United States. Work Projects Administration

“ I didn't want slavery to be over with, mostly because we had the War I reckon. All that trouble made me the loss of my mammy and pappy, and I was always treated good when I was a slave. When it was over I had rather be at home like I was. None of the Cherokees ever whipped us, and my mistress give me some mighty fine rules to live by to git along in this world, too.
The Cherokee didn't have no jail for Negroes and no jail for themselves either. If a man done a crime he come back to take his punishment without being locked up. ”

“ I have lived a plain life and have been rewarded with a ripe age that still finds me feeling young. I shall never grow old in my thoughts and actions, but always keep a place in my mind to welcome something new. ”

“ But after you have talked with people who are too old to work, too feeble to help themselves in any effective fashion, hemmed up in a single room and unable to pay rent on that, odds and ends of broken and dilapidated furniture, ragged clothes, and not even plenty of water on hand for bathing, barely hanging on to the thread of life without a thrill or a passion, then it is a great thing to have six cents to give away and to be able to walk any distance you want to. ”

“ We lived in an old log cabin. The cracks was filled with mud. My Mother done the housework for Master Barr's house. My father and sister and me had to work in the fields. He had a big farm, and owned lots of slaves, and when the old master got mad at his slaves for not working hard enough he would tie them up by their thumbs and whip the male slaves till they begged for mercy. He sure was a mean old man. I will never forget him as long as I live. I don't know exactly how old I is, but I am close to ninety now. After I growed up and married a man named Owens, we come here to Louisville to live. ”

“ In spite of obvious limitations—bias and fallibility of both informants and interviewers, the use of leading questions, unskilled techniques, and insufficient controls and checks—this saga must remain the most authentic and colorful source of our knowledge of the lives and thoughts of thousands of slaves, of their attitudes toward one another, toward their masters, mistresses, and overseers, toward poor whites, North and South, the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, religion, education, and virtually every phase of Negro life in the South. ”

“ When you have turned in and come suddenly out from the plum thicket you find your road winding along with cultivated patches on the left—corn and peas—a fenced-in garden, the palings riven out by hand, and thick dark woods on the left. A lonesome, untenanted cabin is seemingly in the way but your car swings to the left instead of climbing the door-step and suddenly you find you are facing a bog. ”

“ You see, ma’am, when slaves got free, they didn’t have nothing but their two hands to start out with. I never heard of any master giving a slave money or land. Most went back to farming on shares. For many years all they got was their food. Some white folks was so mean. I know what they told us every time when crops would be put by. They said ‘Why didn’t you work harder? Look. When the seed is paid for, and all your food and everything, what food you had just squares the account.’ Then they take all the cotton we raise, all the hogs, corn, everything. ”

“ I don't like for people to have a feeling that slaves are no more than dogs; I don't like that. It causes people to have the wrong idea of slavery. Here is John Bectom, a well, healthy friend of mine, 75 years of age. If we had been treated as some folks say, these big, healthy niggers would not be walking about in the South now. The great Negro leaders we have now would never have come out of it. ”

“ The dead lay in heaps in front of them and almost filled the ditch around the breastworks, but the command though terribly cut to pieces was forming as cooly as if on dress parade. Above them floated a peculiar flag, a field of deep blue on which was a crescent moon and stars. ”

“ Old Missus used to come to the house where I lived and teach me my alphabet. After I got older, I used to take care of Masser's horse and buggy for him; used to hitch-up the horse for him and go with him on his ways to see a patient. Bless his heart, he let me take my Webster's blue back speller and my history with me when I would drive with him. I would study those books and Masser would tell me how to pronounce the hard words. That is the way I got my education. Masser would tell Missus that Jimmie was a smart boy, that he had no father nor mother and that they must be good to him. ”

“ However, home life begins with the smaller porch on the south side where bright flowered morning glory vines climb twine strings, their large green leaves bringing sheltering shadows to Sim's favorite resting place. ”

“ Death comes and unlocks the heart and twists the breath out of that heart and carries it back to God.
Nobody has gone to Heaven, no one can get pass Jesus until the day of his redemption, which is judgement day. ”

“ When a slave got too old to work they would give him a small cabin on the plantation and have the other slaves to wait on him. They would furnish him with victuals, and clothes until he died."
"Slaves were never allowed to talk to white people other than their masters or someone their master knew, as they were afraid the white man might have the slave run away. The masters aimed to keep their slaves in ignorance and the ignorant slaves were all in favor of the Rebel army, only the more intelligent were in favor of the Union army." ”

“ Street knew the facts and respected Louisa and her child and, says grandmother Patterson, "That was the greatest crime ever visited on the United States. It was worse than the cruelty of the overseers, worse than hunger, for many slaves were well fed and well cared for; but when a father can sell his own child, humiliate his own daughter by auctioning her on the slave block, what good could be expected where such practices were allowed?" ”

“ The narratives belong to folk history—history recovered from the memories and lips of participants or eye-witnesses, who mingle group with individual experience and both with observation, hearsay, and tradition. Whether the narrators relate what they actually saw and thought and felt, what they imagine, or what they have thought and felt about slavery since, now we know why they thought and felt as they did. To the white myth of slavery must be added the slaves' own folklore and folk-say of slavery. ”

“ A slave would be placed on a platform and his merits as a speciman of human power and ability to work was enomerated the bidding began. Young slave girls brought high prices because the more slave children that were born on one's plantation the richer he would be in the future. Some slaves were kept just for this purpose, the same as prize thorough-bred stock is kept. In many instances slaves were treated like brutes and their places to sleep were like barn sheds with only a little straw, on which to sleep. ”

“ Gilbert, a good sized lad when slavery was at its height, recalls vividly the cruel lashings and other punishments meted out to those who disobeyed their master or attempted to run away. It was the custom of slaves who wished to go from one plantation to another to carry passes in case they were stopped as suspected runaways. Frequently slaves would visit without benefit of passes, and as result they suffered severe torturing. Often the sons of the slaves' owners would go "nigger hunting" and nothing—not even murder was too horrible for them to do to slaves caught without passes. ”

“ This question was answered the other day when the quest ended on the sunny porch of a little cottage on Lexington Road in Washington-Wilkes, for there in a straight old-fashioned split-bottom chair sat "Aunt" Adeline Willis basking in the warm October sunshine. She is remarkable for her age—she doesn't know just exactly how old she is, from all she tells and what her "white folks" say she is around a hundred. Her general health is good, she spends her days in the open and tires only on the days she cannot be out in her place in the sun. ”

“ The slaves were not expecting much but they were expecting more than they got. I am not telling you anything I read in history but I have heard that there was a bounty in the treasury for the ex-slaves, and them alone. And some reason or other they did not pay it off, but the time was coming when they would pay it off. And every man or woman living that was born a slave would benefit from it. They say that Abraham Lincoln principally was killed because he was going to pay this money to the ex-slaves end before they would permit it they killed him. ”

“ As a small boy and later on, until I was emancipated, I worked on the farm doing farm work, principally in the tobacco fields and in the woods cutting timber and firewood. I slept on a home-made bed or bunk, while my mother and sister slept in a bed made by father on which they had a mattress made by themselves and filled with straw, while dad slept on a bench beside the bed and that he used in the day as a work bench, mending shoes for the slaves and others. I have seen mother going to the fields each day like other slaves to do her part of the farming. ”

“ One day the Master finds a soapy streak in his shirt. Then he finds me.
The Military Road goes by the place and the Master drives me down the road and ties me to a tree. First he tears off the old shirt and then he throws the bull whip to me. When he is tired of beating me more torture is a-coming. The salt water cure. It don't cure nothing but that's what the white folks called it. "Here's at you," the Master say, and slap the salt water into the bleeding cuts. "Here's at you!" The blisters burst every time he slap me with the brine. ”

“ A familiar figure in Savannah, Missouri is that of an aged, bent and withered Negro woman with a little patch of white whiskers on her chin, a cap on her head winter and summer; who is seen almost daily pulling a little red wagon along the streets. ”

“ When they were at the other end of the row, all at once a cloud no bigger than a small spot came up, and it grew fast, and it thundered and lightened as if the world were coming to an end, and the rain just came down in great sheets. ”

“ He give us freedom without giving us any chance to live to ourselves and we still had to depend on the southern white man for work, food and clothing, and he held us through our necessity and want in a state of servitude but little better than slavery. Lincoln done but little for the Negro race and from living standpoint nothing. White folks are not going to do nothing for Negroes except keep them down. ”

“ After quenching his thirst, the rabbit hopped a few feet away and nibbled on a wisp of tender grass. Cindy was as still as a statue as she watched the procedure. "Dat's de cutest little bunny I ever seed," she said to herself. "I wish I could ketch him." But Cindy knew that she could not catch a rabbit, so she was content to stand in the shadow of a sycamore and gaze eagerly at the animal, nibbling the grass. ”

“ Miss Sue told her not to cry because, 'the Lord knows best.' 'Yes, Miss Sue,' answered Mother, 'but you have never loved a man to lose.' With that, they both cried. When anyone died in those days, the people sat up all night and didn't go to bed until the funeral was over. Now, no real sympathy is shown.
"I don't believe any of Marse John's slaves ever went to the war. He was good to them and everyone of them loved him. I heard of patterollers chasing slaves and whipping them if they were caught away from home without a pass, and sometimes they locked them up. ”

“ He used to go from place to place and handle niggers. He carried his cowhide with him when he went. My master said, 'A man is a damn fool to have a valuable slave and butcher him up.' He said, 'If they need a whipping, whip them, but don't beat them so they can't work.' He never whipped his slaves. No man ever hit me a lick but my father. No man. ”

“ The old negro lady slaves would sit in the door way of their little shacks and play with pieces of string, not knowing what else to do to pass off the time. They were never restless for they knew no other life than slavery. ”

“ Berry recalls the old days of black aristocracy when Negroes held high political offices in the state of Florida, when Negro tradesmen and professionals competed successfully and unmolested with the whites. Many fortunes were made by men who are now little more than beggars. To this group belongs the man who in spite of reduced circumstances manages still to make one think of top hats and state affairs. Although small of stature and almost disabled by rheumatism, he has the fiery dignity and straight back that we associate with men who have ruled others. ”