Elizabeth Umpstead
I am Elizabeth Umpstead, dead at seventy-five years of age, and they are taking me in a polished and silver-plated box today, and an undertaker, assured of cash for-his work, will supply straps to let the box down the lean dirt walls, while a quartet of singers — assured of cash for their work, sing " Nearer My God to Thee, " and a clergyman, also assured of cash for his services — will pronounce the words: " Dust to dust and ashes to ashes. "
I am gone from among the two-legged moving figures on top the earth now, and nobody will say my heart is someway wrong when I assert, I was the most beautiful nigger girl in northern Indiana; and men wanted my beauty, white men and black men — they wanted to take it and crush it and taste it and I learned what they wanted and I traded on it; I schemed and haggled to get all I could for it — and so, I am one nigger girl who today has a grand funeral with all the servitors paid in spot cash.
I learned early, away back in short dresses, when a lawyer took me and used me the same as a brass cuspidor or a new horse and buggy or a swivel chair or anything that gives more life-ease for spot cash — he paid $600 cash to me for the keep of the child of my womb and his loins. And then he went to a revival, sang " Jesus Knows All about Our Troubles, " moaned he was a sinner and wanted Jesus to wash his sins away. He joined the church and stood up one night before hundreds of people and blabbed to them how he used me, had a child by me and paid me $600 cash. And I waited till one night I saw him in the public square and I slashed his face with a leather horsewhip, calling all the wild crazy names that came to my tongue to damn him and damn him and damn him, for a sneak in the face of God and man.
I am gone from among the two-legged moving figures on top the earth now, and nobody will say my heart is someway wrong when I assert, I was the most beautiful nigger girl in northern Indiana; and men wanted my beauty, white men and black men — they wanted to take it and crush it and taste it and I learned what they wanted and I traded on it; I schemed and haggled to get all I could for it — and so, I am one nigger girl who today has a grand funeral with all the servitors paid in spot cash.
I learned early, away back in short dresses, when a lawyer took me and used me the same as a brass cuspidor or a new horse and buggy or a swivel chair or anything that gives more life-ease for spot cash — he paid $600 cash to me for the keep of the child of my womb and his loins. And then he went to a revival, sang " Jesus Knows All about Our Troubles, " moaned he was a sinner and wanted Jesus to wash his sins away. He joined the church and stood up one night before hundreds of people and blabbed to them how he used me, had a child by me and paid me $600 cash. And I waited till one night I saw him in the public square and I slashed his face with a leather horsewhip, calling all the wild crazy names that came to my tongue to damn him and damn him and damn him, for a sneak in the face of God and man.
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