The above photo was taken on a bike ride in west-central Alabama in April 2006. Among other things, I wanted to see the places that had been described in All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw. Nate Shaw is a pseudonym, and most of the places named in the book were pseudonyms, but this is one of the very real places he had talked about.
Nate was a sharecropper who made a good bit of extra money for himself by hauling lumber with his mule team. This is one of the roads on which he hauled lumber. The area was pretty much logged out, but trees have grown back and now there is a lumber industry again. I encountered these logging trucks all the time when I was riding there.
Nate did pretty well for himself, but had some severe obstacles to overcome. In the end he accepted the help of the Communist Party in protecting his private property rights, and ended up going to prison for using a gun to defend his property. (The same day I took the above photo, I took photos of the courthouse building where the trial was held — at least I assume it isn’t a newer courthouse. A couple of days earlier I got photos of the prison where he did most of his time.)
What has provoked me to post this now is John Edwards statement about requiring people to get physical checkups under his plan. I’ve run into people who defend that. “What about mandatory seat belt laws?” they ask, as if back at the time those laws were introduced we didn’t object, saying it would lead to nannyism like this.
I don’t think these people understand how odious this is. Maybe it would help to see how Nate Shaw reacted to that kind of behavior from a Mr. Curtis, one of his least favorite landlords.
This is from page 109 in my paperback copy of the book:
Mr. Ames was a little better man than Mr. Curtis, and not sayin that altogether because he put me on better land–it weren’t much better. I didn’t just look at one angle or one point in the difference. I looked at it this way: Mr. Ames put me on a little better land than Mr. Curtis, but I had to go by his orders, too. Well, that cut my britches; he didn’t let me branch out like I wanted to. But I got along well with him. He never did cripple my cow and he never stood over me, tell me how to drive his mule of a Sunday–Mr. Curtis done that. When I’d go and get that plow mule to hitch him to the buggy that I bought from his brother-in-law, go where I wanted to, he’d tell me–well, I know that no man wants his stuff mistreated, but I never did treat his mules wrong; he had no cause to get at me about it. And I never was pleased to mistreat my mules after I got able to buy my own mules. Mr. Curtis laid his larceny to me: “Nate, when you get to where you goin, you’ll be thar. Give the mule his time, give the mule his time.”
Didn’t want me to drive him out of a slow gait. His way of speakin was “thar”; he didn’t say “be there,” he’d say, “be thar.” That was his mule, it weren’t mine, but he just disrecognized me, considered me not to know nothin. Know or not know I had to go by his orders to please him. He just considered me not to know nothin so he would have to tell me.
It’s stamped in me, in my mind, the way I been treated, the way I have seed other colored people treated–couldn’t never go by what you think or say, had to come up to the white man’s orders. “You aint got sense enough to know this, you aint got sense enough to know that, you aint got sense enough to know nothin–just let me tell you how to do what I want you to do.” Well, that’s disrecognizin me, and then he slippin around to see that I doin like he say do, and if I don’t he don’t think it’s on account of I got my own way of doin, but he calls it ignorant and disobeyin his orders. Just disrecognized, discounted in every walk of life. “Just do what I say, like I tell you. Don’t boot me.” Showin me plain he aint got no confidence in me. That’s the way they worked it, and there’s niggers in this country believed that shit.
Edited for niceness, 10-Sep-2007