Of Mulattas and Mutts :: Personal Narrative Essays

Of Mulattas and Mutts Some poor white cracker made a little extra money by being a census man. His boss says, â€Å"What about them people down on Hog Key?† and the cracker says, â€Å"Them? Those people just a passel of niggers and injuns. What I have to go down there for?† His boss just gives him the evil eye. So he got out his skiff and poled on down to Hog Key. He was met by five shotguns. After begging for his life he finally got those people to understand what he was there for. And he went on home and marked that census up. He didn’t know what those people were so he just slashed great big M’s all over the page. Cause he heard that the old midwife Richard used to be a slave up Marion County way. And that his ma was a Choctaw Indian. And his son, Gene, King Gene they called him down there, the meanest man in four counties, had married up with a Seminole. Richard’s pappy was a dark as night negro man and was born and died a slave. That made every last one of them down on Hog Key great big M’s – mulatta’s down to the infant in his momma’s arms. We stayed M’s right up to the last census taken down in the swamps, right up to the time the US government took away what we had farmed and fished and hunted and built so they could make a park out of it. And all of a sudden we were W’s â €“ white, Caucasian. Cause we could always pass. Even way back at the beginning when Richard ran from that Plantation up Marion County way and joined up as a cook on a brig heading out of Key West. He could pass. But word gets round as it always does, flies across invisible lines and roosts in places it has no business. And a body has no choice but to accept the fact that being able to pass and actually passing is two different things entirely. So no one knew what he was, what his children were, what the rest of us to come would be and so they listed them all as M’s. And those folks down there in the Everglades just lived their lives as M’s, not really giving a damn anyhow cause they had each other and didn’t need the white man’s world for shit.