A Way Out of No Way
August 17, 2008
—Turpentine JakeIf you keep your tail between your legs, nobody gonna step on it … but that ain’t no way to live. Got to make a way outta no way.
Today, I attended a startling theatrical production called Turpentine Jake: A Story of Slavery in 1937 America.
The play chronicles the travails of Florida turpentine camp workers caught in the quick sand of debt peonage. A sinister system where blacks did back breaking labor for two weeks, only to find themselves, on pay day, in debt to their white bosses for three weeks salary. If they left the camp while in debt, they were hunted down by “wood’s riders”, brought back to camp, and made to work until the debt was paid off.
Which could be never.
It was the humanity of these characters that touched me so. Their love for each other under racialized financial pressure that could make a man sellout his Mama. Their willingness to judge whites as individuals at a place and time when blacks were routinely lumped into the all inclusive “nigra” category. Their determination to fight for their dignity. Even if it was a fight that could end in prison or death.
These were honorable black men in a dishonorable situation.
They reminded me of many of the black men I’m close to today. Men like Dwight Trible. Conney Williams. Norman Avery. Men who refute stereotypes about African American males by simply living their hard working lives. Lives built on integrity and courage. The kind of men that I wished more nonblack folk took the initiative to know.
Men like Turpentine Jake Hurd. A real man who worked in the turpentine camps for over 30 years before he escaped. His grandson, James Hurd researched his story and co-wrote (with Linda Bannister) a play that resurrected him. And reminded us that sometimes you got to make a way out of no way. Even after you’re dead.
Michael Datcher is the author of the New York Times Bestseller Raising Fences. He is the editor of The Truth About The Fact: International Journal of Literary Nonfiction and is a professor of English at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.