The Emancipation of Robert Sadler (15 page)

Jackie and me, 1968

Jackie (left, back row), with friends, 1941

Manitoba Indians from the Bloodvein Reservation, where I ministered

Compassion House—my storefront church in Anderson, South Carolina

Me in 1975

My wife, Jackie

My ordination photo, 1963

Cousin Bessie's house in Greenville, a white-washed wooden structure set on brick supports, had a narrow, sloping porch and three wooden steps leading up to it. The dirt yard was broken up with two or three small bushes, and two wooden boards laid in a crooked line served as a walkway from the dirt road.

I was made welcome and given a small room of my own with a bed, a glass window that went up and down, curtains, and a rug on the floor. There was a closet for hanging clothes and, wonder of wonders, sheets on the bed. Bessie had me take a bath in the large tin washtub outside in the backyard with some special soap. I had arrived covered with lice.

The soap burned my skin and she scrubbed my head with it, rinsing me off with a bucket of cold water. So this was what it was like to be clean.

Each day was shocking to me as I learned what it meant to be a free man. Bessie's husband, Jake, was a porter in one of the hotels in town. He told me, “When you goes for a job, Robert, be sure'n say yessuh, nosuh, an' act respec'ful.” He drilled me on how to act in town and on the streets. Smile real big and never look at a white woman. Never look at a white man for too long, and never act smart or like you knows any sense. He bought me a pair of shoes, a shirt, and overalls. I strutted around the house like a peacock in my new clothes.

“How old you, boy?”

“Fourteen June las,” I answered.

“Tell them you sixteen.”

I didn't know a thing about working out, but I walked into a factory, asked for a job, and I was hired as a window washer. I worked ten hours a day, six days a week. I got up at 5:30 a.m., walked to work, and started at 7:00 a.m. I didn't dare ask how much I would be earning, and on my first payday when I received my wages of four dollars, it was like discovering Fort Knox.

I spent that first paycheck almost entirely on candy. I pointed out almost everything I saw in the candy case to the grocery clerk. I also bought a quart of peach ice cream and a pocketknife, and gave the rest to Bessie. I ate the candy almost all at once and then ate the ice cream. My stomach hurt and Bessie scolded me. “Don't eat till you sick, boy!”

“I had no idee,” I said weakly.

Cousin Jake drank a lot of whiskey, and one morning after he'd been out all night, someone poisoned him. He managed to get himself home and into his bed. He lay there moaning and complaining, and Bessie thought he was drunk. He died while she was in the kitchen fixing him some coffee.

Nothing was done about the murder. If black people kill black people that's their own business. The police came, asked Bessie some questions, and then left. We never heard another thing about it. When Bessie asked her friends what to do, they advised her to do nothing. “The whites don't care if'n it ain't one of them.”

I continued at my job, and the day after the funeral Bessie went back to her job cooking for a white family on the other side of town. Then she started drinking, too, and pretty soon she was drunk every night. She even went to work in a drunken state sometimes. I hoped she was as smart as Mary Webb, who drank all the time and somehow never got found out.

One afternoon toward the end of the summer of 1925 Buck paid me a visit at my cousin's. I was overjoyed to see him. “Man! You doin OK!” he exclaimed when he saw me. “Them bones is sure fatter than when I saw yoll last!”

He told me about a job opportunity in Florida he was all excited about. “They needs workers!” he told me. “They's astin for men to go and work, and they'll pay the fare and take it outa the wages later on.”

It sounded like a good deal, and it was an opportunity to get farther away from Sam Beal. I finished the week at my window washing job, said good-bye to Bessie, and boarded the train with Buck to Vero Beach, Florida.

The train was crowded. The car we rode in was jammed with Negro men of all ages going to Florida, where—the promotion told us—work and riches waited for us. Our hopes were built up big. For us, who had never hoped for anything at all, it was a new and unfamiliar feeling we weren't sure about.

Vero Beach was one big undevelopment. Forest, swamp, sand, and ocean was almost all there was to it. Buck and I got hired by a big land company, and our job was to work clearing the land for development.

I stayed close to Buck and wherever he went, I went. One day we got separated, and I was sent to a different section of land to work. “Watch out for them rattlers!” a worker warned me. I shrugged and said, “Yessuh,” but I honestly didn't know what he meant.

I took my scrub hoe and began digging up palmetto trees. I was in a spot all by myself when I heard a rattling noise. I turned and saw the biggest, longest, and fattest snake I had ever seen. Its fangs were ripping, ready to dig into me. I screamed frantically, and some of the men came running. They tore at that snake with their hoes and killed it. Then they dug up its hole and found about twenty little baby rattlers which they killed too.

“Thank you, Jesus” was about all I could say. I was so scared that I didn't know what to do with myself. I was too scared to work because of the rattlers, and I was too scared not to work. I was so backward and naïve that I didn't dare open my mouth.

On payday we found that the train fare had been deducted, which was a violation of the agreement that said they would wait to deduct the fare for at least three paychecks. Buck was unhappy about the situation.

“Come on, Robert,” he growled. I followed him to the highway. “You and me, we done had nuff a white men robbin us,” he said, and he had had enough of Vero Beach and getting rich; he was going back to Corrie and his boy. “Reckon yoll stay or come on with me, Robert?” Naturally, I'd go back with him.

We hitchhiked some, but mostly walked. Day after day we walked. A white man in a Ford sedan picked us up outside of Sebastian and carried us to Melbourne. He had a greasy face and eyes that kept rolling back and forth from us to the road. He asked questions about sex and black anatomy from the time we got into the car until we got out. It made me sick, but Buck said it was nothing unusual. “Them white mens, they think all us Negro mens is studs, and they want to know all about it.”

We slept outside by the roadside at night. We walked over sixty miles and reached Daytona Beach worn out and hungry. We went to a house near the highway and asked if maybe they could spare a little food. The white lady, probably in her early twenties, said, “Sure! Set youselves down on the porch and I'll be fixin yoll some food.”

She served us chicken noodle soup, white bread with butter, and black coffee. Then she gave us both a piece of blueberry pie. I had never tasted blueberry pie and gobbled it up practically without chewing. When we had finished eating, she sat down on the porch with us. She had a smile on her face.

“Yoll look plumb tuckered.”

“Yes, Ma'am.”

“Best linger on the porch awhile and rest yourselves.”

“Thank you, Ma'am.”

“I just want you to know that I'm all for you folks.”

“Hunh?”

“I believe all the trouble with the Ku Klux Klan is a crying shame, I do. All that fuss because families want to be free. Killings, hangings, tarrings, whuppings, brandings, tearing down property—it's a crying shame.”

“Yes, Ma'am.”

“I think Mr. DuBois has the right idea, if you want my opinion. Oh, you people have such talent, too! I have a Victrola and I listen to records. I listen to Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, Louis Armstrong and the Hot Five, Bix Beiderbecke—of course, he's white.”

“Yes, Ma'am.”

The young woman, who had very green eyes that looked directly at a person, paused for a moment. Then she said brightly, “You know, I just loved reading
Uncle Tom's Cabin.
I just cried and cried.”

“Oh.”

“I just want yoll to know that I'm all for you folks.” She sighed and stood to her feet. Turning, she said, “I want yoll to know it has been an honor to have you eat on my porch today.”

“Thank you, Ma'am.”

“Now yoll just rest, and I'll be taking my leave.”

When she went inside, I looked at Buck and he looked as scared as I felt. We were too tired to go anywhere, though, and we fell asleep in the cool shade of the porch, leaning against the steps. When we awoke, there were about six little white children standing and staring at us. It might sound crazy for two grown men to be terrified of a few small children, but we were. They were staring at us and when we opened our eyes, one of them squealed, and another one jumped up and down, acting foolish. The young woman came running out of the back door.

“What's going on here?” she demanded, waving her arms at us.

One of the children smiled at me and stepped toward me, holding her hand out. I smiled back at her.

“Ginger Amy! Don't you touch him!”

Buck and I recoiled against the porch. “Don't you try anything!” the woman said. She was very frightened. The veins in her forehead were standing out and her face was red.

“And to think I cried when Booker T. Washington died!”

“Ma'am, we didn't mean no harm—”

Just then there was a man's voice from inside the house. “Rosemary, what's going on out there?”

Buck jerked away from the porch. “Thank you kindly for the meal, Ma'am,” and he turned and hightailed it for the field adjoining the house. I followed on his heels.

We could hear the children cheering and the man's voice from the porch. “My
gawd,
Rosemary, was those Negroes?
”

Later that night as Buck and I lay on our backs looking up at the stars, I asked him, “Why for that woman be so kindly and then change and act so poorly to us?”

Buck studied on it. “The way I sees it, Robert,” he said, “is that she be big on the talkin side but short on the bein side.”

We got out of Daytona Beach and walked until we reached Ormond Beach. There we found a place on the sand near the water to rest our feet. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the sound of the ocean rolling upon the shore was soothing and calming, like a sweet lullaby.

A colored family in a pickup truck stopped for us and carried us to Saint Augustine. From there we walked to Jacksonville. We had very little money left, and Buck decided we would have to find jobs and get some money up before we could make it the rest of the way back to South Carolina.

“With two of us, it won't take no time hardly at all,” he said confidently.

But it took two years.