Read The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman for Free Online

and big whiteeyes, and he looked just like the driver we had left on the place. That kind was used to beating on poor black people who couldn’t hit back.
    “That’s your child?” the white lady asked me.
    “No, Misses, I’m just ’leven or twelve,” I said. “He’s for another lady the Secesh killed yesterday.”
    “There ain’t no more Secesh,” she said.
    “They had some there yesterday,” I said. “And they sure enough killed his mama and his little baby sister.”
    When I said that the rest of the niggers started looking a little scared.
    “Y’all going North?” I asked the white lady.
    “We coming in from Texas,” the white lady said. “We going South.”
    “South?” I said. “Don’t niggers know they don’t have to go South no more?”
    “We goes where us Misses tell us to go, little dried-up,” the driver said. “She knows what she doing. Not you.”
    “Quiet, Nicodemus,” the white lady told him. “We going back to our plantation,” she said. “We left it when we heard the Yankees was coming through.”
    “My old master and them didn’t go nowhere,” I said. “Just hid out in the swamps with the goods till the Yankees packed up and left.”
    “Yankees do much ravishing to y’all place?” she asked me.
    “Not much,” I said. “Nothing the first time. Too busy running after Secesh. Next time, took stocks, something to eat, that’s all.”
    “I hate to think what they did to Rogers Grove,” she said. “It’s been five long years, and I hate to think what I’m go’n find when I get home.”
    “Maybe they didn’t touch a thing,” I said.
    “Oh, if I know Yankees I know they touched something,” she said. “I just hope they left the house standing. Y’all children hungry?”
    “We got food, Misses,” I said.
    “What y’all got?”
    “Potatoes and corn, Misses,” I said.
    “Y’all want some cornbread and meat?” she asked.
    I was hungry, but I made pretend I had to ask Ned if he wanted to eat. He said yes, and the white lady told somebody to bring us some food. Her and her two girls sat down on the ground in front of us.
    “Lord, I ain’t seen nothing but ravishing and more ravishing,” she said. “Everywhere you look, nothing but ravishing. Ravishing, ravishing, ravishing. I been trying to cry, but I done already cried myself dry. Not another drop in me nowhere.”
    “No need to cry,” I said. “Just got to keep going, that’s all.”
    “Misses, just give me the word,” the driver said.
    The white lady didn’t even look at him this time. I looked up at him, and he was standing there rubbing his fist. If that white lady had just nodded her head that nigger would have knocked mine off.
    “Your mama in Ohio?” the white lady asked me.
    “My mama been dead,” I told her. “The overseer we had said he was go’n whip my mama because the driver said she wasn’t hoeing right. My mama told the overseer, ‘You might try and whip me, but nobody say you go’n succeed.’ The overseer ’lowed, ‘I ain’t go’n just try, I’m go’n do it. Pull up that dress.’ My mama said, ‘You the big man, you pull it up.’ And he hit her with the stick. She went on him to choke him, and he hit her again. She fell on the ground and he hit her and hit her and hit her. And they didn’t get rid of him till he had killed two more people. They brought me to the house to see after the children because I didn’t have nobody to stay with. But they used to beat me all the time for nothing.”
    “I never beat my people,” the white lady said.
    “Some people don’t beat their niggers, but they sure used to beat us,” I told her. “Old Master used to beat us with the cat-o’-nine-tails; Old Mistress beat us with the first thing her hands fell on. And had the nerve to cry when they said freedom had come. I ain’t studying about her.”
    “You mind how you talk about white folks,” the driver said.
    “Quiet, Nicodemus,” the white lady said. “You going