Been in the Storm So Long_ The Aftermath of Slavery - Leon F. Litwack [177]
On some plantations, the mistress had made a practice of selecting certain young slaves and moving them into the Big House to train them to be maids. Sarah Debro, a former North Carolina slave, recalled being separated from her mother for that purpose. “De day she took me my mammy cried kaze she knew I would never be ’lowed to live at de cabin wid her no more.” While life in the Big House had both advantages and disadvantages, depending on the moods of the “white folks,” the impressions it made on a young slave could be incalculable.
My dresses an’ aprons was starched stiff. I had a clean apron every day. We had white sheets on de beds an’ we niggers had plenty to eat too, even ham. When Mis’ Polly went to ride she took me in de carriage wid her. De driver set way up high an’ me an’ Mis’ Polly set way down low.… I loved Mis’ Polly an’ loved stayin’ at de big house.
After the war, her mother immediately came to claim her. But Sarah refused to leave, crying and holding on to the dress of her mistress, who pleaded for the right to retain her. Despite the tears and pleas, Sarah’s mother remained firm and reminded the mistress that only her callousness had made this scene possible. “You took her away from me an’ didn’ pay no mind to my cryin’, so now I’se takin’ her back home. We’s free now, Mis’ Polly, we ain’t gwine be slaves no more to nobody.” With those words, she dragged her daughter out of the house. “I can see how Mis’ Polly looked now,” Sarah Debro recollected. “She didn’ say nothin’ but she looked hard at Mammy an’ her face was white.” That night, in the windowless “mud house” to which they moved, Sarah lay on her straw mattress and looked up through the cracks in the roof. “I could see de stars, an’ de sky shinin’ through de cracks looked like long blue splinters stretched ’cross de rafters. I lay dare an’ cried kaze I wanted to go back to Mis’ Polly.”31
The close relationships that sometimes developed between slave children and the white mistress could be even more psychologically damaging than separation by sale. Where a master or mistress made “pets” out of certain favorites, indulging them in ways their parents could not, a conflict of loyalties became highly possible. Jane Sutton, a former Mississippi slave, contrasted her master, who provided the blacks with “plenty t’eat an’ wear” and gave the children candy and presents when he returned from town, with her father, who belonged to a neighboring planter and visited on weekends. “He jus’ come on Satu’d’y night an’ us don’ see much of’im. Us call him ‘dat man.’ Mammy tol’ us to be more ’spectful to ’im ’cause he was us daddy, but us aint care nothin’ ’bout ’im. He aint never brung us no candy or nothin’.” Rather than live with her father after emancipation, Jane ran away and returned to the old plantation. With equally conflicting emotions, Lizzie Hill, who had been a slave in Alabama, ran away from her mother three times after the war in order to return to the plantation where she had been accorded the same food and clothes as the white children with whom she had played and slept. Nor could Lou Turner easily give up the life she had led as a young slave on a Texas plantation, where the mistress had fed her well, dressed her in nice clothes, and insisted