Mrs. Esther Easter
Age 85 Yrs.
Tulsa, Okla.
I was born near Memphis, Tenn., on the old Ben Moore plantation, but I
don’t know anything about the Old South because Master Ben moves us all up into Missouri (about 14
miles east of Westport, now Kansas City), long before they started fighting about slavery.
Mary Collier was my mother’s name before she was a Moore. About my
father, I dunno. Mammy was sickly most of the time when I was a baby, and she was so thin and poorly
when they moved to Missouri that white folks afraid she going to die on the way.
But she fool ‘em, and she live two – three years after that. That’s
what good Old Master Ben tells me when I gets older.
I stay with Master Ben’s married daughter, Mary, till the coming of the
War. Times was good begore the War, and I wasn’t suffering none from slavery, except once in a
while the Mistress would fan me with a stick – bet I needed it, too.
When the War come along Master he say to leave Misstress Mary and get
ready to go to Texas. Jim Moore, one of the meanest men I ever see, was the son of Master Ben;
he’s going to take us there.
Demon Jim, that’s what I call him when he ain’t around the place, but
when he’s home it was always Master Jim ‘cause he was reckless with the whip. He was a Rebel
officer fighting round the country and didn’t take us slaves to Texas right away. So I stayed on
at his place not far from Master Ben’s plantation.
Master Jim’s wife was a demon, just like her husband. Used the whip all
the time, and every time Master Jim come home he whip me ‘cause the Misstress say I been mean.
One time I tell him, you better but me in your pocket (sell me), Master
Jim, else I’se going run away. He don’t pay no mind, and I don’t try to run away ‘cause of
the whips.
I done see one whipping and that enough. They wasn’t no fooling about
it. A runaway slave from the Jenkins plantation was brought back, and there was a public whipping,
so’s the slaves could see what happens when the tries to get away.
The runaway was chained to the whipping post, and I was full of misery
when I see the lash cutting deep into that boy’s skin. He swell up like a dead horse, but he gets
over it, only he was never no county for work no more.
While Master Jim is out fighting the Yanks, the Mistress is fiddling
around with a neighbor man, Mister Headsmith. I is young then, but I knows enough that Master
Jim’s going be mighty mad he hears about it.
The Mistress didn’t know I knows her secret, and I’m filling to even
up for some of them whipping she put off on me. That’s why I tell Master Jim next time he come
home.
See that Crack in the Wall? Master Jim say yes, and I say, it’s just
like the open door when the eyes are close to the wall. He peek and see into the bedroom.
That’s how I find out about the Mistress and Master Headsmith, I tells
him, and I see he’s getting mad.
What you mean? And Master Jim grabs me hard by the arm like I was trying
to get away.
I see them in the bed.
That’s all I say. The Demon’s got him and Master Jim tears out of the
room looking for the Mistress.
Then I hears loud talking and pretty soon the Mistress is screaming and
calling for help, and if old Master Ben hadn’t drop in just then and stop the fight, why, I guess
she be beat almost to death, that how mad the Master was.
Then Master Ben gets mad ‘cause his boy Jim ain’t got us down in
Texas yet. Then we stay up all the night packing for the trip. Master Jim takes us, but the Mistress
stay at home, and I wonder if Master Jim beat her again when he gets back.
We rides the wagons all the way, how many days, I dunno. The country was
wild most of the way, and I know now that we come through the same country where I lives now, only
it was to the east. (The trip was evidently made of the “Texas Road”) And we keeps on riding and
comes to the big river that’s all brown and red looking, (Red River) and the next thing I was sold
to Mrs. Vaughn at Bonham, Texas, and there I stay till after the slaves is free.
The new Mistress was a widow, no children round the place, and she treat
me mighty good. She was good white folks – like old Master Ben, powerful good.
When the word get to us that the slaves is free, the Mistress says I is
free to go anywheres I want. And I tell her this talk about being free sounds like foolishment to me
– anyway, where can I go? She just pat me on the shoulder and say I better stay right there with
ere, and that’s what I do for a long time. Them I hears about how the white folks down in Dallas
pays big money for house girls and there I goes.
That’s all I ever do after that – work at the houses till I gets too
old to hobble on these tired old feets and legs, then I just sits down.
Jest sits down and wishes for Old Master Ben to come and get me, and take
care of this old woman like he use to do when she is just a little black child on the plantation in
Missouri!
God Bless Old Master Ben – He was good white folks!
Contributed by M. Dawson, May 2002
