Black Bodies

Crawford Allen, Mississippi Negro, lay sick abed in his shanty just across the Louisiana line. It was night and his wife Anna slept deeply beside him. Nearby slept his three pickaninnies, Teelie, Lewis, Myra. None of the Aliens had any clothes on; it was August, hot. . . .

Two white men came in, flashed lights, grinned, shouted. At the point of a gun they shuffled the Aliens into an automobile with only a towel more or less to cover their nakedness. Before dawn, white faces and black bodies were in Louisiana. White faces talked with a farmer. White hands took $20 and left black bodies with the farmer. . . .

For several months last year the black bodies did what the farmer told them to, and were fed.

The tale of the selling of the Aliens into slavery was set forth last week in a Federal grand jury indictment charging one John D. Alford and one Webb Bellue with violation of the Peonage Act. Both black-slavers were in hiding.

According to James Weldon Johnson of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, enforced servitude of Negroes is not uncommon. Most common, said he, is the trick of keeping ignorant Negroes in perpetual debt.