Blues, haints and bayous: snippets from the Deep South: Forks of the Road

Even the name ‘Natchez’ is evocative. It sounds pretty. But, as we drove into town one of our first stops was at Forks of the Road, on the outskirts of town. The history of this spot is barbaric. The tales from here still tear at our hearts today, and may, forever. Here, on this small plot of triangular land, and for sixty years before slavery was finally abolished in the nation, hundreds and thousands of black persons were sold as slaves.

Some 750,000 men, women and children were put on the block. These slaves were already in America. But, from the north, where work for existing slaves there was gradually declining as the demand down south was increasing.

Pressures at home and abroad had stopped the international market in slave trading as of 1 January, 1808. Slaves were no longer able to be brought into America on ships. But, the deep south was living high on the hog from the cotton plantations it had developed. It was providing most of the cotton that British factories were weaving into fabric and shipping to meet endless demand around the empire. The southern plantations still needed cheap slave labour. And as is the way of money men, the means were devised.

Bringing down slaves already in the country was not, technically, importing them. So, quickly, that became the solution. Southern scouts would head north to places like Alexandria, in Virginia, where unemployed blacks would be gathered in slave pens, ready for shipment south. They would wrench them from their families, coffle them in chains, and walk them over hundreds of miles in their shackles, stopping enroute only to offer them for work, where work was needed. Like bullocks. A slave caravan. Heavily chained.

“The slave has no rights”, said Frederick Douglas, a former slave, in 1846. “He is a being with all the capacities of a man in the conditions of a brute.” They were brought to this place, the Forks of the Road Slave Market.

After weeks and weeks of trudging with many dying enroute and many debilitated by chains, overwork, and the desperately long trek, they were required to clean up and put on their Sunday best. The men were required to wear navy blue suits, with shiny buttons and plug hats. The women had to put on calico dresses with white aprons. Their hair, had to be carefully restrained and braided, and a pink ribbon tied around their necks.

Then, they were presented for sale to the white planters needing field hands or house servants, who came to this market specifically for “this particular species of goods and chattels.” (Felix Eugene Houston Hadsell, courtesy of Isabel Hadsell Linch) They were picked out, minutely examined, then sold to the highest bidder.

This grassy knoll is green here today. It looks peaceful, and if you pass by without reading the placards, it even looks pretty. But, that it can never be.