RELATIONS: Runaway!
On the Friday morning before the Tyre Nichols video was released, I had been poring over pages from a plantation ledger. The ledger had been mailed to me on a memory stick just a few days earlier by the man who bought Locust Ridge Plantation from my family in the mid-2000s.
Throughout the day as I read the ledger, I also learned more about the video that would be released at 6pm that evening. I heard it described as “gruesome” and “unspeakable” and read that it was so horrifying that police departments across the country were preparing for riots. Activists were again calling to defund or abolish the police.
Meanwhile as I read the plantation ledger notes about tasks assigned and how many pounds of cotton each enslaved person picked each day, I saw the word “runaway” again and again. I don’t know why — perhaps because I had been told all my life that our family treated slaves kindly — but I was surprised to see that the people enslaved on my great grandfather’s plantation were constantly running away.
For instance, during the week ending September 15th, 1860, the ledger shows that Steave, Lewis, and Eveline “Run away” 4 out of 5 days, while Ephraem and Ann Willis “Run away” for 2 days. The notes for the week record that on Thursday, “Mr. Preston brought Eveline home in the evening. Ephream and Ann Willis ranaway at knight!” and later that “Ann Willis was brought home Sunday evening.”
The ledger for the following week offers more insight. Steave is recorded as “Runaway” all week, as are Ephraem and Lewis. The day after being “brought home,” Ann Willis is recorded as picking only 65 pounds of cotton — compared to the usual 160 to 190 pounds she normally picked, suggesting she was either sick or had been harshly punished, probably whipped, and then put right back to work.
A month later during the week ending October 13, 1860, Ephream is “runaway” and Ann Willis is “runaway” after picking only 70 pounds of cotton the day before, again suggesting that she is either sick or has been punished in a way that has compromised her ability to work.
The morning after our whipping, we all had to go to work, as if nothing had happened. I was so sore I could hardly do anything. I had to leave my row and go off over the fence a great many times, and towards night, when I saw I could not get my task done, and knew I should be whipped again, I made for the woods, and at midnight went as far as I could down the country.
from Recollections of Slavery by a Runaway Slave
The ledgers for the weeks following show that Ephream and Ann Willis are still “runaway” at the end of October.
To learn more about enslaved people running away, I turned to the first-hand accounts in slave narratives.* These accounts confirmed my suspicion that the people enslaved on my ancestors’ Locust Ridge Plantation likely ran away out of desperation to have even a few days and nights respite from constant hard labor, abuse, and dehumanization. The narratives also confirmed that enslaved people were often hunted like animals and whipped, beaten, or otherwise tortured when caught.
Slaves would run away but most of the time they were caught. The Master would put blood hounds on their trail, and sometimes the slave would kill the blood hound and make his escape. If a slave once tried to run away and was caught, he would be whipped almost to death, and from then on if he was sent any place they would chain their meanest blood hound to him.
— OCTAVIA GEORGE, enslaved in Louisiana
My mammy’s name was Harriet Clemens. When I was too little to know anything ’bout it she run off an’ lef’ us. I don’t ’member much ’bout her ’fore she run off, I reckon I was mos’ too little. She tol’ me when she come after us, after de war was over, all ’bout why she had to run away: It was on ’count o’ de Nigger overseers. (Dey had Niggers over de hoers an’ white mens over de plow han’s.) Dey kep’ a-tryin’ to mess ’roun’ wid her an’ she wouldn’ have nothin’ to do wid ’em. One time while she was in de fiel’ de overseer asked her to go over to de woods wid him an’ she said, “All right, I’ll go find a nice place an’ wait.” She jus’ kep’ a-goin. She swum de river an’ run away. She slipped back onct or twict at night to see us, but dat was all.
— ANNA BAKER, enslaved in Alabama
According to the ledger, Ephraem is finally “caught” on Saturday, November 10th, but Ann Willis is still missing. In fact, the ledger records her as “runaway” for the next several months. Then, on Thursday, Feb 13th, 1862, the ledger notes that “Ann Willis sick.” It is the last entry about her that I can find.
Run, nigger, run,
De Patteroll git you!
Run, nigger, run, De Patteroll come!
Watch, nigger, watch ⎯
De Patteroll trick you!
Watch nigger watch,
He got a big gun!
— song recalled by Anthony Dawson, an enslaved man from North Carolina*
I did not watch the video when it was released that evening, but my husband did. He told me that after the police dragged Tyre Nichols from his car and piled onto him, the young man somehow managed to escape and run away. That he tried to run away from those police, run away to safety, run away home. Runaway!
I thought about how terrified he must have been. After having been dragged from his car, tased, kicked, and beaten — how he must have felt he was running for his life. And he was, but he couldn’t outrun the gang of police chasing him. Tyre Nichols cause of death is described as “extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating.”
I had heard people say that modern policing in the U.S. was rooted in slave patrols, but I just didn’t get it until I found myself reading the words “run away” again and again in the plantation ledger the same day that the news about the Tyre Nichols video emerged. Suddenly it all seemed so obvious. Slave patrols had been formed to protect rich white people and their property; while police departments today also work to protect rich white people and their property.
I can take this analogy a step further and personalize it. Slave patrols worked to protect my ancestors and their property, while today’s police are expected to protect me (a white woman) and my property.
To make the connection between Tyre Nichols’ murder, slave patrols, my ancestors, the police, and me is sickening and destabilizing — but there is truth in it. And maybe if enough of us start telling the truth, we can escape the hounding lie of white supremacy. And maybe, just maybe, the truth can finally set us free.
While history is what happened, it is also, just as important, how we think about what happened and what we unearth and choose to remember about what happened. — Nikole Hannah-Jones, The 1619 Project
Note: Selections from the slave narratives are presented as transcribed. Black interviewees often referred to themselves with terms that in some uses are considered offensive. Further, white interviewers, despite project guidelines for transcribing the narratives, often used stereotypical ways of representing black speech.
Special thanks to Edward Adams, my newly discovered cousin, for granting me permission to title my blog RELATIONS. which is also the title of his book on his Adams and Stewart family history.
SOURCES
https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/runaway/runaway.html
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai/enslavement/text8/runawayswpa.pdf
About the Author
I began researching my family’s involvement in the slave society of the South in the spring of 2021. Until that time, I knew very little about American history and nothing about genealogy. I am slowly learning about both. In addition to the essays and interviews published on Medium, I have published essays and op-eds in Salon, the Austin American Statesman, and Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine, among others. I have an MFA in Creative Writing from Texas State University.
