https://da.mdah.ms.gov/series/territorial/s488/detail/9673

Although this blog normally focuses on North Alabama, it would be short-sighted to ignore that North Alabama was once part of the Mississippi Territory and that the norms and attitudes that prevailed there influenced how mass enslavement and plantation system developed in Madison County. Also, some historic sources are too fascinating to pass up. Here is a brief statement that recounts the trial of three enslaved men accused of robbing a fourth enslaved man during a party.

   I was present this morning at a trial before Mr. Pollard in which he acted as a magistrate. The case was simply this. A Negro man of Mr. Dangerfield’s filed a complaint against three fellows for having stolen six dollars out of his chest on Wednesday or Thursday night last. My fellow Sam was one of the accused. They were examined repeatedly the evidence amounted to this. That on the night stated there had been a dance at Cato’s (who keeps a house in town) that the three accused were there after the party broke up, they went to Mr. Dangerfield’s house for the purpose of playing cards (which they had been doing at Cato’s) they were admitted and furnished with whiskey before […] to play – They broke up a little before day […] after which the money was missing on which the fellow made his accusation. He failed to substantiate the charge and my fellow was acquitted of having taken any part in the burglary, his object being to find a runaway of Mr Wm. Wright’s that is about town, for which Mr. W. offered him a reward.

   The decision of the magistrate was that Mr. D’s fellow should pay him costs of court, $4.75/100 & $10 fine, of the other two fellows pay $2 ea of a fine. Mine was acquitted. He enquired if they could pay fines or when they could pay him, particularly Mr. D’s man. Who said he would as soon as he had collected some money as he had lost all he had, as stated above, but that he would pay as soon as possible. Mr. P observed he must do it even if he had to work at night & pick oakum – I suggested the propriety of having these fellows whipped instead of fined, that I thought it would have a much better effect. He observed he did not know the Laws exactly on that point but that he would inform himself or something to that amount. 

   […] Dunlap was present at the greatest part of the trial. 

• Mark Jackson [?]
• Natchez July 24, 1813

We can learn a lot from this brief transcript. First let’s examine all the characters mentioned.

Mr. Pollard, an unnamed enslaved man, his enslaver Mr. Dangerfield, an enslaved man named Sam, two other enslaved men with no names, Cato, Dunlap, another unnamed enslaved person who had escaped from William Wright, William Wright himself, and finally the author Mark Jackson. The original statement is incredibly faded, and the author had messy handwriting even when it was fresh, so it is possible that his name could be anything from Jackson to Isaacson. That’s twelve people in two paragraphs and at least five (possibly six) of them are enslaved.

Mr. Pollard – Almost certainly either Peter P. Pollard, who ran a magistrate office in early Natchez, or William Pollard who was the Justice of the Peace of Mobile. Either way from the way he is discussed and the deference afforded him by all involved we can work out that he’s a white man with a background in law.

Unnamed enslaved man who was robbed – Tragically the statement’s author neglected to even extend the most basic personhood to the man who brought the suit against the other enslaved men in his group.

Mr. Dangerfield – Most likely William Dangerfield, a prominent enslaver and plantation owner in Natchez who served as the acting governor of the Mississippi Territory for a time.

Sam – A man enslaved by Mr. Dangerfield. He may have been hired by William Wright to find the whereabouts of an enslaved person who escaped from Wright.

Two other enslaved men – Again, the statement’s author neglects to record their names.

Cato – A man who keeps a house in Natchez.

Dunlap – Someone who came to watch the trial.

William Wright – An enslaver whose hostage has escaped and is somewhere nearby Natchez

Unnamed enslaved person who escaped from William Wright

Mark Jackson – The author of the statement

We can learn a lot from these small glimpses. Enslaved people in early Natchez possessed a modicum of autonomy and mobility. They are socializing at night, drinking in multiple locations, and gambling. All of their movement and revelry seemingly outside the concerns of the local night watch or slave patrol. This may have been a festive occasion – there are recorded examples of festivals on plantations (Black Saturnalias) throughout the Caribbean, the junkanoo celebration that occurred in a variety of locations from Jamaica to North Carolina, and celebrations among the enslaved and free Black populations of the Northeast known as Pinkster. It may have also been the norm for what was still very much a frontier town.

Secondly, enslaved people in Natchez occasionally possessed some amount of property. The man who filed the complaint against his fellow revelers at one point owned both a chest and six dollars. Indeed, Mississippi Territorial records are replete with enslaved people who owned everyday items like chests, small amounts of cash, blankets, and a favorite set of clothes. These items technically existed at the whim of the enslaver, but allowing a touch of autonomy or sense of identity was often used to ‘soften’ the constant horrors of enslavement.

Third, enslaved people might be able to hire out their own time. This goes back to the concept of limited autonomy mentioned above. When Mr. Pollard issued his series of fines he instructed the men that they might have to work at night, implying that nights or evenings were ‘owned’ time, or pick oakum to satisfy the fines. Oakum was a type of hemp fiber that was soaked in tar and used to seal gaps in ships. Picking oakum meant that one had to tease apart the woven fibers from otherwise useless pieces of cord. The activity was tedious, irritating to the fingers, and was often meted out as a punishment, specifically an alternative to floggings, by officers in the British Navy. Convicts also commonly picked oakum to cover the cost of food and the extremely poor across the Atlantic picked oakum and sold the fibers back to ships for survival wages.

Cato presents another twist in further understanding enslaved life in Natchez. The document refers to white men as Mr. So-and-so. Enslaved people, when it bothers to name them, are called by single names. There were a handful of prominent white men named Cato, like Cato West, in the Mississippi Territory, but the lack of an honorific points to Cato either being an enslaved man or a free black who kept a house in Natchez. If Madison County’s later slave codes are anything to go by, it was not uncommon for some enslaved people in the Mississippi Territory to live apart from their enslaver and deliver goods or labor when commanded. This was especially true for those enslaved people considered ‘skilled labor.’ Cato was also an incredibly popular name for enslaved men in the United States and Caribbean. Enslavers gained an amount of sadistic and sarcastic satisfaction from naming their drudges after prominent Greco-Roman figures. All of this taken together implies either an enslaved man or recently freed Black man who kept a house in Natchez where he hosted entertainment for other members of his community.

Sam either parlayed his knowledge about a missing enslaved person into avoiding fines, or was really assisting William Wright in locating and capturing his escaped hostage. There have been other instances on this blog where enslaved people passed information to enslavers, and Sam may have been more than tempted by the prospect of payment. There are few records that I am aware of that relate to enslaved people acting as slave catchers, but Sam very well could have exploited his networks and knowledge for gain.

Lastly, the differing attitudes of the white men involved towards punishment. Pollard prefers heavy fines and labor, Jackson thinks corporeal punishment more fitting. Both men obviously disapprove of the drinking, gambling, and carousing done by those involved. Rather than acquit all of them for lack of evidence there is the urge to punish the enslaved for doing something that white men did everyday. Pollard, whose legalistic impulse is paternalistic at best, shuns the immediate violence endorsed by Jackson and relies on the classic punishment meted out to poor people of picking oakum. Jackson wants to reinforce white supremacy through bodily harm and violent punishment, to him fines are reserved for people worthy of court appearances – a status that the enslaved could never possess. Indeed, the fact he wrote a statement after witnessing Pollard presiding as a magistrate further indicates the strangeness of the situation in Jackson’s eyes.

In two short paragraphs there are innumerable glimpses into the life of enslaved people in the early Mississippi Territory, hints at the Natchez’s social organization and night life, and even competing ideas about crime and punishment in the Atlantic world. It’s a fascinating document.

Picking oakum

Jill Lepore mentions the Black Saturnalia, Pinkster, and the relative autonomy of enslaved people living in cities in New York Burning

– p. 172 for the Caribbean celebrations

Junkanoo or Caribbean Christmas

Jonkunoo in North Carolina

Pinkster

On the importance of Pinkster to enslaved Africans in New York

Cato as popular name for enslaved people

.Greco-Roman names for enslaved people in the Americas

In 1925, Huntsville’s resident elites – the people who for all intents and purposes controlled the political and economic lifeblood of the city – seized upon an idea. They would organize an event that simultaneously highlighted local businesses and cajoled people into patronizing them. From May 3-9, 1925, they hoped to inspire residents to “Be Loyal to Huntsville.”

The early 20th century saw a slew of changes in how people purchased and consumed products. For decades, clerks weighed out grocery orders, porters delivered them to individual homes, and hometown merchants traveled to regional bazaars to procure more exotic goods for local resale. People lived and died within a complex web of creditors and debtors. Each market was little less than its own ecosystem.

Companies like Sears and Piggly Wiggly changed that math. Sears’ Catalog brought the world (and many of its regional bazaars) to your doorstep, people could literally get their next house delivered in the mail. This meant that merchants who previously made their living as professional middle men were suddenly threatened. Although the local and regional retailer hung on for decades yet, they sensed early that competition was to become more fierce.

Piggly Wiggly eschewed traditional labor standards by forcing customers to pick out their own prepackaged goods. Clerks now simply collected cash and assisted people in findings things, they no longer took orders or collected grocery bills. Clarence Saunders, Piggly Wiggly’s founder, focused on franchising and the self-service grocery method soon spread throughout the southeast. Without the need for a small army of clerks stores could offer lower prices and often put local retailers out of business.

It is this national climate, where faraway markets now dominated local commerce, that prompted Huntsville’s business community and resident elites to begin organizing around the concept of regional and city loyalty. Throughout the early 1920s a focus on the needs of “home merchants” became more prominent and newspapers bragged about turning down advertising orders from rival communities in Chattanooga, Birmingham, and Atlanta.¹

To be certain there were previous exhortations to the “loyal citizens of Huntsville” throughout the years. Whenever the city hosted a large conference or had visiting dignitaries, local newspapers called for the city to present itself well. Yet these previous instances were about putting forward the best possible face to visitors and outsiders. It was only after the commercial pressures presented by competing firms in nearby cities, retail franchising, and the ever-present threat of the Sears catalog that resident elites began pressuring the people of Huntsville to show their hometown pride by meeting their consumption needs from local merchants first.²

Precursors to the “Be Loyal to Huntsville” week appeared at least a year earlier with an advertisement titled “All Aboard For Prosperity via Greater Huntsville.”³ The train to prosperity passing through the city was an iconic image, one that its creators used often in their advertisement campaigns. The national market forced cities to not only compete with one another for business, but to try and differentiate themselves as places of commerce and opportunity. It is ironic that so many towns turned to the same advertising firm to highlight their unique characteristics. The F.G. Hogan Syndicate operated out of Kane, Pennsylvania and literally drew up the template that towns nationwide used to try to sell themselves to locals and outside businessmen.

However, Huntsville’s resident elites often managed to set the city apart. Rather than simply copy what worked elsewhere they focused on both loyalty and the concept of Greater Huntsville – the long-promised annexation of surrounding communities into the city itself. Huntsville planned to expand outwards, to continue on the seemingly natural path of progress that transformed Madison county from a cotton producing monolith to a diversified economy with suburbs, factories, and slums. To that end resident elites demanded the loyalty of not just the city dwellers but of the entire region’s population.

Huntsville’s parochialism proved intense even in an era of fierce competition and a focus on hometown loyalty. Thus the “Be Loyal to Huntsville” campaign launched in Spring 1925 is an historically significant event that highlighted not only the depths of inter-city rivalries but how completely the rhetoric and realities of the New South era transformed Huntsville’s self-perception.

The phrase emerged in March 1925. The first instance of “Be Loyal to Huntsville” was not directly associated with the upcoming loyalty week but instead emerged from a dramatic advice column-cum-advertisement for the Chamber of Commerce. Huntsville Times editor J.E. Pierce attempted to anthropomorphize not only the concept of loyalty, but his readers monetary interests. “I am your payroll,” his column proclaimed, and only by cooperating with other local businessmen could one hope to prosper in this new world where regional markets were wracked by increasingly intense external forces.⁴

Pierce’s column continued its dramatic flairs. By late March his campaign to demand loyalty to local businesses took on a Biblical tone when he consciously aped the Ten Commandments. “Thou shalts,” littered the column and it touched on all the concerns and contrasts of the Progressive movement. Pierce’s pronouncements were the KJV, City Beautiful, and Good Roads movement in one fell swoop. There were calls to combat the “death that lurks in the marshes,” to increase access to sunlight to drive out tuberculosis, to “build good roads and keep them good.” The zeal and willingness to mix religion and middle class interests typified not just the Progressive era but Huntsville itself. No wonder that Pierce’s final sentence returned to the authority of the commandments: “Thou shalt be loyal to Huntsville.”⁵

By late March other resident elites heard the beat of Pierce’s drum. The Chamber of Commerce, downtown churches, and major fraternal and civic organizations like the Kiwanis and Acme Clubs all announced their support for a week dedicated to Huntsville, its people, and businesses. The planning committee consisted of the most prominent men in the city. Former mayors, prosperous grocers, bankers, attorneys, and the county health officer not only endorsed the plan but volunteered their time and talents to the enterprise. Their participation proved less than philanthropic. These men stood to benefit the most because they owned the businesses and led the social institutions that demanded the loyalty of thousands of residents of Greater Huntsville.⁶

Loyalty took on many forms in 1925. Promoting Huntsville’s nascent baseball league established one as a loyal citizen. As did stumping for annexation of more nearby territories. Attending church was sure to prove one’s loyalty. In response, area churches coordinated on special services that stressed commitment to community. Although the ‘loyalty week’ proved an overwhelmingly white endeavor, there are glimpses of the Black community’s participation. For instance a choir from Alabama A&M performed “negro spirituals” at the city high school to celebrate both Music Week and the loyalty week. Unlike many things in the early 20th century south, loyalty apparently crossed the color line. ⁷

‘Loyalty Week’ invited comparisons between Huntsville and those parts of the United States that boomed. Opinion pieces chalked up the success of California in attracting outside investors, tourists, and developers to the extremely loyal and tight knit Anglo population that ran the state. Real estate developers snubbed the land rush in Florida and instructed hopeful investors to sink all their money into Madison county. There were predictions that Huntsville’s municipal bonds would soon become some of the most coveted financial instruments in the United States. Many of these pronouncements relied on Huntsville’s natural splendor and some of the earliest calls to transform the area around the Big Spring into a public park stemmed directly from the loyalty campaign. It proved successful enough that phrase “Be Loyal to Huntsville” appeared sporadically in local newspapers until the end of the decade.⁸

But far and away the greatest predictor of loyalty lay in how one used their pocket book. A May 1925 ad from the Retail Credit Bureau minced no words. One could only truly be loyal to the city by “trading with hometown merchants.” Merchants further afield had no long term interest in the city or its people. They did not contribute to charities or fund public institutions like the fire department or police. Huntsville’s resident elites relied on a paternalistic understanding of city politics and zero-sum growth to appeal to the masses. Wealthy merchants and business owners from other regions would only try to enrich themselves and their hometowns while simultaneously impoverishing Huntsville. Trading with outsiders was tantamount to treason.⁹

In an effort to draw a direct line between their shops and the continued well-being of the city, merchants featured the “Be Loyal to Huntsville” slogan heavily in their advertising. Hometown pride helped push everything from pianos and insurance policies to less grandiose items like brooms.

The celebration was not always so obviously mercantile. Contests and prizes abounded. In an effort to help foster “sincere reverence” for the city and its resident elites, school children wrote essays in exchange for gold, churches tracked attendance in hopes of winning a new vacuum cleaner. Civic organizations competed to raise funds (and perform good works) in exchange for high status items like loving cups, lawn mowers, and silk flags.¹⁰

Winning essays found their way into local papers and their contents help highlight how completely the loyalty campaign had seeped into both the local imagination and the minds of children. Cecil Brendle, a student at Huntsville High School, worried that without unwavering support the city government might falter and the city would become a “refuge for criminals” before eventually fading into disrepair and obscurity.¹¹ Another winner declared that “to know Huntsville it love it… to Huntsville you owe your existence” and told anyone who might question or criticize city leaders that they should “get out or get in line.”¹²

Huntsville was not unique in advertising itself to the outside world, nor was it uncommon for merchants appeal to residents and citizens to shop local. Where it differed from so many other cities was in its concerted (and manic) efforts to not only inspire loyalty in the citizenry but publicly demand it. Between May 3-9, 1925 people allowed themselves to be gripped by a patriotic fervor and booster ethos that few places could replicate then and almost nowhere could replicate today. This fervor was stoked by a powerful and interconnected band of resident elites who wholeheartedly believed in the promise of both the New South and the Progressive era and hoped to use the associated ideologies to shape an ever-grander city.

Citations

Links:

“Before Folding 30 Years Ago, the Sears Catalog Sold Some Surprising Products” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/before-folding-30-years-ago-the-sears-catalog-sold-some-surprising-products-180981504/

“City Beautiful movement” at Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Beautiful_movement

“Good Roads Movement” at Encyclopedia of Alabama. encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/good-roads-movement/

“Getting Out of the Mud: The Alabama Good Roads Movement and Highway Administration, 1898-1928.” http://www.uapress.ua.edu/9780817360603/getting-out-of-the-mud/

“Loving Cup” at Encyclopedia Brittanica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/loving-cup

“New South” at Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_South

searsarchives.com/homes/

searshouses.com

searshomes.org

“The Bizarre Story of Piggly Wiggly, the first self-service grocery store” at Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/bizarre-story-piggly-wiggly-first-self-service-grocery-store-180964708/

“The New South” at Khan Academy. https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-gilded-age/south-after-civil-war/a/the-new-south

Footnotes:

1. “Loyalty to our Home Merchants – Another Out of Town Merchant’s Advertising Order Declined”
   The Huntsville Times Nov 19, 1923 ↩︎
2. “Huntsville’s Big Opportunity” The Huntsville Times March 30, 1913; “All as one for Mr. Wilson” The Huntsville Times Feb 13, 1917 ↩︎
3. “All Aboard For Prosperity via Greater Huntsville.” The Huntsville Times June 29, 1924 ↩︎
4. “Talking It Over – Chamber of Commerce Activities.” The Huntsville Times March 8, 1925 ↩︎
5. “Talking It Over – Chamber of Commerce Activities.” The Huntsville Times March 23, 1925 ↩︎
6. “Be Loyal to Huntsville – Week in May will be Devoted to Impressing all with that Idea.” The Huntsville Times March 25, 1925 ↩︎
7. “Baseball Meeting is Called for Next Friday Night.” The Huntsville Times May 4, 1925; “The Building of Greater Huntsville” The Huntsville Times March 27, 1925; “Be Loyal to Huntsville. How? Go to church.” The Huntsville Times May 3, 1925; “Loyalty Week Has Begun and is Being Observed.” The Huntsville Times May 4, 1925; The scant mentions of Black participation should not be taken as lack of enthusiasm. White newspaper owners often engaged in direct erasure of Black social life and, when they bothered to report on it at all, offered mostly paternalistic reports. ↩︎
8. “Be Loyal to Huntsville Week” by A.M. Duffield The Huntsville Times April 14, 1925; “Party Returns from Florida.” The Huntsville Times July 26, 1925; “The Loyalty Campaign is Working Wonders” The Huntsville Times May 5, 1925; “You’re in the Army Now.” The Huntsville Times May 2, 1927 ↩︎
9. “Retail Credit Bureau Ad.” The Huntsville Times May 4, 1925 ↩︎
10. “Be Loyal to Huntsville – Huntsville Has Been Loyal to You.” The Huntsville Times April 5, 1925. ↩︎
11. “Talking It Over – School Children Essays.” The Huntsville Times May 20, 1925. ↩︎
12. “Talking It Over – School Children Essays.” The Huntsville Times May 17, 1925. ↩︎