there we can find a local judge or attorney, someone like Mr. Carmichael and give him a copy for safe-keeping. Michigan isn’t some wild territory. It’s been a
state for four years. They’ve got laws there, same as here. “
She did not, however, tell him everything she knew about those laws. After
Uncle Scruggs returned to Five Rocks he had continued to receive the Detroit Gazette by post. Olivia had found a bundle of yellowing issues, each four pages
long, the first three in English, the last in French. From them she learned that Michigan had the same laws against Negroes that they seemed to have
everywhere. Whites and Negroes were forbidden to marry. Public schools were
not required to accept Negro children and if they chose to do so were allowed to
provide separate facilities. In Michigan, however, they had another terrible law
that she had never heard of before. She learned of it from an article that had appeared on the front page of an issue published in 1828:
“A much-needed amendment to the law for the regulation
of Negroes has finally been passed. As we have already
informed our readers the original law passed in 1827
requires all Negroes to carry a valid, court-attested
Certificate of Freedom and to register with the clerk of the
County Court and file a $500 bond guaranteeing good
behavior. The new amendment enables sheriffs and
constables to evict non-complying Negroes.”
A letter to the editor in the next issue complained that:
“Not hardly a one of these dark bipeds has obeyed the
law. This unfortunate species not equal to ourselves roams
our towns and cities unsupervised while the men we pay to
uphold the law choose to ignore their disregard for our legal
system. For this sorry state of affairs we can thank the
niggery abolitionists who are deviants and favor the social
integration of these inferior creatures.”
Her conscience shouted at her to show that article to Mourning, but she
couldn’t bring herself to destroy whatever chance there may be of him coming with her. Anyway, didn’t the horrible man who wrote that nasty letter complain
about nobody obeying the stupid law? And the sheriffs not caring that they
didn’t? And Fae’s Landing probably didn’t even have a sheriff. Anyway, maybe
the Negroes didn’t have to give them $500. Maybe filing a bond meant that a person signed some paper promising to pay $500 if they went and robbed
someone or did some other bad thing. Mourning would never do anything like
that.
Mourning said nothing and Olivia leaned forward and pressed on. “Please,
Mourning, you’ve got to think it over again. Mr. Carmichael isn’t going to be around forever. You’ve got to make a life for yourself. I know you could run a
farm better than anyone. You’d know how to buy a wagon and a team of oxen,
wouldn’t you?”
He stooped his shoulders and slowed his speech to a drawl, the imitation of a
groveling slave he had begun doing when they were children, any time she got
bossy and annoyed him. “Far’s I ’member, Miz Olivia, you be wantin’ to buy
something, you be handin’ over yo’ money and then you be takin’ that thing
