ch4,5,6

Chapter 4:

As the winter season came, the Hopkins gave us our single outfit of winter clothing. It seemed meager to some, but was quite an upgrade from the Scott plantation. It was also around this time that Mr. Hopkins began bringing in a preacher to “educate” us on the importance of Jesus’ birth, and thus the need for a Christmas celebration; however, this man who would be preaching to us did little spiritual reviving and educating and instead, preached about the righteousness of slavery and how slaves would not be able to live on their own without their white masters. This man was vicious too, demanding our complete and utter attention, in threat of being whipped by our overseer. He took joy too in the ensuing whippings that caused the pain and unrelenting agony for near a half dozen slaves. How could such a “devoted Christian” man be so devoutly religious, repenting on his sins almost daily, yet also be such a harsh, snide, hypocrite, forgetting the very teaching of the Golden Rule of Jesus himself: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The abuses went on for several months, all the while we continued to work our lives away, with body aches and sickness being always-present factors in the whippings that we might or might not receive that day; however, Mr. Hopkins eventually fired the pastor in the beginning of December for stealing potatoes from one of the barrels of foodstuffs. How ironic, a pious man going to Hell.

This was not even an isolated incident in the Christian community. Many so-called “Christians” would beat slaves, such as one time when the overseer of our plantation thought one of the slaves looked at him funny, so he whipped the poor soul almost to death. When two slaves were seen eyeing each other and talking instead of working, Mr. Hopkins and the overseer forced them into “hotboxes”, which were metallic boxes that the person would sit in, barely clad, with no food or water, for a given amount of time, or until death. Another time, Mr. Hopkins was especially angry one morning, so when his breakfast was a mere two minutes later than expected, he tossed the hot coffee into the man’s face, scalding his skin, and then punched him in the gut, while also verbally abusing him. This also happened at Mr. Scott’s plantation, several years ago. The list went on and on, with violations of human rights being flagrant reminders of our social status as human beings. This cemented our doubts about the sermons which we were being taught.

Our new minister came for the first time on December 15. He taught the same principles as our previous pastor, but treated us even more as desperate souls in dire need of conversion, and as wretched, cursed beings in need of a sermon to drain our spirits. He was even more brutal than our previous pastor, with whippings occurring almost daily. There was little we could do, since resisting a whipping would incur an even more abusive beating. Mr. Hopkins began giving fewer and fewer warnings before he brought down his wrath upon misbehaving slaves, showing the pastor’s heavy influence on him. This was blatantly portrayed when a young girl stood up to stretch her back. Mr. Hopkins saw this and screamed at her, whipping her five times, just for stopping work for a few measly seconds. We were not even allowed to sing our spirituals, as Mr. Hopkins and our preacher saw them as “giving us too much freedom”. They must have thought that if they gave us that much freedom, we would become curious and yearn for more, so we continued our bleak, desolate lives with little hope of bettering them.

Chapter 5:

While the days of December barreled past, the weather got colder and colder, reaching a surprisingly low temperature given the normal mildness of a regular South Carolinian winter. With this dreary, rainy weather came similar feelings among the slaves of the Hopkins plantation, for we knew that come New Years, many of us would never see each other again. This holiday was little of an enjoyment to slaves, unlike the white folk who would roast entire animals in great feasts upon which the Negroes could not partake. Even more, the well-off whites of the region would set off these infernal contraptions that would shoot off into the sky and explode, giving off an immense concussion and emitting cinders, ash, and smoke that would rain from the heavens as if the Lord had come down from heaven with volcanoes erupting in his wake! The biggest upset that we incurred was when our new preacher, whom many of us had come to somewhat enjoy, needed to leave to go visit with his family.

These trifling events would not allow us slaves to enjoy even the slightest hint of a Christmas miracle, much less the holiday itself. No presents were exchanged, unlike the Hopkins’ home, warm and scrumptious smelling, full to the brim with a Christmas tree and waves upon waves of presents. Mr. Hopkins did, however, uphold a form of the Christmas spirit of “giving” by letting us have a single piece of bread to sum with our monthly rations of food.

Christmas day came, and we gave ourselves a brief, dull sermon in order to try to bring out spirits up, but this quickly failed and descended into a yelling fest with many weary beings angry at others. This really tested our unity among the group, but we prevailed after I and another slave quelled the unrest with a song. Soon the entire group was singing along to the tune.

The day went on smoothly until around noon, when Mr. Hopkins came out and said that we still needed to tend the fields, even on Christmas. He said that he was sorry, but he needed our labor to start the beginning of the next harvesting season. We all went out, few even with the basic commodities of shoes, and tilled rows for what would be cotton bushels. Luckily for us, the work load was generously small, so we were back to our huts for the rest of the day within two hours.

After Mr. Hopkins and the overseer had been gone for an hour or so, all of the slaves gathered in the central clearing between the huts and started a small fire hidden from the house, upon which we cooked a rabbit caught by one of the resourceful full African slaves. We also made a sort of berry mix from the surrounding bushes. Everything was just starting to come together when Mrs. Hopkins sighted us. While she was usually quite kind to us slaves in the fields, her puritanical attitude toward how her slaves would conduct themselves compelled her to run inside to warn Mr. Hopkins. He bolted outside, and, with a bucket of water, he doused the fire and destroyed our get together in only a few blinks of an eye. His faced turned an inglorious crimson red, uttering the scream, “How dare you disrespect the time which I have granted you incompetent Negroes by burning up my property! Do any of you know how dangerous that is? That could easily have set off a brush fire and killed all the crops! Whoever started this had better step forward, or there will be repercussions upon all of you!” No one had really started the whole “feast”; it just happened out of necessity, so no one stepped up. We all got our rations reduced by 3 ounces of our pork, and a single whipping, but it truly seemed like more.

Chapter 6:

After our calamitous Christmas Feast, things sort of died down for a while. The work load remained at its relative standstill status, with only the occasional hour or two per day to maintain the sprouting crops. It was during this lull in the activity that I began pondering how my life would be different if I educated myself, like the famous Frederick Douglass; where would I be? What could I accomplish? These questions puzzled my brain for hours every day as I tried to teach myself a basic education from one of the “Noah Webster’s Grammar Books” which I found in the garbage. I did, however, try to hide this from the Hopkins; they did not want their slaves to be educated, for that could possibly plant the seeds of insurrection. It was then that I had an epiphany. My good friend Martha, one of the slaves who served as a motherly figure to all of us slaves, especially me, was a very learned woman. She had been with me almost my entire life, being sold from the Scott Plantation in the same auction as I, to the same destination. She even helped me understand my past at the Scott Plantation, and all the information from the time before I could consciously remember. Thus, I ventured into her hut with my book and an open mind.

When Martha saw me, her entire face was illuminated with a massive grin. I came in and sat down on the mat and I dropped the question of whether or not she would teach me. As soon as the word “teach” came out of my mouth, the kind look on her face morphed into a sternly furrowed frown. She calmly said, “Don’t you know that that stuff is illegal? How you expect me to teach you anything when there’s all them laws and people out there to stop ya?” After all, slave education was against the law, but I was determined to not let that stop me. I begged and pleaded, and finally, that friendliness hatched in her once again. She accepted, but made a list of ground rules for the teaching sessions: they would have to be at night; they would have to be no more than forty-five minutes or less, so as not to arouse any suspicion and shorten the possibility of us getting caught; and I could not tell anyone else of the prospect.

Our first sessions began in earnest the first day afterwards, and I never looked back. Not only could that exemplary woman teach me more than I needed to know on the subject of English and Grammar, but she was also extremely well versed on her basic Mathematics, History, and a dash of Sciences. Before I knew it, I could read, minimally write, do basic arithmetic, and knew multitudes of information about the sun and the heavens, the people of the world, and the soil upon which I trod. It all came so easily to me, and I soaked it all up with pleasure. Then it happened.

One day, the overseer was passing through our slave shanty when he saw the corner of a book protruding from my hut door. He immediately burst inside, grabbed the book and screamed in my face, “Is this here book yours? Huh?! You better fess up you stupid wench or I’ll have you shot!” At this last threat, I quickly announced that I had found the book in the trash, and picked it up because I enjoyed looking at the pictures. Unknown to him, there actually were no pictures in the book, so I saw through his tough exterior to see the uneducated man whom he truly was. He asked me to read a passage from it, and I pretended to be ignorant of the trick, so I baffled and mumbled to myself for a moment before telling him that I could not understand the markings. He ripped up the book and threw it into the fire. Little did he know that all of the knowledge that I had not already known was not in that miniscule book; it was deep within the depths of Martha’s mind, and it would continue to leak out for a long time to come; I just had to be more careful.