The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (84 page)

Image A.4. Alfred Parrott, formerly enslaved man, photographed in 1941, when he was ninety-one. Jack Delano, Farm Security Administration. Library of Congress.

Image A.5. Formerly enslaved woman, living on a farm near Greensboro, Alabama. Jack Delano, Farm Security Administration, 1941, Library of Congress.

The descendants of enslaved African Americans could do these mighty deeds for many reasons, but one root of every reason was this: those who survived slavery had passed down what they had learned. The gifts, the creations, the breath of
spirit, songs that saved lives, lessons learned for dimes, the ordinary virtues, and the determination to survive the wolf. The lessons came down in the strong arms that held babies in sharecroppers’ cabins, in the notes of songs, in the rocking of churches, in jokes told around the water bucket on hot days of cotton-picking, and in lessons taught in both one-room schoolhouses and at places like
Hampton. Day after day, year after year, the half untold was told. And in the tomb, the body stirred.

The wind washed the sun clear of clouds. Claude Anderson scribbled the last few words with his pencil, and then noticed that the old man had come to a stop. The sunlight had marched far across the pine board floor. It must be well past noon. Glancing up, Anderson saw Lorenzo Ivy looking at him
with a calm smile, one that belied the catalog of horrors he had detailed. Outside, children were calling to each other in wild play. Anderson heard two pairs of bare feet shooting down the street in chase. He could feel the dirt kicking out behind his own heels, only a few years since.

Somewhere, across the sea, people peered up through the barbed wire at guard towers. The story being told to
justify the machine guns was one of the prisoners’ subhuman race. It was a story told with phrases that the defenders of slavery had coined to claim their righteous hold on Ivy when he had been a child. Somewhere, across the sea, a man in a gulag huddled under a blanket woven from cotton picked by Anderson’s and Ivy’s lost cousins. Somewhere, across the ocean, a child in a tavern entrance heard
a record playing, heard a shocking combination of correctness and violation, a trumpet singing a new song. Somewhere, in fact at the far end of the same old slave trail that led through Danville and over the mountain, a mother huddled by Mississippi’s Highway 61 with her children. Put out with the coming of the tractor, she clutched a Chicago address in her hand. And somewhere—not far from Danville—law
students three generations from slavery huddled, planning the next move against Jim Crow and lynching.

Another shift of wind shook the curtains, another minute had marched the sun further, to an angle that suddenly cast the deep wrinkles on Ivy’s face into relief. He rose, creaking audibly. Sometimes these old men wanted chewing tobacco; Anderson often gave the women snuff. Ivy’s hand only asked
for a grip. “I know a lot more I can tell you some other time; I’ll write it out. Just send me an envelope like you said and I’ll write it all down and send it to you.”
¹⁵
Anderson thanked him, and he stepped through the door the old man held open. He walked down the steps, opened the door of his black Ford, dropped his notepads on the passenger side, and slid into the driver’s seat. He started
the engine and leaned his head out through the rolled-down window. The old man was still on the porch. “Be good now,” Lorenzo Ivy said, and turned back through the open door.

Image A.6. Great-grandchildren of enslaved men and women, preparing to leave the cotton South, 1930s. Marion Wolcott, Works Progress Administration, 1939. Library of Congress.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Any book that takes this long to write inevitably leads one to incur multiple debts. The power of compound interest eventually renders those debts completely unpayable. I’ll just consider this a statement of bankruptcy. In this list of debts, I must begin with the fact that this book would never have seen the light of day without the unflagging support of Lara Heimert, editor and director of Basic Books. I can’t thank her enough for her support, patience, careful readings, and pointed questions. Other sources of support and expertise at the press and in the production process include Sandra Beris and Leah Stecher of Basic, line editor Roger Labrie, and copyeditor Kathy Streckfus. Linda Beltz Glaser and Syl Kacapyr of Cornell helped with promotion ideas, David Ethridge did the maps, and Lillian Baptist helped create the cover concept.

Research funding came above all from Cornell University, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the University of Miami, but also from the University of São Paulo, Tulane University, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, the University of North Carolina, and Duke University.

No work of history is possible without the support of the librarians, archivists, and institutions that make original research possible. Support and assistance came from: Cornell University Library and its entire staff; Duke University Library and its staff, especially Elizabeth Dunn, Nelda Webb, and Janie Morris; the University of North Carolina’s Southern Historical Collection, especially Laura Clark Brown, Tim West, Tim Pyatt, Shayera Tangri, and John White; Tulane University’s Howard-Tilton Library and its Special Collections Department; the New Orleans Notarial Archives; the New Orleans Public Library, especially Greg Osborne; the New York Public Library; the New York Historical Society; Louisiana State University’s Hill Memorial Library; the National Archives (Washington, DC, and Fort Worth); the Chicago Historical Society; the Newberry Library; the Virginia Historical Society; and the University of Miami Library. The Natchez Historical Collection deserves special mention for the intellectual and moral support given to scholars by Mimi Miller, as does the University of West Alabama’s Center for Study of the Black Belt. I thank Zachary Kaplan, Gregg Lightfoot, and Sam Robinson for research assistance. Thanks go as well to Jonathan Pritchett, James Wilson, Richard H. Kilbourne, Dale Tomich, and Mimi Miller for sharing data, to CISER (Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research) for help in storing and analyzing data, especially Bill Block, Lynn Martin, and Jeremy Williams; and also to Jordan Suter, Nancy Brooks, Peter Hirtle, Bob Kibbee, and Michelle Paolillo for help in analyzing data.

I was able to get useful feedback from audiences and co-panelists at numerous presentations of portions of the materials contained here, so I thank those who participated in and organized such events, including the Southern Historical Association, Social Science History Association, Humboldt Foundation, American Philosophical Society, Fernand Braudel Center at Binghamton University, Federal University of São Paulo, University of Rio de Janeiro, University of São Paulo, British-American Nineteenth-Century History Conference, Cambridge University, Cornell University Society for the Humanities, Harvard University, Brown University, University of North Carolina, Tulane University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern Mississippi (Gulfport), University of the West Indies (St. Augustine), Georgetown University, the Huntington Library, and Columbia University.

Then there is the group of people who read and commented on all or on significant parts of the book as it was being written and revised. These include Sarah Franklin, and Rafael Marquese and his students and colleagues at the University of São Paulo, including Waldimiro Lourenço, Leo Marques, and Tamis Parron. The group also includes Richard Dunn, Chuck Mathewes, Joshua Rothman, Tom Balcerski, Eric Tagliacozzo, Adam Rothman, Julia Ott, Dale Tomich, and Tony Kaye. I thank others who not only engaged with the arguments in the book, but from whom I have learned on a journey that has been going on so long that some of you have probably forgotten. But I remember: Lauren Acker, Rosanne Adderley, Ligia Aldana, Tony Badger, Whitney Battle-Baptiste, Sven Beckert, Catherine Biba, Ser Seshs Ab Heter-Clifford M. Boxley, Jeff Brosco, Vince Brown, the late Clark Cahow, Corey Capers, Mickey Casad, Catherine Clinton, Mari Crabtree, Fred D’Aguiar, Edwidge Danticat, Christine Desan, Doug Egerton, the late Robert F. Engs, Freddi Evans, Susan Ferber, Laura Free, Johan Grimm, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Will Harris, Maurice Jackson, Walter Johnson, James Lake, Triwa Lee-Chin, Jonathan Levy, David Libby, Gregg Lightfoot, Mary Maples Dunn, Stephanie McCurry, John H. McNeill, Delores McQuinn, Alice Michtom, Stephen Mihm, Daegan Miller, Duncan Morgan, Brent Morris, Chris Morris, Viranjini Munansinghe, Michael O’Brien, Sarah Pearsall, Dylan Penningroth, David Perry, Larry Powell, Marcus Rediker, Elizabeth Pryor Stordeur, Olivia Robba de Rocha, Pharissa Robinson, Seth Rockman, Dan Rood, Ricardo Salles, Manisha Sinha, Adriane Lentz-Smith, Jason Scott Smith, Nicole Spruill, Daisybelle Thomas-Quinney, Darla Thompson, Phil Troutman, Rob Vanderlan, Harry Watson, Jonathan Wells, Mark Wilson, Betty Wood, Kirsten Wood, and Michael Zakim.