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LULLABIES
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O figure of the old South was more vivid or more beloved than the "black mammy," with her white apron and her gay bandana, or tignon, on her head, tending her small charges. She has come down to us of a later generation in story and song, as well as in the fond recollections of those who knew her care. "Mammy" held an honored place in the home, for the white children were taught to respect and obey her; and when they grew up, they loved her as a second mother. An amusing instance of this is related by Mrs. Anna Hordeman Meade, in her volume of plantation recollections, "When I Was a Little Girl." Mammy was an autocrat whose boast was, " I got Injun blood in dese yer veins!" and who scorned the overseer as "po' white folks." Once, when the master and mistress were away from home and a grown son came home to take charge of affairs, the overseer complained to him:
"'Doctor, this old woman's insolence is becoming unbearable and I want to ask your advice about punishing her.'
"'What old woman?' asked our uncle.
"'The one they call Mammy, Sir. She ought to be sent to the fields, Sir/
"'What — what!' said Uncle Stewart in amazed and amused consternation. 'Why, I would as soon think of punishing my own mother! Why, man, you'd have four of the biggest men in Mississippi down on you if you even dare suggest such a thing, and she knows it I All you can do is to knuckle down to Mammy.'"
The peculiar conditions of slavery made the Negro nurse lavish more affection — or at least more demonstration of affection — on her white charges than on her own children. Negro children on many plantations received a sort of communal care. I saw on a plantation in Louisiana a house that in slavery times was used as a day nursery, where the mothers left their children in care of one or two old women, while they worked in the fields. They would come in at intervals to nurse the babies and then go back to the cotton-row or the rice- or cane-fields. In many cases mother love was thwarted and driven back upon itself under an institution which separated parent and |
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