"And even if they did believe you, it wouldn't change your legal status one bit. You'd still be enslaved because your mama wasn't married to him. And the law's real clear that bastard children of enslaved or servant mothers don't inherit freedom from white fathers, no matter who those fathers are."
"I know I wouldn't gain legal freedom from the revelation," I'd said, my thoughts crystallizing as I spoke them aloud. "That's not what I'm trying to achieve. I'm trying to destroy his reputation. He's made me live my whole life as a secret, as something shameful to be hidden."
"I want to make his secret public. I want everyone in Lexington to know what he did, to see the evidence of his hypocrisy standing right in front of them. Even if it doesn't free me legally, it would ruin him socially and politically and professionally. Isn't that worth something?"
"Isn't that a kind of justice?"
Tildy had been silent for a long moment, her weathered face thoughtful. Then she'd nodded slowly.
"Might be the only justice you ever get, truth be told. Might be worth it just to see his face when you say it, when you claim your name in front of God and everybody. But baby, you understand what you'd be doing. You'd be making yourself more vulnerable, not less."
"White folks don't like slaves who speak up, who expose secrets, who make uncomfortable truths public. You do this, there's no telling what happens after. Could be the person who buys you is sympathetic. Could be they're enraged at being involved in a scandal."
"Could go either way."
"What happens if I stay silent?" I'd said grimly. "I get sold to some plantation in Mississippi or Louisiana where life expectancy is maybe 10 years if I'm lucky. Where I'll work myself to death in cotton fields or as a house servant for some family that works me 18 hours a day and feeds me barely enough to survive."
"That's my future if I stay silent. If I just accept what he's decided for me, at least if I speak, I go down having said my truth, having made him acknowledge me for one moment, even if it's the last thing I ever do. That's worth whatever comes after."
The 2 weeks between that conversation and the auction had been the strangest of my life. I'd move through my normal routines, cooking, cleaning, tending the garden, serving meals to the Blackwood family, while internally preparing myself for what I was going to do. I'd watched my father at the dinner table, studied his face as he discussed business and politics with his wife and James as he tried to counsel Charles on responsibility and consequence while dealing with the mess Charles had created. And I tried to memorize everything, Mama Tildy's face, the cabin where I'd lived, the familiar paths around the plantation, all the small details of my life that I'd taken for granted and that I might never see again after I spoke my truth and everything changed irrevocably.
I'd said my goodbyes to Mama Tildy, though she refused to accept them as final goodbyes.
"You're stronger than you know, child," she'd said on the night before the auction, holding me tight against her chest like she'd done when I was small. "You speak your truth tomorrow and whatever happens after you hold your head high. You're our Blackwood, whether he admits it or not. You're somebody."
"You matter. Don't you ever forget that."
The morning of the auction, August 16th, 1851, dawned clear and hot, one of those breathless Kentucky summer days when even the air seems too thick to breathe properly. I dressed in the plain cotton dress that marked me as enslaved, but that was at least clean and relatively whole. Not the ragged clothing that suggested an owner too poor or too cruel to care for his property properly. I tied my hair back simply, revealing my face fully. The face that anyone who looked closely would see carried unmistakable traces of Judge Blackwood's features in the bone structure and the eyes and the set of the jaw.
I'd walked to town with the other seven people being sold, all of us silent and frightened, each processing in our own way what it meant to be uprooted from everything we knew and sent to some unknown future. We'd been loaded into a wagon like livestock being transported to market, and during that ride, I'd looked back at the only home I'd ever known, at the plantation where I'd been born and hidden and raised, and I'd felt nothing but cold satisfaction that I was about to burn it all down. The auction yard in Lexington was a permanent installation on Main Street, a raised wooden platform with steps on both sides where merchandise could be displayed to best advantage, surrounded by a fenced area where enslaved people waited before being called up for sale. A crowd had already gathered by the time we arrived, maybe 200 people in total. A mix of potential buyers evaluating purchases, curious townspeople who found auctions entertaining, a few known abolitionists who documented sales to use in their political advocacy, and various others who simply wanted to see what was happening on a Saturday afternoon in town.
Judge Blackwood was there, standing toward the back of the crowd with his wife Catherine beside him. Both of them maintaining the neutral expressions of people who'd come to observe a routine business transaction. Charles wasn't present, presumably either too ashamed or too drunk or too indifferent to watch the consequences of his actions being sorted out through the sale of human beings who'd done nothing wrong except have the misfortune of being owned by his family. But Hamilton Pierce was there, standing near the front with a slight smile playing around his lips, clearly enjoying the spectacle of his rival being forced to liquidate valuable property to pay a debt Pierce himself had created.
Pierce was the kind of man who delighted in others' discomfort, who saw every interaction as a competition to be won, and who'd clearly won this particular contest. I'd been fourth in line to be sold. I'd watched the first three go through the process, called up to the platform, examined by the auctioneer, described to the crowd in terms that emphasized their value as labor rather than their humanity.
Joseph, a field worker in his 30s, had sold for $1,200 to a tobacco plantation owner. Mary, a young woman my age, had sold for $950 to a family looking for a house servant. Thomas, a skilled blacksmith, had sold for $1,500 to a mine owner who needed someone to maintain equipment.
Each sale had taken maybe 10 minutes. The description, the inspection, the opening bid, the competition among buyers, the final sale, and the gavel coming down to make it official, quick, efficient routine, just business being conducted, property being transferred from one owner to another. Nothing remarkable or unusual about it. And then it was my turn.