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Charles McGruder Had a “Black Job”
He Traveled From Plantation to Plantation to Breed With Enslaved Women
The cover photo is from the movie “Mandingo,” in which “Mede,” played by Ken Norton, Jr, is forced to breed with an enslaved woman (Pearl) he’s related to and blackmailed into sleeping with the plantation mistress. Things didn’t work out well for Mede as he was shot twice and landed in a pot of boiling water. Mandingo was fiction, but the story of Charles McGruder was quite real.
McGruder didn’t get shot or get boiled in water; he lived a long life, working his Black job as a stockman, which sounds pretty innocuous. McGruder was a “buck” made to breed with unwilling enslaved women in several plantations. He sired as many as 100 children who had many children of their own. His extended family is well over 1,000 people and includes almost every Black person named McGruder in Alabama.
He was born Charles Magruder in North Carolina in 1829. After emancipation, he changed his name and registered to vote to express his new life. Another reason for the name change might have been to reduce the stigma. McGruder was well known at plantations in several counties as the man who raped mothers, sisters, cousins, and wives for the profit of their masters.
