Mrs. Witmore screamed.
Not because she was injured,
but because a slave had broken something that belonged to her.
Thomas Burch has been called up.
Zacharie heard his mother scream and started running—he should never have run. He went around the house and saw her tied to a post behind the kitchen. Her dress was torn. Burch was standing behind her, his whip in his hand. Mrs. Witmore watched the scene from the shadows. Colonel Witmore, with his arms folded, stood beside her, looking bored.
“Look, my boy,” said an overseer, seizing Zechariah’s arm.
“Look what happens when your people forget their place.”
Thomas Burch has struck.
Zacharie counted each stroke.
Thirty-seven.
He watched his mother scream until she was exhausted. He saw her collapse against the post. He saw the blood darken her skin. He saw the masters walk away as if nothing had happened.
They left her there until nightfall.
By dawn, she was dead.
Zechariah was sent to the fields that same morning.
Seven years old. Old enough, they thought, to pick cotton. No time for sorrow. Only work.
That night, lying where his mother had slept, Zechariah made a promise, not to God, but to himself.
One day, he would find Thomas Burch.
One day, he would find Colonel Witmore.
One day, they would all pay.
What slavery did to him
The years that followed hardened him. The whippings left scars upon scars. Hunger gnawed at him. Yet, something in his eyes never faded.
Thomas Burch noticed it.
“That one has the devil in him,” he had said one day.
“We’ll have to sell him before he grows up.”
In 1859, Colonel Witmore sold Grace, Zachariah’s six-year-old sister.
She shouted his name as they dragged her to the wagon.
Zacharie ran away.
A guard hit him.
Leave a Comment