100 People in 100 Days:xi. Alexander Banks

Alexander Banks was finishing a twenty-hour workday. That was how harvest time went. Getting up earlier than usual; going to bed even later. By the time Alexander and the other slaves got going to bed it was so dark, not even the lanterns could help them find their quarters. He had been picking cotton faster than most do the last weeks. His sister, though pregnant eight months, was still expected to pull her two-hundred pounds of cotton if she was to earn her food rations. Alexander picked enough to help here and then tried to make up what he needed so he could eat too.

Alexander had been born into this kind of life. At eleven he was expected to be a man, not receiving any forgiveness for being a child. He was to work the hours of his parents and older slaves. He was quickly taught this lesson when he received fifteen lashes for complaining about being tired.

He tried his best to smile and yes’m sir when his master came around. He had been threatened with being taken to auction in the best when he acted up. Alexander found the only sufferable part of being on the plantation was that he had family there.

Though in secret Alexander and the others discussed the possibility of some rumblings of revolution coming from the northern states. His faith had turned to Jesus but he did not know whether this coming revolution was the second coming of his Lord and Savior or just a ploy from the masters to see what boys needed to be disposed. Rule with fear, and keep the others in line.

At night he would pick at the blisters on his hand and feet, then washed away the blood and clean the wounds with the water his mama fetched from the well two miles south of their quarters.

One night as mama walked back from the well, she checked on their secret garden that they hid from the masters. This let the slaves acquire extra food to make up for their measly rations. The garden was dug up and turned over, completely ruined. Mama ran back to the quarters.

Alexander’s sister and father were asleep in on the dirt floor of the shack. Alexander was picked dead skin from the calluses on his hands. “Lex,” his moma said walking into the shack, “they done find the garden. Done dug it all up. This can’t be good.”

Alexander began rubbing his feet. “What’a you think they’ll do?”

“Can’t say. Maybe whip a few of us. Maybe break up some of the families. Auctions. Teach us good for trying to be self sufficient.”

“Can’t do nothing, I suppose mama. Just hope Jesus come soon to save us.”

His mama brought over the bucket of water and began cleaning the bloody wounds on Alexander’s feet. “No mama,” he said, “I can take care of myself. If you needs be doing something, go spin your yarn. Make some nice scarf or mittens to trade. We’ll be being short on food for the next while until we can get a new garden.” Mama put down the cloth she was using to clean his feet. She walked over and began knitting a scarf she had been working on by night.

“Careful they don’t find that. They’ll say you stole it, robbed them.”

“Son, I’ve made it some fifty years of this life. In the fields, not as no house slave. I work in the fields my whole life. Less time around the devil, the better. Jesus works with you in these fields. He can’t protect you in the home. God can’t be were the devil roams.” She looked down at the dirt floor, and then at her sleeping husband and pregnant daughter. “Jesus protect us a lot in these fields, and still look at our hard life.”

“I’m going to bed mama. It’s easier to feel Jesus when I’m not awake.”

“Let the angels minister to you son.”

“Yes, mama. The sun will peak soon and pack to the fields. Just pray that this rumbling in the states is the voice of God to free Israel.” Alexander picked up a blanket and limped over to a corner of the shack. He spread out his blanket on the dirt and lay down and went to sleep.

No more than two years later Alexander Banks was shot in the back. He was called to the house to help serve for a large party of masters celebrating the decision to succeed. One of the masters thought Alexander smiled too much at the women and needed to teach him the demands of justice for sexually enticing the white women. His body was taken by two other slaves and laid at the door of the shack of his mama, sister, and niece. Two slaves spent the night digging Alexander’s grave and burying his body. His sister cried. His mama yelled at God, demanding Jesus to hurry up with his returning and end the world.

In 1974, Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman argued that slaves did not have it so bad in their book Time on the Cross. Alexander had been spending every moment since that book’s publishing, spinning in his small, unmarked grave. If you put your ear to the ground like an injun listening for the pending doom of the marching calvary above Alexander’s small, unmarked grave, you could here the whhiiiiiirrrrrr of his spinning corpse.

Also at that time, Jesus had yet to return and end the world.