Po' Sandy

“Po’ Sandy,” a short story by Black American writer Charles W. Chesnutt, was first published in The Atlantic in 1888. The version most commonly read today is from a collection of stories Chesnutt published in 1898 titled The Conjure Woman. These stories share settings and narrative voices. Each story in the collection is contained in a frame narrative in the voice of John, a Northerner. While it is never directly stated, John is white. He is the new owner of the property where a man called Uncle Julius was born into slavery and, at the time of the story, now lives as a freed Black man. The story focuses on the interactions between John, his wife Annie, and Julius. This summary refers to the 1990 reprint of the 1969 edition of The Conjure Woman from the University of Michigan Press.

Warning: This language used in this story was common at the time but is considered inappropriate today. The Julius uses the n-word, and John uses the word “colored” to refer to Black people. Julius also speaks in a heavily affected Black Southern dialect. Additionally, this story depicts the practice of slavery in the US.

“Po’ Sandy” is set in the fictional town of Patesville, North Carolina, about 25 years following the Civil War, roughly the late 1880s or early 1890s. The story begins with a first-person narrative by a Northerner named John who purchased the land in hopes of starting a vineyard and building a home in a location more suited to Annie’s medical condition, which is not identified.

The story begins with John looking at and describing an outbuilding on his property that he plans to turn into a kitchen. John has been told that the building was a schoolhouse in the years preceding the Civil War. He plans to take down the building and use the boards to build the kitchen. Uncle Julius, the “colored coachman” (38), takes John and Annie to the lumberyard to get additional lumber needed to complete the project. As the three are waiting to be served, they hear saws cutting logs into boards. On hearing the sound, Julius says, “Ugh! But dat des do cuddle my blood!” (40). He then tells the story of “Po’ Sandy,” which took place before the war.

Sandy is an enslaved man belonging to Mars Marrabo McSwayne, whose plantation, Julius says, “wuz on de yuther side’n de swamp” next to John’s property (41). Sandy is very talented, and his master frequently lends him out to work for family and friends. This requires much travel for Sandy, and during one such trip away from the plantation, Sandy’s master sells Sandy’s wife and replaces her with another enslaved woman named Tenie.

Over time, Sandy and Tenie become a couple, and one afternoon he says to her, “I’m getting’ monst’us ti’ed er dish yer gwine roun so much,” to which Tenie replies, “Sandy, is I eber tol’ you I wuz a conjuh ’oman?” (44-45). She has always had the gift to “goopher” or conjure magical results, but after she became religious, she stopped using the gift. Together they decide that Tenie will turn Sandy into a tree so he does not need to travel, and she will periodically change him back into a person so they can visit.

One day, Mars Marrabo has the tree chopped down and sawed into boards to build a kitchen. After the kitchen is built, Julius says, the slaves assigned to work in it “could hear sump’n moann’ en groanin’ […] lack it wuz in great pain en sufferin’ […] [they] would n’ rudder take forty dan ter go ’bout dat kitchen” (57-58). In other words, the women would rather be whipped than work in the kitchen. Soon, nearly everyone on the plantation believes the building is haunted; according to Julius, “Mars Marrabo tuk en to’ de kitchen down, en use’ de lumber fer ter buil’ dat ole school’ouse w’at you er talkin’ ’bout pullin’ down” (58-59). That is, the schoolhouse that Mars Marrabo built is the same structure that John plans to dismantle to build a kitchen. Tenie frequently goes to the schoolhouse seeking Sandy’s spirit. One morning, she is found dead on the schoolhouse floor, and Julius suggests she died of grief.

That evening, Annie decides she doesn’t want John to use the boards from the schoolhouse. John is irritated but agrees to build the kitchen with new boards and leave the schoolhouse standing. Two weeks later, Annie tells John that Julius asked to use the building for his church group. She asked Julius if Sandy’s ghost might be a distraction for the group, to which Julius replied, “If Sandy’s spirit should happen to stray into the meeting […] no doubt the preaching would do it good” (63).