The white children seemed to love nothing more than playing “massa” and pretending to beat the black ones, or playing “hosses” by climbing onto their backs and making them scramble about on all fours. Playing “school,” the white children would “teach” the black to read and write, with many cuffings and shriekings about their “dumbness.” Yet after lunch—which the black children would spend fanning the massa and his family with leafy branches to keep flies away—the white and black children would lie down together and take naps on pallets.
