I will always remember the first day I moved into my home. Anticipating the date I would be moving into my new home, I had moved out of my apartment and moved in with my brother. One day I received a call to come out to the title company and sign some papers. I had been going out and signing papers with them for the last month or so and didn’t think anything of it. Me: “Okay Boss, be right there.” It was about a two-hour drive from my brother’s house and I’m like I will be glad when they call me to close, I’m tired of driving out here every week to sign a couple of documents, grab some Micky Dee’s and go back home. It wasn’t like it was around the corner, it was a two-hundred-mile roundtrip. So, I went out there and they had me waiting around in the office for about half an hour before they called me in the back. I went into this poorly lit conference room where three very stern looking people were sitting around the conference table. I sat down across from them thinking that any moment the old white dude in the middle was going to say, “I find you guilty and sentence you to death… May God have mercy on your soul…”
Anyway, they started shuffling papers and handing them to me for my signature. I was in there for about 30 minutes when the old white guy gets up and leaves the room. A few minutes later he comes back with a folder, gives it to me along with some keys and says, these are the keys to your home. You could have knocked me over with a feather! When they called, they never even mentioned the fact that I was closing that day. Had they said something, I would have least put on some slacks and a nice shirt and invited a friend or two to come with me. I was in there with my Bullets gear on and some sandals by myself. Anyway, one of the ladies led me back to the receptionist room and I left. Not one congratulations, or good luck. I thought I heard someone say kiss my @ss nigra, when I said goodbye, but I couldn’t be sure. I knew right then and there I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
It was about 20 minutes from the title office to my new home. I had one of the larger homes in the new development and you could just about hear all the blinds being crack open when I stepped out the car to go inside. It was raining when I got here and since this was my first time opening the front door, naturally I was sort of fumbling with my keys, but you can bet I got my mind right when I started sensing front doors opening and people standing on porches. Them: “Nigra you got two minutes to open that front door or its going to be a misunderstanding…” The last thing I wanted was to be shot at my front door because someone thought a nigra was breaking and entering. I went in and looked around… it was wonderful… nothing like the smell of a new home. Since I wasn’t expecting to close that day, I didn’t have anything with me except a blanket I kept in the car and a small portable cassette radio player. It was a two-hour drive back home and I wasn’t feeling that, so I brought something to eat, picked up a pint of Jack Daniels and a coke and laid back. Most of my furniture was in storage out here, so I didn’t have to worry about that. Tomorrow I would go get my TV and clothes from my brother’s house and then Saturday I would get my furniture out of storage… I figured I’d wait until Sunday so that everyone would be home before I cleaned my pistols and shotgun in the garage with the door open to exercise my 2nd Amendment Rights… Article II: Sec I. – The right to bury arms… legs… heads and anything thing else, if you come over heeh with that bullshit.
Ain’t Nothing New Under The Sun
Nowadays we are luckier than our enslaved ancestor. Depending on where you were enslaved, your dwellings could be a proverbial mansion, or a few leaves tied to some branches. It all depended on two primary systems of labor used for black enslavement. They were called the gang system and the task system. So, the gang system was primarily used on agriculture plantations. The gang system worked like… well I don’t want to be the one to tell them… but it worked liked Henry Ford’s assembly line… and he had them thinking it was a marvel of an innovation. Nope, I ain’t gonna say he was using them the same way the Massa was using slaves on the plantation, because that kind of talk could lead to toes dangling. Henry is viewed as the “man!,” one of the most innovated and forward thinking capitalist of the 20th century. “They dare you to use the word Massa and Ford in the same sentence.” Anyway, so yeah, in the gang system of labor, you would have some people digging the holes to plant the crop in, another set of people would go behind them and drop seeds in the hole and the final set of people would cover it up. This way you could have a continuous level of production all during the day from sunrise to sunset. The other system we said was being used was called the task system. In this system you were given a task and when you finished it, you were done for the day. That system was mostly used in urban setting.
Help Yourself
So, the reason I bring these systems up is because, one permitted more leisure time than the other. If you are involved in the gang system, you are working for the better part of a day and as far as quarters were concerned, all you needed was a place to lay your head down for a few hours. The Massa could put ten of us under one roof on a dirt floor and we would be like… “The Massa is so good to me…”
Massa: “I do that because you are a good one…”
The houses were of such poor condition, that when then became uninhabitable, they just let them rot away. Most of these houses were part of a centrally located community group, although down South you also had what were called field cabins. The field cabin was often remote allowing for close proximity to the fields and for boss man to get a little bit of some without being bothered… Okay, I don’t know if he was out there getting some… but I ain’t never seen a plantation where you couldn’t see the cotton field. Anyway, in the centrally located communities, these shacks were usually situated close to the big house, where they would have access to places like the dairy, wash house or smokehouse. The smokehouse is where they cured the meat and could easily be identified by the noose hanging in front of it. Sometimes the Massa would leave the door open so you could smell the cured meat and then he’d leave a ham with a fork in it on a bench right under the noose… okay no he didn’t.
Anyway, the people that lived in these communities which were close to the big house… now I keep saying close to the big house… I mean relatively close… close as in when the Massa has to sneak down there while his wife is sleeping, he doesn’t have to put on his clothes or when he goes on the veranda, he can just make out a couple of pickaninny’s stealing a watermelon out his watermelon patch… that close. Anyway, those people mostly were engaged in the tasks system.
So being engaged in the task system meant you had more leisure time. More leisure time meant more domestic time. More domestic time meant you could take better care of your shack. Some people built fireplaces in them and some had wooden floors and windows. Not the kind you could see through, they usually had opaque windows. Those that didn’t have glass windows had shutters and those without shutters had curtains. If you didn’t have windows, you were probably a hater…
While most had one room, some had two rooms and there were others that even had duplexes!
I heard you had to watch the Nigras with the duplexes… If you had a duplex.. than you were more than just a good one…
Can I Have Yo Cornbread?
Now remember we are talking about enslaved folks, so when I say duplex, I really mean attic… with a couple of boards across the ceiling beam that you could lay a bed of rags across so that if you had guest, they could sleep on the top floor of yo “duplex.”
In the movies, you usually see slave cabins with beds, tables and chairs. That was highly uncommon in real life. If you went into enslaved quarters and they had a table, chairs and a bed… get the faque out of there right away and don’t come back… yo life is in danger… Ima tell you right now, somebody’s doing some stuff you don’t want to have nothing to do with.
I mean it was a minimalistic life. Most enslaved people didn’t even have cookware unless they made it themselves. Most slave quarters had kitchen gardens where they would grow food. A lot of the enslaved black folks would supplement their rations with hunting. So, you might find hunting and fishing equipment in those shacks. In the early part of the 18th century, that meant you could even find a gun or two used for hunting. After Nat turner dropped it like its hot, they forbade black folks from owning guns. Even though it was a dismal life, the enslave quarters was the cradle of the rural enslaved black community. Weddings and burials were held there. Want to know where the slave quarters were located… look for the burial grounds. Most enslaved black folk’s graveyards were somewhere behind the enslaved quarters.
Give Me A Break
The urban enslave quarters were a little bit posher. A lot of the urban enslaved quarters were made of stone. They were mainly behind the main residence and were usually encompassed by a wall. This was to prevent enslaved people from leaving or entering. The other difference between urban and rural enslaved quarters was that urban enslaved quarters combined the workspaces with in them. The laundry, kitchen, stable and bathroom were all combined in the enslaved quarters. It usually was set up like this, the workspaces would be on the first floor and the enslaved quarters would be on the second floor or the enslaved quarters would be over a shop or the stables. After the Civil War, many of these enslaved quarters were preserved and rented out as apartments. Sometimes the slave quarters were connected by a hallway to the Massa’s main house… if the wife allowed that shat. The Massa’s side of the house would be the side that looked down upon the street, while the enslaved side of the house would look down upon the alley or city lot.
Slave quarters in the north were less common and not many survived after the Civil War. There are some examples still left in of all places Massachusetts, Brooklyn, New York and New Jersey. While it is not widely known, there were still slaves in New Jersey up until 1865, New York ended slavery in 1827, while Massachusetts ended the practice in 1790.
So that’s a little bit about the living conditions of the enslaved people of the United States. That stuff you see on TV is purely fictional. The real-life Toby didn’t wear any shoes or have a button-down shirt and the real-life Pratt didn’t look like he just had a $100 haircut, shave and manicure. Our ancestors lived in decrepit conditions under the intolerable yoke of enslavement… for centuries.
Join us next week at Hill1news as we explore more African American history.
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