a half a block from where my father did (on right, on Bonnycastle) , in the Highland (above the Ohio River floods) neighborhood of Louisville KY.
It was upper middle class, and the only black family I ever saw
there lived in a ratty little house behind the apartment across the
street that fronted on an alley (Louisville is famous for its wonderful
alleys). Red arrow, much better condition now than then..when it really
was something of a hovel
A half a block further up the street was the old Bonnycastle Big
House, the original center of the slave-owning estate (whence came the
name of the street Dad grew up on). Hardly more than a
mini-mansion these days, it had only two columns before the front
door. There was a central hall and simple if wide staircase that
gave entry onto rooms on both sides. The revelation (if you knew what
to look for) was the back entry to the central hallway, an uncovered
porch, wide, shallow with a few wide steps. The property has been
repurposed many times, as a girls' day school (I have movies of a May
Day celebration there when my long gone aunt, danced with flowers at
her graduation), as a synagogue, as an evangelical church. The original
Big House, has been tacked onto and is now surrounded by later
buildings, picture on the left...
but in the picture on right, you can still see the back porch at the
end of of a little driveway...now overshadowed by buildout over
it. The point of all this is this: Above the back porch on the
wall were bells on haircurler springs, on the house wall were
grommets. There was a bell for each slave and to get George or
Anna, someone on the other side of the door to the porch would pull the
rope for that slave. Wouldn't open the door and call for George
(much less say please :(), just pull the rope and thus depersonalize
the slave. This was turning people into objects; it's a wonder they
even had names. So, they sat out in the clement and inclement
weather waiting for their bell to ring so they could run in, and bow
and say Yes Massa and What do you want, Massa. It wasn't like some
Victorian house where a pull rang a bell maybe 500' away in the kitchen
(I've seen them in Pennsylvania), here the slave master or mistress
stood 5' away and summoned the slave. When I was in Louisville
maybe 25 years ago, you could still see all that.
My parents, who had no
particular use for religion, nevertheless wanted me to see the
elephant. And so, I want to UU Sunday school, my grangdmother's
Presbyterian Sunday church and even for a while, Bar Mitzvah school up
the street at
that synagogue. Eventually, the property passed to an evangelical
church; I wasn't :) sent there. Through it all the bells
remained, mute nauseated
testimony to the everyday horror of slavery....if you knew what to
look. I always looked.
Yes: in the South, the past isn't dead, often it isn't even past
The slave quarters still exist....and ironically is a much more
interesting (looks like something Frank Llyod Wright might have done
)and beautifully sited house;. its looks have been spoiled by additions
and makeovers.
