“Kidnapped” Rock Diggers.
Another incident noticeable on my journey to Durant, Nov. 1st, ’92, is the fact that in the mountainous regions lying on both sides of the Georgia Pacific Road, is rock suitable for railway bridges, etc. After receiving orders to leave Coalsburg, the conductor gave the ordinary notice, “All aboard.” I need not mention the various expressions of joy to be leaving a place of sorrow and woe. We had not gone more than 40 miles when a company of colored men, directed by a white man, boarded our train. The porter immediately gave the information that trouble was awaiting the colored company, of which they were not aware. Just about 35 miles down the road is a path leading out to a rock den, they will have to go about 18 miles back in the woods to find it, there they will be worked. Some of them will be worked to death without a cent of pay, said the porter. When they arrived at their destination, the ghostly “thicket” at once attracted my attention. Like dumb driven cattle, the men, with unbalanced luggage, over stepped the rugged mountain, some of whom will never return.
The Georgia Pacific Railroad is systematized strictly on Southern principles. Having roughly split bottom seats on the “colored car.” While at the Union Station in Birmingham, Ala., en route for Atlanta, Ga., we beheld such a pitiful condition of three colored ladies. Those who have not in any way come in contact with such a state of human life as seen in this car, can only marvel at our story, and question whether such moral character exists amid such a tremendous flow of offensiveness and pragmatical elements.
In the car with the three colored ladies were five convicts chained down to their seats in a most ghastly condition, and 15 white men. The ladies were compelled to hoist the windows in hope of shirking the profane language and intense heat and smoke from 15 cigars. The ladies were evidently professional ladies, and of no mean ability and character, but their high attainments were depreciated, being told abruptly, “Go in that car there, that’s the nigger car.” Many ministers and other representative colored men are smokers per force. They must ride in cars with the lowest smoking classes, but when the smokers are through, retire to the “white car.” Many persons who would never smoke, are forced to smoke to protect their system during their ride in a car filled with deathly odor.