The black border

Just under the left shoulder of Africa, which juts out boldly into the Atlantic, as though to meet half way the right shoulder of South America, lie, between Sierra Leone and th...

Joe, runt as he was, had two sources of pride--the aristocratic lineage of his “owners,” for he had belonged to the Heywards, and the achievement, on his own behalf, of the pate...

Several years ago there lived on the “Lewisburg” rice plantation of former Governor Duncan Clinch Heyward, one Monday White, a yellow negro and a persistent and imaginative prac...

“No, man, dem ent fuh t’row’way dem hebby sin, uh dunkyuh ef lion crack dem bone’. Een slabery time nigguh baig ’e maussuh’ paa’d’n fuh t’ief ’e fowl w’en ’e git ketch, but w’en...

On Saturday morning the deep and swift Edisto, lacking a ferry, was crossed in a shallow bateau, the saddle-horses, held by their bridles, swimming alongside, and the accused an...

As boys, a few years after the war, we knew him as a mighty squirrel hunter, and the negroes in the neighborhood knew him as a mighty slippery old scoundrel, whose smoothness ha...

All through the autumn, when golden-rod and sumac flaunted the colors of Spain from every neglected fence corner, and the ripening sun burned from the blue through the haze that...

They kept the tryst. The dawn came up slowly and silently, bringing in one of those rare windless, low-country winter days, when all the air is pale blue and gold and the forest...

And now that the Dragon that guarded the treasure had been haled from the dungeon and put _hors de combat_, Sabey tied a couple of empty sacks, each to a plow line, and essayed...

“Uh yent know wuh you call so, Jedge, but uh nebbuh do none uh dem t’ing wuh da’ papuh call dem name. Ef Jedus yeddy me, uh nebbuh do uh Gawd’ t’ing but cut da’ ’ooman, en’ uh n...

“Yaas’suh, alltwo come out de same nes’ en’ alltwo hatch out de same time. Da’ todduh one duh dish’yuh one bubbuh, en’ dish’yuh one duh da’ todduh one tittie. Him look big mo’nu...

Harrison rose with bleary eyes and a fatuous smile on his bronzed face. Unable to read or write, he held the pencil as a small boy holds a sizzling firecracker, but he was game...

“Uh marri’d you, fuh true, Esau, but enty uh done run you off, en’ now you stan’ same lukkuh all dem todduh man wuh uh nebbuh bin hab fuh husbun’?”

“Mas’ Rafe, uh bin ketch cootuh een me time, uh bin ketch alligettuh, but uh yent fuh ketch no t’unduh en’ no lightnin’, en’ da’ t’ing oonuh call Ole Pickett, him duh t’unduh en...

“Well, suh, Sat’d’y two week’, I gone back en’ I say, ‘well, Mary, I come, how ’bout’um, wuh you got fuh say?’ Him mek ansuh: ‘Ent nutt’n’ ’bout’um. Yent got nutt’n’ fuh say.’ D...

“Yaas, suh, me en’ Silus Smit’ en Hacklus Rab’nel, w’ich Hacklus is my niece, ’cause _him_ gran’ en’ _my_ gran’ alltwo is de same man, en’ _him_ farruh en’ _my_ farruh is two tw...

His reflections were rudely interrupted by the advent of Jim Green, the colored constable of a neighboring trial justice, who, mounted on a razor-backed rat of a Texas pony, rod...

On a night in the early summer, an unusually large congregation had gathered at this trysting place of the faithful, for the news had spread that “Pa Kinlaw” was going to say so...

The Gullah’s favorite pronunciation of our first vowel is that of “a” in at, hat, bat--words that, like all others having the same “a” sound, he invariably pronounces correctly....

CRACK ’E TEET’--crack, cracks, cracked, cracking his, her or their teeth, meaning opened her or his mouth to speak; as: “’E yent crack ’e teet’”--She never opened her mouth.

TAS’--task--a measure of distance as well as of area: 105 feet or 105 feet square. A “tas’,” or one-fourth of an acre, being the daily task during slavery on a sea-island cotton...

“‘Tu’n me loose, fo’ I kick de natal stuffin’ outen you,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, but de Tar-Baby, she ain’t sayin’ nothin.’ She des hilt on, en den Brer Rabbit lose de use er h...