a retraction, a trip to cleveland /part 2

a retraction, a trip to Cleveland part 2

fiction
edward w Pritchard

see my trip to Cleveland part 1



From the Diary of  Moseby Whitsell
former slave
as reported to an unidentified WPA interviewer in 1936
for the Slave Narrative collection

Mr. Whitsell is spry for his age and claims to be 101 years old. Nearly blind he lives alone and mentions three times in brief interview how he misses his deceased wife. He is very glad to get a chance to talk to us about the slave project because he said he wrote a few things in his diary [?] back in the 1870's that he would like to correct [ retract] [sic] now . The incident in question involved Mr. Whitsell being hired to take an unidentified woman [ identified as Mrs. Day later ]to a feminist convention in 1870 to Cleveland, Ohio.

Below is his first diary entry and then the entry recorded now for the Slave Narrative-bk [ full name unidentified]

1st- June 1870
Wow what a trip. I took Mrs. F Day to Cleveland Ohio for a feminist conference. Her husband Mr. Day gave me forty dollars for four days work, a small fortune to me, to accompany his wife. I drove a fine buggy and served as Mrs. Days bodyguard.

We took an old stage coach route from Alliance, up through Deerfield and Streetsboro and on to Cleveland. We had no trouble on the way. Once in Cleveland Mrs. Day stayed at her hotel where the convention was held and I slept out at the Beach on Lake Erie.

Staying on lake Erie was Ok with me for they had a colored beach out there where people from Cleveland went swimming and walked along a boardwalk. I never saw so many beautiful black women. One young girl had on black socks that came to her knees, a red sash around her waist, a silky black bathing suit and a fancy turban on her head. She walked and strutted about drinking some kind of juice drink. I just watched, I'm a married man, but I did enjoy that.
end

2nd entry by Mr. Whitsell
Oct 1936

My owner on the plantation in Virginia taught me to read and write. He was an unusual slave holder and I came to be a free black near Alliance Ohio later, because of his religious beliefs; he was a Quaker.  I mention this because he taught me not to edit my diary, a diary that he had me start to practice my reading and writing skills. Still today here in 1936 I wish to edit what I described before in my trip to Cleveland in 1870.

Yes I did drive Mrs. Day[ ?] but I did not stay the whole time at the beach in Cleveland.
After the first full day at the beach two policemen in Cleveland stopped me and told me that I couldn't sleep at lake Erie. They though I was a vagrant. After I convinced them that I had money and was working for Mr. Day of Alliance, who one officer, Sergeant Ferrell,  had heard of they let me move along but told me I couldn't stay out on lake Erie.

The policemen directed me to the West side of Cleveland to a boarding house for Colored people ran by a Mrs. Bell, called the hole in the Wall near Canal Street and West Seneca. So I went there to stay for 30 cents a night.

That house there in Cleveland was the worst I ever saw, even including in slavery days. There was no light, even in the day because of lack of windows and the windows that were there were covered with paper so working men could sleep in the day and then go to work at night. The odor was horrible. Rats and vermin were everywhere. There was a young colored woman with a baby, about three who was very hungry. I stayed there two days and I gave a dollar extra to Mrs. Bell to buy food for the children there. I tell this not to make myself look good but to tell that when I went to Cleveland with Mrs. Day that although I saw some pretty Black women out at lake Erie, and saw some black folks who were doing well, and could spend time at the Beach,  the Cleveland ghetto [sic] on the West side had about the sorriest poor people I ever saw.
end