Randy Ford Author- FREEDOM Testament chapter 22

HURRY!   Before we’re all dead men!

Musically: foretelling a massive migration.   Refugees on the move.   Freedom, hey-day!   Hey-day, freedom!   Freedom, hey-day, freedom!   We’re free!   We’re free!   We’re free, at last!   God be thanked!

Of their chains, they broke.   They fled.   They broke away.   Go!   Let us extol the Lord with our praises!

Musically: Lift up your voices, and sing praises unto the Lord.   Sing, Joy, joy, joy, down in my heart…   Till they exhaust themselves.   Say amen!   No way did they think that this would ever happen.   Free at last!

Freedom, hey-day!   Hey-day, freedom!   Freedom, hey-day, freedom!

That all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are, and henceforward shall be free.”

No, no, you have to secure your own liberty.

Dear Mr. President.   It is my Desire to be free and to go to see my people.   My mistress won’t let me.   Please let me know if we are free and what I can do.

Sing Follow the Drinkin’ Gourd.

I had a little truble in giting away, But as the lord led the Children of Isrel to the land of Canon, so he led me to a land whare freedom will rain in spite of earth and hell. I am free from the slaver’s lash.   Your affectionate husband.   Kiss Daniel for me.

Yes, we’re free.

Sir: I got your letter and was glad to find you had not forgotten me, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can.   I have often felt uneasy about you.   I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this for harboring Rebs.   Glad you are still living.

Give my love to Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee.   Tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this.   We are kindly treated, but sometimes we overhear others saying, “The colored people were slaves” down in Tennessee.   The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks, but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Col. Anderson.   Many darkies would have been proud, as I used to was, to call you master.

Here I draw my wages every Saturday night, but in Tennessee there was never any pay day for the Negroes any more than for the horses and cows.

I would rather stay here and starve and die if it comes to that than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters.

Sing, The Walls Came Tumblin’ Down.   Freedom, hey-day!   Hey-day, freedom!   Freedom, hey-day, freedom!

Musically: auld lang syne.   Playing down their slavery past.   With all the celebration, a little wistfulness.  Imagine a mass exodus.   All to which not a complaint.   But their fate, what will it be?   Traveling day and night, well tired, very stiff.   Lucky!   No, not just lucky, but God’s Chosen Ones.

With a strong hand, the Lord brought them out of the land of Egypt.   And they were smiling ever.

      Randy Ford

Randy Ford Author- Testament A CROSS TO BEAR chapter 12

In the same place they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife, and Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried Leah.

When he found himself at pointblank range looking down the barrel of a revolver, his whole life flashed before him.   More than a billion bites of data.   Gosh, what with all his troubles, the murky business, the blotched opportunities, the tattered relationships, the inconsistencies, the fox-trotting to keep a head of the pack, the lice, the scum he knew, the tears, the drinking, my what a cross to bear.

And Jacob made Joe promise to bury him in the land of Canaan with Abraham and Issac.  And eventually Joe died.   Took stock and died.   They embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.

Now these are the names of the children of Israel, which came into Egypt; every man and his house came with Jacob. Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, Dan, and Naphtali, Gad, and Asher.   And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls: for Joseph was in Egypt already.

Musically: the sounds of hopscotch and tag beat through the trees while the top branches wave in contrapuntal rhythms.   Burdens, because there was a new king, from dawn to dusk, who made their lives bitter with hard bondage.   And they built for Pharoah the treasured cities of Pithom and Raamses.

To an African drumbeat, “savages” wildly dance.   They prance and twist, strut, leap and pirouette.   Else there is danger.   Their antics and attitudes, prancing and posturing are a direct imitation of game.

During many odd years these people of hod, cement, and edifices piled stone upon stone building a great city, building it on the banks of Nile.   And still they multiplied.

Noisy monkeys and a menagerie of sound. Moon light campfire burning.   The air explodes with the screech of a trapped cat.   Slave-makers relentlessly pursue those who run through the bush.   Run, else you’re caught!

One yesterday he collapsed under the weight of a heavy stone.   His fate dictated nothing else from him.   And men like to ants bore more, and with sore backs working stacks of bricks; and their taskmasters afflicted them with all manner of service in the field.   Where else in this world would we see such a thing?

A man with a whip.   The whip in hand, the man cracks it smartly about.

And the king was an ugly person.   Throughout the land he set in motion a plan of death.   Let the midwives carryout his dirty work.   By order of the king all Hebrew boys were to be killed.   And so?   Used the midwives?   No, they didn’t allow themselves to be used.

Death’s Gwineter Lay His Cold Icy Hands on Me.   Musically: a jackass-bark has set sail across the sea with a human cargo.   There is a strong gale testing the rigging.   There is flapping and creaks and groans of the rigging.   In the belly of a bark the cry of many peoples.   The songs of childbirth.   The songs of dying.   A cotton-picking song sung by those who labor with a short-handled hoe.

The jurors are out; and here are the witnesses.   The gravest embezzlement is the theft of human beings.   Playing down how much slavery hurts.   If he pulls you over, say you’re free.

Slave.   As Caliban, the savage.   No more dams I’ll make for fish, nor fetch in firing at requiring; nor scrape onions, nor wash dish: ‘Ban,’ Ban, Cacaliban has a new master; get a new man.   Freedom, hey-day!   Hey-day, freedom!   Freedom, hey-day, freedom!  O brave monster!   Lead the way.

      Randy Ford