She has come in from the night with a chicken! Where did she get it? Hush! Where do you suppose oppressed colored people get chickens?
She picks the bird—prepares it for the skillet—fries it over the coals. And then when it is done just right, Maryland style, this mother full of mother-love, an ingredient which God never omits, shakes each little piccaninny into wakefulness, and gives him the forbidden dainty—drumstick, wishbone, gizzard, white meat, or the part that went through the fence last—anything but the neck.
Feathers, bones, waste are thrown into the fireplace, and what the village editor calls the "devouring element" hides all trace of the crime. Then all lie down to sleep, until the faint flush of pink comes into the East, and jocund day stands tiptoe on the mountain-tops.
This ex-slave remembers a strange and trying time, when all of the colored folk on the plantation were notified to assemble at the "big house." They arrived and stood around in groups, waiting and wondering, talking in whispers. The master came out, and standing on the veranda read from a paper in a tremulous voice. Then he told them that they were all free, and shook hands with each. Everybody cried. However, they were very happy in spite of the tears, for freedom to them meant heaven—a heaven of rest. Yet they bore only love towards their former owners.
Most of them began to wander—they thought they had to leave their old quarters. In a few days the wisest came back and went to work just as usual. Booker T.'s mother quit work for just half a day.
But in a little while her husband arrived—a colored man to whom she had been married years before, and who had been sold and sent away. Now he came and took her and the little monochrome brood, and they all started away for West Virginia, where they heard that colored men were hired to work in coalmines and were paid wages in real money.
It took months and months to make the journey. They carried all their belongings in bundles. They had no horses—no cows—no wagon—they walked. If the weather was pleasant they slept out of doors; if it rained they sought a tobacco-shed, a barn, or the friendly side of a straw-stack. For food they depended on a little cornmeal they carried, with which the mother made pone-cakes in the ashes of a campfire. Kind colored people on the way replenished the meal-bag, for colored people are always generous to the hungry and needy if they have anything to be generous with. Then Providence sent stray, ownerless chickens their way, at times, just as the Children of Israel were fed on quails in the wilderness. Once they caught a 'possum—and there was a genuine banquet, where the children ate until they were as tight as drums.
Finally they reached the promised land of West Virginia, and at the little village of Maiden, near Charleston, they stopped, for here were the coal mine and the salt-works where colored men were hired and paid in real money.
Booker's stepfather found a job, and he also found a job for little Booker. They had nothing to live on until pay-day, so the kind man who owned the mine allowed them to get things at the store on credit. This was a brand-new experience—and no doubt they bought a few things they did not need, for prices and values were absolutely out of their realm. Besides, they did not know how much wages they were to get, neither could they figure the prices of the things they bought. At any rate, when pay-day came they were still in debt, so they saw no real money—certainly little Booker at this time of his life never did.
