The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman Read Free

Master,” I said.
    “Try,” he said.
    I started grinning.
    “Come on,” he said. “Try.”
    “I can’t say that, Master,” I said.
    “Can you say Brown?”
    “Yes, Master.”
    “Well, just call me Mr. Brown,” he said. “And I’m go’n call you something else ’sides Ticey. Ticey is a slave name, and I don’t like slavery. I’m go’n call you Jane,” he said. “That’s right, I’ll call you Jane. That’s my girl’s name back there in Ohio. You like for me to call you that?”
    I stood there grinning like a little fool. I rubbed my foot with my big toe and just stood there grinning. The other Troops was grinning at me, too.
    “Yes,” he said, “I think you do like that name. Well, from now on your name is Jane. Not Ticey no more. Jane. Jane Brown. Miss Jane Brown. When you get older you can change it to what else you want. But till then your name is Jane Brown.”
    I just stood there grinning, rubbing my foot with my big toe. It was the prettiest name I had ever heard.
    “And if any of them ever hit you again, you catch up with me and let me know,” he said. “I’ll come back here and I’ll burn down this place.”
    The Yankee Officers got on their horses and came out in the road and told the Troops let’s go. They got to their feet and marched on. And soon as my mistress thought they couldn’t hear she started calling my name. I just stood there and watched the soldiers go down the road. One of them looked back and waved at me—not Troop Lewis: I reckoned he was still mad at me. I grinned and waved back. After they had made the bend, I stood there and watched the dust high over the field. I was still feeling good because of my new name. Then all of a sudden my mistress was out there and she had grabbed me by the shoulders.
    “You little wench, didn’t you hear me calling you?” she said. I raised my head high and looked her straight in the face and said: “You called me Ticey. My name ain’t no Ticey no more, it’s Miss Jane Brown. And Mr. Brown say catch him and tell him if you don’t like it.”
    My mistress face got red, her eyes got wide, and for about half a minute she just stood there gaping at me. Then she gathered up her dress and started running for the house. That night when the master and the rest of them came in from the swamps she told my master I had sassed her in front of the Yankees. My master told two of the other slaves to hold me down. One took my arms, the other one took my legs. My master jecked up my dress and gived my mistress the whip and told her to teach me a lesson. Every time she hit me she asked me what I said my name was. I said Jane Brown. She hit me again: what I said my name was. I said Jane Brown.
    My mistress got tired beating me and told my master to beat me some. He told her that was enough, I was already bleeding.
    “Sell her,” my mistress said.
    “Who go’n buy her with them Yankees tramping all over the place?” my master said.
    “Take her to the swamps and kill her,” my mistress said. “Get her out of my sight.”
    “Kill her?” my master said. “Brown come back here asking ’bout her, then what? I’ll put her in the field and bring another one up here to look after them children.”
    They put me in the field when I was ten or ’leven. A year after that the Freedom come.

Freedom
    We was in the field chopping cotton when we heard the bell ringing. We was scared to stop work—the sun was too high in the sky for us to go in yet. But the bell went on ringing and ringing; just ringing and ringing. The driver, a great big old black, round, oily-face nigger kept on looking back over his shoulders toward the house. Every time the bell rang he looked back. he told us to keep on working, he was going in to see what all the ringing was about. I watched him go up to the house, then I saw him coming back waving his arm. We swung our hoes on our shoulders and went across the field. The driver told us the master wanted us all at the house.