One of nineteen children, John Moore was born in Rutherford County, Tennessee, between Murfreesboro and Nashville, on the first Sunday in February 1848. He was born a slave and remained a slave until he was seventeen. Son of Americus Moore and grandson of a slave woman and her white master, he adopted the name of Moore after his father’s first owner, also named John Moore. John’s grandfather was shot to death as he sat by his cabin door. Although he had been warned that the Ku Kluxers were coming after him and planned to defend himself, he fell asleep and was overtaken. The old man, son of a white master, had his gun across his knee when he was killed.
John’s father and mother were married in the slave quarters of a Tennessee plantation. The wedding ceremony consisted of both groom and bride jumping over a broom handle. The broom was held by two guests at the ceremony, and jumping the broom was taken seriously. After jumping the broom, Americus and his slave wife remained true to their vows, though they later were remarried in a legal ceremony. Americus was given to Moore’s daughter when she married Silas Tucker, so some of his children were named Tucker.
Memories of bondage remained vivid in John’s mind throughout his life. For instance, he witnessed the brutal slaying of a fellow slave. “Marse Tucker just naturally had him killed to get rid of him,” according to John, because the slave desired his freedom more than anything else and developed a habit of running away. Although the owner punished him and warned him not to try to escape again, the temptation for freedom overtook him, and he tried again.
The slaveholder had a hole dug just big enough to fit the body of the runaway slave and had him put into the hole. With his arms and legs pinioned to the earth and his body even with the top of the hole, the slave was beaten on his bare flesh by a blacksmith and his striker [blacksmith’s helper] until he died. While he was still alive, his wounds were sponged with a mixture of vinegar, salt, and pepper, as the white slaveholder sat reading nearby. John recalled the sorrow of the other slaves who stood powerless to prevent this cruel treatment, and he remembered how the victim’s family grieved his death.
John related a familiar folktale. He said his master was a prankster who enjoyed tormenting his slaves. Isam, one of the slaves, often prayed to the Lord to take him away from his situation and let him come on to heaven. His voice often reached outside his cabin, and other slaves often listened to him praying. One night the slaveholder climbed to the roof and heard the prayer, “Oh, Lord, please come take poor Isam to heaven.” The slaveholder made an ominous sound on the shingles. “Who’s there?” asked old Isam. “It is the Lord, come for Isam,” said the slaveholder. “That nigger ain’t home tonight,” replied Isam, and that ended his prayers for deliverance for a long time. (Baughman J217.0.0.1.1, “Trickster overhears man praying for death to take him.”)
The slaves, John said, were religious and always prayed for freedom. They enjoyed the sermons of black preachers because they preached from experiences and not from the Bible. The slaves praised and worshiped God because they believed that God would deliver them from bondage. John remembered that emancipation was a major theme of the sermons of black preachers.
John attended a school conducted by the Freedmen’s Bureau. The teacher always kept his pistol on his desk because the white slaveholders objected to the education of blacks. Teaching blacks was a perilous occupation, according to John.
John remembered some folk traditions of his fellow slaves. “It rained blood one day,” his grandfather told his father. Traditional accounts repeat the story of the Red Rain as follows: The slaves were forced to work in the fields on the Sabbath, which filled them with fear of God’s wrath. When they prayed that they might be excused of this sinful practice, a storm broke the calm, and it rained blood. After that, the frightened slaveholder never again sent his slaves into the fields to work on the Sabbath; he always allowed them to rest and worship God on that day.
John also related a few folk beliefs that were handed down from parent to child and still existed in tradition: “If you don’t want a visitor to come again, sprinkle salt in his tracks, and he won’t come again. If a black cat crosses your path, go back home and start again; if he crosses your path again, go home and stay awhile and don’t try to go where you had started out to go.” John also recalled that slaves sprinkled chamber lye on their cabin steps at four o’clock in the morning to keep away evil spirits. Many slaves believed in the power to hex. If an enemy desired to hex you, all he or she had to do was to borrow or steal some object belonging to you and give it your name. For example, if an enemy wanted you to burn, he or she could place the object named for you in a hot fire, and your body would be tortured by the flames.
An old slave woman bent and twisted a poker she had borrowed from another slave woman, causing the hexed woman to bend nearly double from rheumatic pain. When winter came, a mild Tennessee winter though it was, the borrower put the poker outside the cabin, and it froze into the ground. The lender of the poker nearly froze to death that winter, but early in the spring a grandson of the cursed woman found the bent and twisted poker. He had it straightened by the blacksmith and returned it to his grandmother. Only then did they understand that she had been hexed, and after that they would not allow the hexer to enter their door. The sick woman was soon well and could stand in an upright position.
John was once imprisoned for stabbing to death a white man, Garret Jean. The stabbing was done in self-defense when the drunken white man attacked John. An angry mob surrounded the jail demanding John so that they could lynch him. The jailer protected John from the mob and moved him to safety. John received a fair trial, and his innocence was proven beyond a doubt. No one envied John his liberty after the truth was learned.
John was a good citizen of Evansville for many years and had many friends in his community. He died on February 4, 1929, and was buried at Locust Hill Cemetery on February 5, 1929.