Notes and attributions for Br’er Rabbit’s Boy
Br’er Rabbit’s Boy was inspired by the original fugitive slave narratives written in the nineteenth century—stories of survival and escape narrated by former slaves, who, as adults, looked back on their childhood experiences.
The stories have common themes: the injustices of slavery, kidnapping, whippings, the sale of loved ones, bodily abuse, humiliation, and the subsequent determination of each person to claim her or his dignity as a free human being. I felt an urge to bring their stories to a wider audience, re-imagining the experiences from an adolescent’s point of view and making them accessible to readers of all ages.
I have set my story in a real place and time, and incorporated authentic historical events and scenes from the original fugitive slave narratives, many of which are acknowledged and explained in these notes.
Chapter One:
Toby’s pass: The slave code in Kentucky made it illegal for a slave to “go from the tenements of his master . . . without a pass or some letter or token . . . from his master, employer, or overseer.” If Toby left the premises without permission, the punishment was “ten lashes upon his or her bare back for every such offense” (Littell, 1150).
Bag of herbs: A folk practice in both early American and African culture is a little bag of herbs tied around a baby’s neck. It is thought to ward off both illness and evil. My own mother, born in southern Indiana in 1923, kept the “asafetidy bag” from her infancy among her keepsakes.
Slaves Reading: Most states passed “slave codes” making it illegal for slaves to be taught to read and write. Kentucky actually had no such law, although the common fear was that teaching a slave to read or write would create dissatisfaction and foment rebellion.
The idea that slaves were not suited to learning was postulated by Thomas Jefferson himself in his 1785 book Notes on the State of Virginia. Jefferson postulated that “the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind” (155). He recommended recolonizing all black people in Africa.
Try Again: The words to the “Try, try again” poem, as well as the “The horse eats hay” text in chapter two, are from the McGuffey Reader, first published in 1836 and used in schools throughout America for 100 years.
Learning to read and write: Slaves employed a variety of tricks to learn to read and write. My favorite story is from William Wells Brown, who learned to write just after escaping from slavery. “I never spent a day in school in my life, for I had no money to pay for schooling. . . I carried a piece of chalk in my pocket, and whenever I met a boy I would stop him and take out my chalk and get at a board fence. . . First I made flourishes with no meaning, and called a boy up. . . . I said ‘Is not that William Wells Brown?’ ‘Give me the chalk,’ says he, and he wrote out in large letters, ‘William Wells Brown’” (28).
Frederick Douglass employed a similar stratagem, claiming he could write, and then forming a few letters he had learned to copy and asking other little boys if they could beat that. Of course they could, and he gradually learned to read and write from their demonstrations (45).
Chapter Two
Cotton in Kentucky: When I visited western Kentucky in 2016, I spoke with Sue Williams, the volunteer at the Hickman County Museum in Clinton, Kentucky. She told me that when she was a child, her mother put her children on a blanket in the field while she picked cotton. Northwest of Clinton, I stopped at a rural feed store and asked if cotton is still sold there. Jerry, the merchant, assured me that it is, though farmers need to get a government base acreage allotment to grow that crop.
Cotton in the bolls: There are about 20 seeds per boll, and the dried protective casing splits open leaving sharp, woody points.
Exchanging insults: Toby and Sampson’s game of insulting each other is a common African American contest of wits, verbal ability, and self-control called “playing the dozens.” In the field, the boys can engage in a verbal competition without getting in trouble or getting hurt, though the game is best played in front of an appreciative audience.
Rosa Parks wrote of the bus boycott, “The more we gave in, the more we complied with that kind of treatment, the more oppressive it became.” So, for example, once Blacks complied with the directive to sit only in the back of the bus, they were required to give up even that seat if a White person wanted it.
Chapter Three
Stealing food: Food for slaves was not ample, and Booker T. Washington described going to the places where the cows and pigs were fed to steal some of their feed, even collect their wasted food: kernels of “corn scattered around the fence or trough”(My Larger Education,7). He wrote, “meals were gotten by the children very much as dumb animals get theirs. It was a piece of bread here and a scrap of meat there. It was a cup of milk at one time and some potatoes at another. Sometimes a portion of our family would eat out of the skillet or pot, while some one else would eat from a tin plate held on the knees, and often using nothing but the hands with which to hold the food” (Up From Slavery, 9).
Black men walking free: Cincinnati, just across the Ohio River from Kentucky, was a common destination for escaping slaves, and a center of abolitionist activity and the Underground Railroad (UGRR), and the home of Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped incite the north against slavery. The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati was a source of background information and visual images for me as I prepared this manuscript.
Another Declaration of Independence: In 1848, what is commonly referred to as the Seneca Falls Convention published a “Declaration of Rights and Sentiments,” paraphrasing the Declaration of Independence in its proclamation that “all men and women are created equal.” It called for women to have access to higher education, professions, property rights, equal wages, and the right to vote, and was signed by 100 people who attended. Abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass, who attended the convention, called it “grand movement for attaining the civil, social, political, and religious rights of women.”
Again in 1850, the first National Women’s Rights Convention convened in Massachusetts, featuring Frederick Douglass among the participants. The first statewide women’s rights convention was held in Salem Ohio in April of 1850, so James would have learned about all of these events in law school that year. (The US Constitution was not amended to grant women the right to vote until the 19th amendment in 1920.)
Man driven out of Augusta: Augusta College in Bracken County, Kentucky was on the Ohio River in the eastern part of the state. It existed from 1822 until 1849, when the Kentucky State legislature revoked its charter for promoting abolitionism. James A. Thome, who was born in Augusta and educated at Augusta College, persuaded his father, Arthur, to emancipate his slaves. Arthur and James Thome were reportedly banished from their home, (White Hall at 212 Elizabeth Street in Augusta) at gunpoint after being accused of harboring fugitives (Snodgrass).
Slave songs: Frederick Douglass wrote in his 1845 autobiography, “they would sing, as a chorus, to words which to many would seem unmeaning jargon, but which, nevertheless, were full of meaning to themselves. I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy. . . . They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish” (Douglass, 14).
The specific expression “rhythmic cry” and the songs in my book are from the chapter “Of the Sorrow Songs” in the 1903 book Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. DuBois. As Du Bois says, “They are the music of an unhappy people” (267). I have supplemented additional verses from the 1867 published collection, Slave Songs of the United States (Allen).
Chapter Four
Henry’s Sale: Slaves in the South were considered property, bought and sold at auction or by trades just like animals or produce. Still the United States Constitution did not use the word “slave,” but instead referred to “persons held in servitude.” The “three-fifths” clause in The Constitution allowed each slave to be counted as 3/5 of a person for the purposes of tax assessment and representation to the National legislature, thus giving slave holding states more representation in Congress, though the slaves were not permitted to vote. Slave owners held titles to their slaves and transferred the documents as slaves were sold and bought.
The African’s Scars: African scarification is a pattern of superficial incisions that indicate tribal affiliation, noble heritage, or familial associations. Although most Africans no longer practice scarification, older people wanting to preserve tradition and identity still sometimes “kidnap” their grandchildren and scar them against their parents’ wishes (Brooks).
Chapter Five
Sunday: On Sundays, most slaves were usually excused from their daily labors, but on Toby’s farm they still had all their personal tasks to complete: gathering firewood, constructing and washing clothes, repairing cabins, planting and harvesting gardens, and grinding the corn that was issued to each person that day. On some plantations, Sunday work was prohibited, and slaves might be required to attend religious services provided by the master. On those plantations, slaves would have to take care of personal needs after their workday ended at dark.
The usual allotment of food for a week was one peck (about two gallons) of corn per person and some bacon or beans for protein. Since food from the master was limited, slaves also gathered wild nuts and berries, fished, or hunted raccoons and possum, during their Sunday time, if they could do so without violating their restrictions on movement.
Slave meetings: Unsupervised slave meetings were often prohibited by the master, and slaves would have to secretly slip off into the woods to sing and worship. Even in places where Christian religious services were provided for the slaves, they might go out—to natural “hush harbors,” for their own sacred meetings, where they could “share what they remembered of African lore and cultural wisdom” (Cornelius, 9).
Moses: Moses, who delivered the descendants of Jacob, or Israel out of slavery in Egypt, is one of the most revered prophets of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Josiah would have grounded his stories in the Biblical Book of Exodus. Slaves were always seeking a “Moses” who would free them from slavery and deliver them to the other side of the river and safety in the Promised Land. Harriet Tubman, who may have escorted as many as 300 slaves to freedom, was commonly called a Moses to her people.