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Louisiana Anthology

John W. H. Barnett.
Rachel Bradley.
Ellen Brass.
Mary Reynolds.
“Louisiana Slave Narratives.”



[Illustration: frontispiece.jpg]
Old Slave.




SLAVE NARRATIVES


A Folk History of Slavery in the United States
From Interviews with Former Slaves



TYPEWRITTEN RECORDS PREPARED BY
THE FEDERAL WRITERS’ PROJECT,
1936-1938
ASSEMBLED BY
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS PROJECT
WORK PROJECTS ADMINISTRATION
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
SPONSORED BY THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Illustrated with Photographs


WASHINGTON 1941








VOLUME II
ARKANSAS NARRATIVES
PART I



Prepared by
the Federal Writers’ Project of
the Works Progress Administration
for the State of Arkansas







INFORMANTS

  1. Barnett, John W.H.
  2. Bradley, Rachel
  3. Brass, Ellen
  4. Reynolds, Mary





Person interviewed: John W. H. Barnett
Marianna, Arkansas
Age: 81
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson


“I was born at Clinton Parish, Louisiana. I’m eighty-one years old. My parents and four children was sold and left six children behind. They kept the oldest children. In that way I was sold but never alone. Our family was divided and that brought grief to my parents. We was sold on a block at New Orleans. J.J. Gambol (Gamble?) in north Louisiana bought us. After freedom I seen all but one of our family. I don’t recollect why that was.

“For three weeks steady after the surrender people was passing from the War and for two years off and on somebody come along going home. Some rode and some had a cane or stick walking. Mother was cooking a pot of shoulder meat. Them blue soldiers come by and et it up. I didn’t get any I know that. They cleaned us out. Father was born at Eastern Shore, Maryland. He was about half Indian. Mother’s mother was a squaw. I’m more Indian than Negro. Father said it was a white man’s war. He didn’t go to war. Mother was very dark. He spoke a broken tongue.

“We worked on after freedom for the man we was owned by. We worked crops and patches. I didn’t see much difference then. I see a big change come out of it. We had to work. The work didn’t slacken a bit. I never owned land but my father owned eighty acres in Drew County. I don’t know what become of it. I worked on the railroad section, laid crossties, worked in stave mills. I farmed a whole lot all along. I hauled and cut wood.

“I get ten dollars and I sells sassafras and little things along to help out. My wife died. My two sons left just before the World War. I never hear from them. I married since then.

“Present times — I can’t figure it out. Seems like a stampede. Not much work to do. If I was young I reckon I could find something to do.

“Present generation — Seem like they are more united. The old ones have to teach the young ones what to do. They don’t listen all the time. The times is strange. People’s children don’t do them much good now seems like. They waste most all they make some way. They don’t make it regular like we did farming. The work wasn’t regular farming but Saturday was ration day and we got that.”




Person interviewed: Rachel Bradley
1103 State Street
Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 107?
Name of Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden


Upon arriving at the humble unpainted home of Rachel Bradley I found her sitting in the doorway on a typical split-oak bottomed chair watching the traffic of State Street, one of our busiest streets out of the high rent district. It is a mixture of white and Negro stores and homes.

After asking her name to be sure I was really talking to Rachel Bradley, I said I had been told she was a former slave. “Yes’m, I used to be a slave.” She smiled broadly displaying nearly a full set of teeth. She is of a cheerful, happy disposition and seemed glad to answer my questions. As to her age, she said she was “a little girl on the floor whan the stars fell.” I looked this up at the public library and found that falling stars or showers of meteors occur in cycles of thirty-three years. One such display was recorded in 1833 and another in 1866. So if Rachel Bradley is really 107 years old, she was born in 1830. It is a question in my mind whether or not she could have remembered falling stars at the age of three, but on the other hand if she was “a little girl on the floor” in 1866 she would be only somewhere between seventy-five and eighty years of age.

Her master and mistress were Mitchell and Elizabeth Simmons and they had two sons and two daughters. They lived on a plantation about twelve miles from Farmersville, Louisiana.

Rachel was a house girl and her mother was the cook. Besides doing house work, she was nursemaid and as she grew older did her mistress’ sewing and could also weave and knit. From the way she smiled and rolled her eyes I could see that this was the happiest time of her life. “My white folks was so good to me. I sat right down to the same table after they was thru.”

While a child in the home of her white folks she played with her mistress’ children. In her own words “My mistress give us a task to do and when we got it done, we went to our playhouse in the yard.”

When the war came along, her master was too old to go but his two sons went and both lived through the war.

Questioned about the Yankees during the war she said, “I seen right smart of the Yankees. I seen the ‘Calvary’ go by. They didn’t bother my white folks none.”

Rachel said the ABC’s for me but cannot read or write. She said her mistress’ children wanted to teach her but she would rather play so grew up in ignorance.

After the war Rachel’s white folks moved to Texas and Rachel went to live with her mistress’ married daughter Martha. For her work she was paid six dollars a month. She was not given any money by her former owners after being freed, but was paid for her work. Later on Rachel went to work in the field making a crop with her brother, turning it over to the owner of the land for groceries and other supplies and when the cotton was weighed “de white folks taken out part of our half. I knowed they done it but we couldn’t do nothin bout it.”

Rachel had four husbands and eleven children. Her second husband abandoned her, taking the three oldest and leaving five with her. One boy and one girl were old enough to help their mother in the field and one stayed in the house with the babies, so she managed to make a living working by the day for the white people.

The only clash with the Ku Klux Klan was when they came to get an army gun her husband had bought.

Being a woman, Rachel did not know much about politics during the Reconstruction period. She had heard the words “Democrat,” “Radical” and “Republican” and that was about all she remembered.

Concerning the younger generation Rachel said: “I don’t know what goin’ come of ’em. The most of ’em is on the beat” (trying to get all they can from others).

After moving to Arkansas, she made a living working in the field by the day and as she grew older, washing and ironing, sewing, housecleaning and cooking.

Her long association with white people shows in her speech which is quite plain with only a few typical Negro expressions, such as the following:

“She died this last gone Sattiday and I hope (help) shroud her.”

“When white lady find baby, I used to go hep draw the breas’.”

“Heap a people.”

“Bawn.”

The Welfare Department gives Rachel $8.00 a month. She pays $2.00 a month for two rooms with no drinking water. With the help of her white friends she manages to exist and says she is “pendin on the Lord” to help her get along.

She sang for me in a quavering voice the following songs reminiscent of the war:

“Homespun dresses plain I know.
And the hat palmetto too.
Hurrah! Hurrah!
We cheer for the South we love so dear,
We cheer for the homespun dresses
The Southern ladies wear!”

“Who is Price a fightin’?
He is a fightin’, I do know.
I think it is old Curtis.
I hear the cannons roa’”




Person interviewed: Ellen Brass
1427 W. Eighth Street
Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: About 82
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor


[Handwritten Note: White Folks want Niggers]

“I was born in Alabama in Green County. I was about four years old when I came from there; so I don’t know much about it. I growed up in Catahoula, Louisiana. My mother’s name was Caroline Butler and my father’s name was Lee Butler. One of my father’s brothers was named Sam Butler. I used to be a Butler myself, but I married. My father and mother were both slaves. They never did any slave work.


Father Free Raised

“My father was free raised. The white folks raised him. I don’t know how he became free. All that I know is that he was raised right in the house with the white folks and was free. His mother and father were both slaves. I was quite small at the time and didn’t know much. They bought us like cattle and carried us from place to place.


Slave Houses

“The slaves lived in log cabins with one room. I don’t know what kind of house the white folks lived in. They, the colored folks, ate corn bread, wheat bread (they raised wheat in those times), pickled pork. They made the flour right on the plantation. George Harris, a white man, was the one who brought me out of Louisiana into this State. We traveled in wagons in those days. George Harris owned us in Louisiana.


Slave Sales

“We were sold from George Harris to Ben Hickinbottom. They bought us then like cattle. I don’t know whether it was a auction sale or a private sale. I am telling it as near as I know it, and I am telling the truth. Hickinbottom brought us to Catahoula Parish in Louisiana. Did I say Harris brought us? Well, Hickinbottom brought us to Louisiana. I don’t know why they went from one place to the other like that. The soldiers were bad about freeing the slaves. From Catahoula Parish, Hickinbottom carried us to Alexandria, Louisiana, and in Alexandria, we was set free.


How Freedom Came

“According to my remembrance the Yankees come around and told the people they was free. I was in Alexandria, Louisiana. They told the colored folks they was free and to go and take what they wanted from the white folks. They had us all out in the yard dancing and playing. They sang the song:

‘They hung Jeff Davis on a sour apple tree
While we all go marching on.’

It wasn’t the white folks on the plantation that told us we was free. It was the soldiers their selves that came around and told us. We called ’em Yankees.


Right After the War

“Right after the War, my folks farmed — raised cotton and corn. My mother had died before I left Alabama. They claimed I was four years old when my mother died in Alabama. My father died after freedom.


Occupation

“My first occupation was farming — you know, field work. Sometimes I used to work around the white people too — clean house and like that.


Random Opinions

“The white folks ain’t got no reason to mistreat the colored people. They need us all the time. They don’t want no food unless a nigger cooks it. They want niggers to do all their washing and ironing. They want niggers to do their sweeping and cleaning and everything around their houses. The niggers handle everything they wears and hands them everything they eat and drink. Ain’t nobody can get closer to a white person than a colored person. If we’d a wanted to kill ’em, they’d a all done been dead. They ain’t no reason for white people mistreating colored people.”




Title Page

Person interviewed: Mary Reynolds
Dallas, Texas
Age: 105?
Interviewer: Unknown WPA Researcher


Mary Reynolds
Mary Reynolds, age 105.

Mary Reynolds claims to be more than a hundred years old. She was born in slavery to the Kilpatrick family, in Black River, Louisiana. Mary now lives at the Dallas County Convalescent Home. She has been blind for five years and is very feeble.

My paw’s name was Tom Vaughn and he was from the north, born free man and lived and died free to the end of his days. He wasn’t no eddicated man, but he was what he calls himself a piano man. He told me once he lived in New York and Chicago and he built the insides of pianos and knew how to make them play in tune. He said some white folks from the south told he if he’d come with them to the south he’d find a lot of work to do with pianos in them parts, and he come off with them. He saw my maw on the Kilpatrick place and her man was dead. He told Dr. Kilpatrick , my massa, he’d buy my maw and her three chillun with all the money he had, iffen he’d sell her. But Dr. Kilpatrick was never one to sell any but the old niggers who was part workin’ in the fields and past their breedin’ times. So my paw marries my maw and works the fields, same as any other nigger. They had six gals: Martha and Panela and Josephine and Ellen and Katherine and me. I was born sometime as Miss Sara Kilpatrick. Dr. Kilpatrick’s first wife and my maw come to their time right together. Miss Sara’s maw died and they brung Miss Sara to suck with me. It’s a thing we ain’t never forgot.

My maw’s name was Sallie and Miss Sara allus looked with kindness on my maw. We sucked till we was a fair size and played together, which wasn’t no common thing. None the other li’l niggers played with the white chillun. But Miss Sara loved me so good. I was jus’ ’bout big ’nough to start playin’ with a broom to go ’bout sweepin’ up and not even half doin’ it when Dr. Kilpatrick sold me. They was a old white man in Trinity and his wife died and he didn’t have chick or child or slave or nothin’. Massa sold me cheap. ’cause he didn’t want Miss Sara to play with no nigger young’un. That old man bought me a big doll and went off and left me all day, with the door open. I jus’ sot on the floor and played with that doll. I used to cry. He’d come home and give me somethin’ to eat and then go to bed, and I slep’ on the foot of the bed with him. I was scart all the time in the dark. He never did close the door. Miss Sara pined and sickened. Massa done what he could, but they wasn’t no pertness in her. She got sicker and sicker, and massa brung ‘nother doctor. He say, ‘You li’l gal is grievin’ the life out her body and she sho’ gwine die iffen you don’t do somethin’ ’bout it.’ Miss Sara says over and over. ‘I wants Mary.’ Massa say to the doctor, ‘That a li’l nigger young’un I done sold.’ The doctor tells him he better git me back iffen he wants to save the life of his child. Dr. Kilpatrick has to give a big plenty more to git me back than what he sold me for, but Miss Sara plumps up right off and grows into fine health. Then massa marries a rich lady from Mississippi and they has chillun for company to Miss Sara and seem like for a time she forgits me. Massa Kilpatrick wasn’t no piddlin’ man. He was a man of plenty. He had a big house with no more style to it than a crib, but it could room plenty people. He was a medicine doctor and they was rooms in the second story for sick folks what come to lay in. It would take two days to go all over the land he owned. He had cattle and stock and sheep and more’n a hundred slaves and more besides. He bought the bes’ of niggers near every time the spec’lators come that may. He’d make a swap of the old ones and give money for young ones what could work. He raised corn and cotton and cane and ’taters and goobers. ’sides the pens and other feedin’ for the niggers. I ’member I helt a hoe handle mighty unsteady when they put a old women to larn me and some other chillun to scrape the fields. That old woman would be in a frantic. She’d show me and then turn ’bout to show some other li’l nigger, and I’d have the young corn cut clean as the grass. She say, ‘For the love of Gawd, you better larn it right, or Solomon will beat the breath out you body.’ Old man Solomon was the nigger driver. Slavery was the worst days was over seed in the world. They was things past tellin’, but I got the scars on my old body to show to this day. I seed worse than what happened to me. I seed them put the men and women in the stock with they hands screwed down through holes in the board and they feets tied together and they naked behinds to the world.

Solomon the overseer beat them with a big whip and massa look on. The niggers better not stop in the fields when they hear them yellin’. They cut the flesh most to the bones and some they was when they taken them out of stock and put them on the beds, they never got up again. When a nigger died they let his folks come out the fields to see him afore he died. They buried him the same day. take a big plank and bust it with a ax in the middle ’nough to bend it back, and put the dead nigger in betwixt it. They’d cart them down to the graveyard on the place and not bury them deep ’nough that buzzards wouldn’t come circlin’ round. Niggers mourns now, but in them days they wasn’t no time for mournin’. The conch shell blowed afore daylight and all hands better git out for roll call or Solomon bust the door down and git them out. It was work hard, git beatin’s and half fed. They brung the victuals and water to the fields on a slide pulled by a old mule. Plenty times they was only a half barrel water and it stale and hot, for all us niggers on the hottes’ days. Mostly we ate pickled pork and corn bread and pens and beans and ’taters. They never was as much as we needed. The times I hated most was pickin’ cotton when the frost was on the bolls. My hands git sore and crack open and bleed. We’d have a li’l fire in the fields and iffen the ones with tender hands couldn’t stand it no longer, we’d run and warm our hands a li’l bit. When I could steal a ’tater. I used to slip it in the ashes and when I’d run to the fire I’d take it out and eat it on the sly. In the cabins it was nice and warm. They was built of pine boardin’ and they was one long row of them up the hill back of the big house. Near one side of the cabins was a fireplace. They’d bring in two, three big logs and put on the fire and they’d last near a week. The beds was made out of puncheons fitted in holes bored in the wall, and planks laid ’cross them poles. We had tickin’ mattresses filled with corn shucks. Sometimes the men build chairs at night. We didn’t know much ’bout havin’ nothin’. though. Sometimes massa let niggers have a li’l patch. They’d raise ’taters or goobers. They liked to have them to help fill out on the victuals. ’Taters roasted in the ashes was the best tastin’ eatin’ I ever had. I could die better satisfied to have jus’ one more ’tater roasted in hot ashes. The niggers had to work the patches at night and dig the ’taters and goobers at night. Then if they wanted to sell any in town they’d have to git a pass to go. They had to go at night, ’cause they couldn’t ever spare a hand from the fields. Once in a while they’d give us a li’l piece of Sat’day evenin’ to wash out clothes in the branch. We hanged them on the ground in the woods to dry. They was a place to wash clothes from the well, but they was so many niggers all couldn’t git round to it on Sundays. When they’d git through with the clothes on Sat’day evenin’s the niggers which sold they goobers and ’taters brung fiddles and guitars and come out and play. The others clap they hands and stomp they feet and we young’uns cut a step round. I was plenty biggity and liked to cut a step.

We was scart of Solomon and his whip, though, and he didn’t like frolickin’. He didn’t like for us niggers to pray, either. We never heared of no church, but us have prayin’ in the cabins. We’d set on the floor and pray with our heads down low and sing low, but if Solomon heared he’d come and beat on the wall with the stock of his whip. He’d say, ‘I’ll come in there and tear the hide off you backs.” But some the old niggers tell us we got to pray to Gawd that he don’t think different of the blacks and the whites. I know that Solomon is burnin’ in hell today, and it pleasures me to know it. Once my maw and paw taken me and Katherine after night to slip to ’nother place to a prayin’ and singin’. A nigger men with white beard tol d us a day an comin’ when niggers only be slaves of Gawd. We prays for the end of Trib’lation and the end of beatin’s and shoes that fit our feet. We prayed that us niggers could have all we wanted to eat and special for fresh meet. Some the old ones say we have to bear all, ’cause that all we can do. Some say they was glad to the time they’s dead. ’cause they’d rather rot in the ground than have the beatin’s. What I hated most was when they’d beat me and I didn’t know what they beat me for, and I hated them strippin’ me naked as the day. I was born. When we’s comin’ back from the prayin’, I thunk I heared the nigger dogs and somebody on horseback. I say, ‘Maw, its them nigger hounds and they’ll eat us up.’ You could hear them old hounds and sluts a bayin’. Maw listens and say, ‘Sho ’nough, them dogs am runnin’ and Gawd help us!’ Then she and paw talk and they take us to a fence corner and stands us up ’gainst the rails and say don’t move and if anyone comes near, don’t breath he loud. They went to the woods, so the hounds chase them and not git us. Me and Katherine stand there, holdin’ hands, shakin’ so we can hardly stand. We hears the hounds come nearer, but we don’t move. They goes after paw and maw, but they circles round to the cabins and gits in. Maw say its the power of Gawd. In them days I weared shirts, like all the young’uns. They had collars and come below the knees and was split up the sides. That’s all we weared in hot weather. The men weared jeans and the women gingham. Shoes was the worstes’ trouble. We weared rough russets when it got cold, and it seem powerful strange they’d never git them to fit. Once when I was a young gal, they got me a new pair and all brass studs in the toes. They was too li’l for me, but I had to wear them. The brass trimmin’s cut into my ankles and them places got mis’ble bad. I rubs tallow in them sore places and wraps rags round them and my sores got worser and worser. The scars are there to this day. I wasn’t sick much, though, Some the niggers had chills and fever a lot, but they hadn’t discovered so many diseases then as now. Dr. Kilpatrick give sick niggers ipecac and asafoetida and oil and turpentine and black fever pills. They was a cabin called the spinnin’ house and two looms and two spinnin’ wheels goin’ all the time, and two nigger women sewing all the time. It took plenty sewin’ to make all the things for a place so big. Once massa goes to Baton Rouge and brung back a yaller gal dressed in fine style. She was a seemster nigger.

He builds her a house ’way from the quarters and she done fine sewin’ for the whites. Us niggers knowed the doctor took a black woman quick as he did a white and took any on his place he wanted, and he took them often. But mostly the chillun born on the place looked like niggers. Aunt Cheyney allus say four of hers was massas, but he didn’t give them no mind. But this yaller gal breads so fast and gits a mess of white young’uns. She larnt them fine manners and combs out they hair. Onct two of them goes down the hill to the doll house where the Kilpatrick chillun am playin’. They wants to go in the dollhouse and one the Kilpatrick boys say, ‘That’s for white chillun.’ They say, ‘We ain’t no niggers, ’cause we got the same daddy you has, and he comes to see us near every day and fetches us clothes and things from town.’ They is fussin’ and Missy Kilpatrick is listenin’ out her chamber window. She heard them white niggers say, ‘He is our daddy and we call him daddy when he comes to our house to see our mama.’ When massa come home that evenin’ his wife hardly say nothin’ to him, and he ask her what the matter and she tells him, ‘Since you asks me, I’m studyin’ in my mind ’bout them white young’uns of that yaller nigger wench from Baton Rouge. He say, ‘Now, honey, I fetches that gal jus’ for you, ’cause she a fine seamster.’ She say. ‘It look kind of funny they got the same kind of hair and eyes as my chillun and they got a nose looks like yours.’ He say, ‘Honey, you jus’ payin’ ’tention to talk of li’l chillun that ain’t got no mind to what they say.’ She say, ‘Over in Mississippi I got a home and plenty with my daddy and I got that in my mind.’ Well, she didn’t never leave and massa bought her a fine, new span of surrey hosses. But she don’t never have no more chillun and she ain’t so cordial with the massa. Margaret , that yallow gal, has more white young’uns, but they don’t never go down the hill no more to the big house. Aunt Cheyney was jus’ out of bed with a sucklin’ baby one time, and she run away. Some say that was ’nother baby of massa’s breedin’. She don’t come to the house to nurse her baby, so they misses her and old Solomon gits the nigger hounds and takes her trail. They gits near her and she grabs a limb and tries to hist herself in a tree, but them dogs grab her and pull her down. The men hollers them onto her, and the dogs tore her naker and et the breasts plumb off her body. She got well and lived to be a old woman, but ’nother woman has to suck her baby and she ain’t got no sign of breasts no more. They give all the niggers fresh meat on Christmas and a plug tobacco all round. The highes’ cotton picker gits a suit of clothes and all the women what had twins that year gits a outfittin’ of clothes for the twins and a double, warm blanket. Seems like after I got bigger. I member’ more’n more niggers run away. They’s most allus cotched. Massa used to hire out his niggers for wage hands.

One time he hired me and a nigger boy, Turner , to work for some ornery white trash name of Kidd. One day Turner goes off and don’t come back, Old man Kidd say I knowed ’bout it, and he tied my wrists together and stripped me. He hanged me by the wrists from a limb on a tree and straddled my legs round the trunk and tied my feet together. Then he beat me. He heat me worser than I ever been beat before and I faints dead away. When I come to I’m in bed. I didn’t care so much iffen I died. I didn’t know ’bout the passin’ of time, but Miss Sara come to me. Some white folks done it word to her. Mr. Kidd tries to talk hisself out of it, but Miss Sara fetches me home when I’m well ’nough to move. She took me in a cart and my maw takes care of me. Massa looks me over good and says I’ll git well, but I’m rain for breedin’ chillun. After while I taken a notion to marry and massa and missy marries us same as all the niggers. They stands inside the house with a broom held crosswise if the door and we stands outside. Missy puts a li’l wreath on my head they kept mere and we steps over the broom into the house. Now, that’s all they was to be marryin’. After freedom I gits married and has it put in the book by a preacher. One day we was workin’ in the fields and hears the conch shell blow, so he all goes to the back gate of the big house. Massa am there. He say, ‘Call the toll for every nigger big ’nough to walk. and I wants them to go to the river and wait there. They’s gwine be a show and I wants you to see it.’ They was a big boat down there. done built up on the sides with boards and holes in the boards and a bit gun barrel stickin’ through every hole. We ain’t never seed nothin’ like that. Massa goes up the plank onto the boat and comes out on the boat porch. He say, ‘This am a Yankee boat.’ He goes inside and the water wheels starts movin’ and that boat goes movin’ up the river and they says it goes to Natches. The boat wasn’t more’n out of sight when a big drove of sojers comes into town. They say they’s Fed’rals. More’n half the niggers goes off with them sojers, but I goes on back home ’cause of my old mammy. Next day them Yankees is swarmin’ the place. Some the niggers wants to show then somethin’. I follows to the woods. The niggers shows them sojers a big pit in the ground, bigger’n a big house. It is got wooden doors that lifts up, but the top am sodded and grass growin’ on it, so you couldn’t tell it. In that pit is stock, hosses and cows and mules and money and chinaware and silver and a mess of stuff them sojers takes.

We jus’ sot on the place doin’ nothin’ till the white folks comes home. Miss Sara come out to the cabin and say she wants to read a letter to my mammy. It come from Louis Carter, which is brother to my mammy, and he done follow the Fed’rals to Galveston. A white man done write the letter for him. It am tored in half and massa done that. The letter say Louis am workin’ in Galveston and wants mammy to come with us, and he’ll pay our way. Miss Sara say massa swear, ‘Damn Louis Carter. I ain’t gwine tell Sallie nothin’.’ and he starts to tear the letter up. But she won’t let him, and she reads it to mammy. After a time massa takes all his niggers what wants to Texas with him and mammy gits to Galveston and dies there. I goes with massa to the Tennessee Colony and then to Navasota. Miss Sara marries Mr. T. Coleman and goes to El Paso. She wrote and told me to come to her and I allus meant to go. My husband and me farmed round for times, and then I done housework and cookin’ for many years. I come to Dallas and cooked seven year for one white family. My husband died years ago. I guess Miss Sara been dead these long years. I allus kep’ my years by Miss Sara’s years, ’count we is born so close. I been blind and mos’ helpless for five year. I’m gittin’ mighty enfeeblin’ and I ain’t walked outside the door for a long time back. I sets and ’members the times in the world. I ’members now clear as yesterday things I forgot for a long time. I ’members ’bout the days of slavery and I don’t ’lieve they ever gwine have slaves no more on this earth. I think Gawd done took that harden offen his black chillun and I’m aimin’ to praise him for it to his face in the days of Glory what ain’t so far off.



Text prepared by:



Source

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves Arkansas Narratives, Part 1. Washington D.C.: Works Progress Administration, 1938. Project Gutenberg. 24 Feb. 2004. Web. 7 Oct. 2014. <http:// www.gutenberg. org/ files/ 11255/ 11255-h/ 11255-h.htm>.

“Mary Reynolds.” Slave Narratives: A Folk History Of Slavery In The United States From Interviews With Former Slaves. Washington: 1941. pp. 236-247. <https:// www.gutenberg.org/ files/ 35380/ 35380-h/ 35380-h.html>.

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