. I was hired out to three different massa’s for that year.” You ever heard of the old folks expression, “What you will be doing on New Year’s Day, will be what you are doing for the rest of the year?” Well I hadn’t heard that saying either, but in 1937 a former slave named Sister Harrison said it in an interview. I can see where she was coming from. Another account is from a woman named Harriet Jacobs. She wrote an autobiography called “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.” In one passage she details how the day went. “From Christmas to New Year’s Eve, we would wait to find out if we would be rented out or not and to whom. At the appointed hour the grounds were thronged with men, women, and children, waiting, like criminals to hear their doom pronounced.” That was some stressful shat. Remember “12 Years A Slave?’ Supposed you were rented out to Epps…
Epps talking to his assembled slaves:
“And that servant which knew his Lord’s will… which knew his Lord’s will and prepared not himself… prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.” D’you hear that? “Stripes.” That ni–er that don’t obey his lord – that’s his master, d’you see? – that there ni–er shall be beaten with many stripes. Now, “many” signifies a great many. Forty, a hundred, a hundred and fifty lashes—that’s Scripture.“
With many stripes…. that’s Scripture… Now you see why I say Violence Committee? Sometimes I swear, I think that dude played that role too good… Anywho, being hired out was only one of their worries.. Jacobs also tells the story about a woman with seven children. On New Year’s Day they were all taken to the auction block. Now the woman expected to lose some of her children, but when they got there, all seven were auctioned off! Jacobs said she would never forget the mother crying out, “Gone! All gone! Why don’t God kill me?” Not you baby.. but the evil men who did it. Anywho, age was not a deterrent either, as she also tell the story of a frail seventy something year old woman being auctioned off because her massa was moving. So back in the day on this holiday, we had families being sold and separated, some temporarily and some permanently. By the hundreds of thousands our ancestors face this horror every January 1st.
Happy Dreams Massa..
Many African American traditions come from the time when our ancestors were held in bondage. Music, spirituality, food and hairstyles are some of the things we incorporate in our present lives. But if we look a little closer some things may not be as evident. Although New Year’s is associated with the evils I mentioned earlier, it is also associated with freedom. In 1808 on January 1st, the federal ban on the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade went into effect… and of course we celebrated. To tell the truth we will celebrate anything as long as there are ribs and chicken dinners being served. Anywho, our ancestors celebrated the end of the Atlantic Slave Trade to America. However the real reason behind not bringing enslaved people straight from Africa was not out of the goodness of their hearts. Besides the economics of bringing people across the Atlantic, you had to consider the fact that enslaving someone who knew about being free wasn’t going to be an easy task. You had to also teach them to speak English and you had to guard them so they wouldn’t be standing over your bed in the dark of night with the longest sharpest knife you ever saw. No it was easier to keep in bondage people who never knew what it was like to be free. So they banned importing Africans and instituted the laws of chattel slavery. The laws said that if your mother was a slave then her kids would be slaves also… and since you couldn’t be born without a mother… guess what? A generation later they had a group of people who never knew what it meant to be free. Anywho the celebrations started dying off, because the domestic slave trade was up and running in high gear. Celebrating your family being sold in front of your eyes was no cause for celebration. Prior to the celebrations ending, they were mostly held in the north, because down south anybody that wasn’t picking cotton was swinging from a tree. But even up north where there were a fair amount of free African Americans, the final nail went into the ending of the celebrations when in 1827 a white mob attacked an African American congregation, burning down the church and killing folks for the celebration.
This Is For My Homies..
Anywho remember when I told you that we have many traditions that date back to our ancestors? Well some are not as evident? In 1863 the celebrations picked back up when Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863. It freed all slaves in the southern states. That meant that if you were in the south and escaped to the north, you were free. You would also be free in any place captured or controlled by Union soldiers. That was one of the reasons why emancipated people followed the Union army around. They called the freed men and women contraband… was it racist? Probably. I mean what’s wrong with calling them people? The Proclamation also did not apply to slave states that did not fight for the Confederacy, those being Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri. Those state could keep their slaves. Maryland abolished slavery in 1864. Missouri and Kentucky abolished slavery with the signing of the 13th Amendment in 1865, making slavery illegal in the United States. Delaware did not sign the 13th Amendment until 1901. They said to the effect, we will abolish slavery when we get ready and if a black steps in Delaware, it’s a possibility he may be sold next to the spittin tabakee in the General Store. They also refused to sign the 14th and 15th Amendment, giving us the right to vote and granting United States citizenship to all freed slaves. All of that was done after the Civil War. Since Lincoln had been assassinated and Andrew Johnson, his successor, was a backdoor racist from North Carolina, nothing was done to put pressure on Delaware. It was 30 years after the rest of the Union had signed, that Delaware finally ratified the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendment. So anywho, the night before Lincoln issued the proclamation, African American congregations from all over the country went to church to pray that night on New Years Eve in celebration of a new dawn of freedom… that was 160 years ago… and they have been going to church and praying on New Years Eve ever since. So if you go to church tonight, don’t forget to say a little prayer for them… and for the legacy they left us.
Hill1News wishes you a Prosperous and Happy New Year!
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