Moses: The Enslaved Potter Who Carved Hope into Clay

Overview

Moses is a foundational figure in Charmaine Wilkerson's Good Dirt, an enslaved potter who lives through the 19th century from his birth around 1803 to his old age after emancipation. He is the original creator of the stoneware jar that becomes the Freeman family heirloom, known as Old Mo. Born on a slave ship to the enslaved woman Kandia, Moses is raised by Auntie and Uncle in South Carolina, learns pottery at the Oldham plantation, and eventually becomes a master turner. His significance lies in his quiet acts of resistance: he secretly carves inscriptions into his pottery, including the jar that generations later holds his family's history. Moses embodies the novel's core themes of memory and trauma, resilience and healing, and the power of family legacy and heritage.

Plot Role

Moses's story is told through flashbacks spanning from 1806 to 1867, interwoven with the contemporary narrative of Ebony Freeman, his descendant. The jar he made in 1847 becomes a narrative anchor: it survives generations, is broken during a robbery that kills Ebony's brother Baz, and is later restored and displayed in a museum. Moses's hidden inscriptions—especially the phrase "Lord Have Mercy" carved after his wife Flora's death—give Willis (later Edward Freeman) the courage to escape slavery. Thus Moses's actions directly enable the Freeman family line to reach freedom in Massachusetts. The prologue and later chapters show the jar as a treasured family member, linking Moses's 19th-century world to the 21st-century Freeman family's grief and healing.

Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions

Moses is driven by a deep need to preserve memory, express grief, and assert his personhood under bondage. Evidence from the outline and retrieved chapters reveals:

• Grief and emotional survival: After his wife Flora dies from a snakebite in 1843, Moses sinks his hands into clay and begins carving hidden disks on jar bottoms. He creates a relief of Flora's face and later incises the phrase "Lord Have Mercy," feeling the ache in his soul dull slightly. This shows he uses pottery as emotional medicine.

• Defiance through literacy: Despite laws forbidding enslaved people from writing, Moses learns to read and write from Uncle, who teaches him with a Bible and a blue book. Moses then risks writing his master's initials, dates, and secret designs—and eventually full sentences—on his pots. He hides these inscriptions because discovery could mean whipping.

• Love and commitment: Moses chooses to marry Flora in a broom-jumping ceremony, recorded in Uncle's hidden Bible. After her death, he resists remarrying for years but later finds companionship with Abigail in old age. He also mentors Willis and later takes on female apprentices, showing his dedication to community uplift.

• Caution and courage: In 1847, when carving a disk, Moses tells himself he could destroy it later but chooses not to. Twenty years earlier he would never have taken such a risk, indicating his growing defiance. After emancipation, he partners with a white man to open a pottery, an act of interracial business collaboration that was "unheard-of" at the time.

• Groundedness: Moses repeatedly feels the clay connects him to his mother Kandia, who made a goat figurine for him. He describes the clay's smell bringing comfort and sorrow. This tactile connection to his heritage and to the earth sustains him.

Chronological Arc

A summary of Moses's life timeline, based on the outline and evidence:

Note: Exact ages are approximate due to uncertainty about his birth year.

Relationships

• Kandia (mother): She comforts him on the slave ship and gives him a clay goat. Her memory and the scent of clay remain with Moses for life. He inherits her belief that clay is a living thing.

• Auntie and Uncle: Raise Moses after his mother dies. Auntie teaches gardening and remedies; Uncle teaches literacy, hunting, and Scripture. They give him a sense of belonging outside the master's control. After Auntie's death, Moses continues to visit Uncle.

• Flora (wife): Moses marries her in 1837. Their Sunday walks "as if they were free" represent his most hopeful period. Her death devastates him and catalyzes his secret carving.

• Willis (brother-in-law, later Edward Freeman): Moses mentors Willis in pottery painting. Willis discovers the hidden inscription on the jar and uses it as courage to escape to Massachusetts, eventually adopting the name Freeman. Moses later takes Willis's surname after emancipation.

• Betsey: A newcomer at the pottery, Betsey forms a bond with Moses. But she is assaulted by Jacob Oldham and dies. Moses cannot protect her, and he never fully believes her death was suicide. This relationship reveals the limits of love under slavery.

• Master Oldham and nephew Jacob: Martin Oldham praises Moses's work but ignores abuses by his family. Jacob is abusive toward Betsey and field hands. Moses must navigate these power dynamics, often by staying silent.

Key Decisions and Consequences

1. Decision to learn to read and write (age ~10): Uncle teaches him secretly. This decision later enables Moses to inscribe messages that inspire escape and preserve family history.

2. Decision to marry Flora: Despite the lack of legal recognition, Moses formalizes their union through ceremony and hidden Bible record, affirming their humanity.

3. Decision to carve hidden messages after Flora's death: He risks whipping to write "Lord Have Mercy" and later five words on the heirloom jar. This act becomes a lifeline for Willis, who reads the inscription and gains courage to flee.

4. Decision to stay in the South after emancipation: Willis urges him to move to Massachusetts, but Moses chooses to remain, partnering with a white man. He reasons he is part of a community and wants to help younger folks "gain back some of what had been taken away."

5. Decision to train female apprentices: Against the objections of male workers, Moses teaches two girls. This honors Betsey's desire to learn pottery and invests in the next generation's future.

Theme and Symbol Connections

• Clay and the Jar: Clay represents both bondage (the dirt he is forced to work) and freedom (he shapes it into objects of beauty and hidden meaning). The jar itself becomes a vessel for memory, hope, and family continuity. The hidden inscriptions symbolize secrets and truth, knowledge that is dangerous but liberating.

• Literacy as Resistance: Moses's writing defies laws that forbid enslaved people from reading and writing. His hidden words are acts of rebellion that empower Willis to become Edward Freeman, directly linking to racial identity and privilege.

• Grief and Healing: Moses loses his mother, Auntie, Flora, and Betsey. Clay becomes his therapy. The novel suggests that channeling pain into creative or meaningful work is a form of resilience and healing.

• The Goat Figurine: The tiny clay goat that Kandia makes for Moses is his first memory of love and craft. It is crushed when he is sold, yet the concept of molding destiny from earth persists. This connects to the theme of family legacy and heritage, as the jar later holds the same metaphorical power.

• Silence and Voice: Moses must keep his writing hidden. His silent carvings speak across centuries to his descendants, echoing the novel's exploration of how suppressed stories eventually surface.

Book-Specific Questions and Answers about Moses

1. What was the first hidden message Moses carved into a jar, and why did he carve it?
After Flora's death from a snakebite in 1843, Moses incised the phrase "Lord Have Mercy" onto a clay disk and affixed it to the bottom of a jar. He did so because the act of writing eased his grief, providing an outlet for his pain that nothing else could.

2. How did Moses's mother Kandia influence his relationship with clay?
Kandia, a free potter in West Africa enslaved and brought to America, made a clay goat figurine for Moses during the Middle Passage. She taught him that clay is a living thing. The smell of clay throughout his life reminds him of her hands and that early act of creation and love.

3. How did the jar Moses made help Willis escape slavery?
Willis accidentally discovered Moses's incised words on the jar's bottom while loading pottery. The hidden message gave Willis the courage to use a counterfeit free badge, board a ship, and flee to Massachusetts, where he adopted the name Edward Freeman. The jar carried provisions and a paper and pencil that aided his survival.

4. What does the name "Old Mo" symbolize for the Freeman family?
"Old Mo" is the family nickname for the jar created by Moses. It symbolizes the endurance of memory, the hidden strength of ancestors, and the message that even under oppression, one can preserve hope and identity. The jar's cracked pieces are later reassembled into an exhibit, reflecting the family's own brokenness and repair.

5. How does Moses's character embody the theme of resilience?
Moses endures the loss of his mother, his childhood home, his wife, and later Betsey. Each time, he turns back to clay to center himself. He learns to read in secret, marries by choice in a ceremony that risks punishment, and after freedom builds a business and trains young potters. His life demonstrates that resilience is not merely survival but the active, creative refusal to be diminished by trauma.

Further Reading

• Explore the novel's full story in the Good Dirt summary and analysis.
• Dive into the ending explained to see how Moses's jar resolves.
• See how Moses's legacy connects to secrets and truth across generations.
• Understand the family legacy and heritage that Moses founded.

These pages provide additional context for Moses's role in Good Dirt and the interconnected themes Wilkerson weaves throughout the novel.