You
just couldn’t escape your fate, could you, Stack-O-Lee of
Scotland Neck?
At
your birth in 1870, they had it in for you, black rebellion was
still in the air.
Fifteen
years a slave and as many free they finally whipped the hell out
of you.
You
were a Jubilee Child, youngest of four. Nobody told Rosa your mama
Slavery
was dead as Abraham Lincoln. She learned no letters or instruction
other
than the whip or the rod. At eight years old, you were too bad for
her
to
raise and she gave you to a white man to break, to manage seven
years.
You
worked night and day for that white man, no pay, just enough to
wear.
You
worked ‘til your legs were sturdy and arms powerful, your spirit
defiant.
What
becomes of a fifteen-year-old boy, no mama, no papa, nothing?
Now
you seem at peace, at rest in heaven, you, upright in an unpainted
box
in
public view, on the street, they have stripped you bare, button, cut of cloth,
sprigs of
whiskers, the tip of a finger, an ear, a toe.
Black
man, the photographer will
archive this image!
Thirty-six
witnesses and twelve jurors, the great
men of Hicksford
sanctioned
your murder, found “no presentments” in the law
and
the mob, lynched a jailed Negro on a cherry tree in courtyard
square.
Walter
Speaks
I
ran away and promised myself I’ll die before I’ll work
for
another white man, a vow that led me to take what I needed.
In
yesterday’s slavery, for breaking & entering, stealing
meat
from
the smokehouse, a black could be given “thirty and nine,”
branded and hanged
At fifteen I got twenty months for Edmunsen
and Jasey’s
then
three years for Mr. Shield’s Store.
By
twenty I nearly killed a man with my blade
and
so I left Scotland Neck. I rolled and rambled for years
until
I was twenty-nine, on the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad
in
Southside Virginia, when I fell in with the Irishman O’Grady.
August
3, 1899, Charles Wyatt, a grocer, was robbed and killed
Second
Avenue and Glasgow Street, Portsmouth, Virginia, I was
there;
seized in Norfolk, given a speedy trial. Sentenced to hang
June
12, 1900, my partner Dave Brandt O’Grady passed me a file.
The
Irishman was an educated tramp by choice, with an evil temper.
I
robbed George Blick of Belfield; O’Grady killed him with a
coupling
pin,
mangled him brutally with a heavy steel rod for sport and revenge.
My
life is worth no more than others; if I were the murdering
savage
they take me for I could have killed John Grizzard,
his
wife and infant; yet I took only clothes, a watch, a pistol.
I
was ready to die in Skippers, defending myself from Confederates
who
thought they had easy money; I came out my sleep shooting.
Joseph
Weldon drew; he never got off a shot. J. W. Saunders,
he
got one in the back. J E. Morris escaped with his life.
I
was still standing, a hole in my hand, a dead man walking,
on
my head, $1000, four white men dead, my life not
worth
the clothes on my back. I knew I didn’t have long
to
live; I was dog tired when C.P. Parham & W. H. Moore
took
me bleeding in Jarratt. Waiting on the railroad tracks
they
were hunters and could scent a Negro a mile away.
A
bogus telegram arrived in Stony Creek--back to Emporia.
Dragged
from the train, the mob ready to kill me, I escaped
with
bruises, but my time was near, 1500 in the courtyard,
yelling,
“Lynch the nigger! Lynch the nigger!” I taunted them
aplenty.
”Hang me, you cowards, hang me. Break this neck.
It’s
been a good one.” Two white men dead; a stolen gun!
I
walked boldly, erect to the cherry tree, my arms
tied
behind my back, a rope around my neck. I done
done
some wrong in my life, not all that people say.
I
have no regrets. I did the best with what I had.
Hoisted
in mid-air; the whites cry out with joy,
