Insights from Slave Narratives and Experiences

I never know my age till after the war and the master got out a big book and it shows I'm 25 year old Shows I was 12 when I was bought, and $800 was paid for me. My mammy was owned by John Williams in Petersburg in Virginia, and I come born to her on that plantation. Then... Long came a Friday and that unlucky star day and I playing around the house and Master Williams come up and say, Dallas, will you lie here and walk down the street with me? My mammy say, alright Jim, you be a good boy. That the last time I ever heard her speak or ever see her. The Library of Congress is home to most of the slave narratives. multi-volume collection of interviews with former slaves. What's that? You want me to tell you about slavery days? Lots of old slaves closed the door before they tell the truth about their days of slavery. I could tell you about it all day but even then you couldn't guess the awfulness of it. My life was filled with heartache. Thanks and despair. We was married on the front porch of the big house. Then they put them on the block to sell them. The ones between 18 and 30 always bring the most money. The boys came in and threw her down on the floor and tied her down so she couldn't struggle. Lord, Lord, child, what make you folks this wait so long before you get this stuff by way back yonder? When the Civil War ended in 1865, more than 4 million slaves were set free. By the late 1930s, 100,000 ex-slaves were still alive. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Federal Writers Project hired journalists and writers to travel the country and record the memories of this last generation of African Americans born into bondage. Most former slaves were still living in the rigidly segregated South, a society deeply rooted in its Confederate past and that still treated black people as inferior. Never turn back Some ex-slaves were reluctant to speak openly with their mainly white interviewers for fear of retaliation for telling the truth. But many others, approaching the end of their lives, were willing to tell their stories. Never, never turn back Although these ex-slaves did not all speak in one voice, they were the last African Americans able to give a first-hand account of what it was like to be a slave in the years before the Civil War. Over 2,000 interviews were transcribed as spoken, in the vernacular of the time, to form this unique historical record. Sarah Gudger. Gudger? Yes. Sarah apparently went blind a year before this interview was taken. I mean, there's nothing written to describe her, but that pretty much says it all. You know. this her mouth yeah the set of mouth when they did these are these like did they ask them some questions or did they just say just talk to the question but there was a set of subjects on a list that they would ask the ex-slaves about Okay. Action. Sarah Gudger, Slave Narratives, Volume 11, North Carolina. I sure has had a hard life. Just work, work and work. I never know nothing but work. I never knows what it was to rest. I just work all the time, from morning to late at night. Working field, chop wood, hoe comb. Sometimes, I... Feels like my back's surely breaking. Honey, you can't know what a time I had. All cold and hungry. Oh no, I ain't telling no lies. It's the gospel truth. Bells and horns, bell for this, horn for that. All we know is go and come by the bells and the horns. Old Ramhorn blowed a sentence all to the field. We all line up, about 75 field niggas, and go by the tool shed and get our hoes, or maybe go hitch up the mule to the plows. Come get another nigga tomorrow, get another nigga tomorrow. On most plantations, slaves worked from sunrise till sundown six days a week. Some worked into the night and on Sunday too. The overwhelming majority toiled in the fields, growing crops like tobacco, rice, sugar cane, and cotton. For every field hand, ten acres of cotton were produced. Cotton became the United States'greatest export, making plantation owners, the South, and America rich. Everyone but the slaves profited from it. For all of the ex-slaves, a lifetime of labor began at a very young age. Many started work in the master's house, often as playmates for white children. Let it fly, We be playing in the barn and Jimmy always say to me, come on nigga, let's ride around the farm. I say, I ain't no nigga. He say, yes you is. My pa paid $200 for you. He bought you for the play with me. I have about 85 years of good memory to call on. I'm 90, and so I'm not counting my first five years of life. My earliest recollection is the day my old boss presented me to his son, Joe, as his property. I was about five years old, and my new master was only two. No sir, I never went into books. I used to handle a big dictionary three times a day, but it was only to put it on a chair so my young master could sit up higher at the table. I never went to school. I learned to talk pretty good by associating with my masters in their big house. Well, my master and all the other big white folks, they raised peafowls. We'd catch them wild things at night when they roost in the pine trees. Then my ma, she would pull the long feathers out of the tails and make fly brushes. In them days, the dining room was big and had the windows open all the summer long. Quick as a mess of billows come on the table, my ma fetched me in and I'd get put up in a swang over the table to fan the flies and gnats off the mistress'food. Well, they had to show me just how to hold the brush, cause them feathers was so long, if you didn't mind your business, the ends of them feathers would splash in the gravy and the mistress'table would be all. Don't splat it up! Wasn't long before I got used to it, and I took to going to sleep up there. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Let me see a picture. One more time. Let me see a picture. Thank you. That's so wonderful. I was gonna say, Jenny's house might be a little better than mine was. Jenny, that's a very nice porch. I think our porch was bigger. So we had a room, we had two rooms. Jenny got an outhouse, we had an outhouse in the back. Okay, Jenny. Action. Jenny Proctor, Slave Narratives, Volume 16, Texas. I was here telling them good slave days, but I ain't never seen no good times then. My mother's name was Liza. I don't recollect nothing about my daddy. If I had any brothers and sisters, I didn't know it. I tended to the chilling when I was a little gal and tried to clean the house just like Ole Miss tells me to. I recollect once when I was... I was trying to clean the house. I finds me a biscuit. And I so hungry, I eat it. Because we never see such thing as a biscuit. But when I ate that biscuit, she comes in and say, where that biscuit? I say, miss, I ate it because I so hungry. Then she grabbed that broom and start to beating me over the head with it and calling me. Low down, nigga. I guess I just clean lost my head, because I know better than the fighter if I know anything at all. But I start to fight her, and the driver, he comes in, grabs me and starts beating me with that cat-of-nine-tails, beats me till I fall to the floor nearly dead, cut my back all to pieces. Then they rub salt in the cuts for more punishment. Lord, Lord, honey, them was some awful days. In most states, it was against the law for slaves to be educated. Slave children might play with their young masters and mistresses at home, but they could not go to school with them. None of us was allowed to see a book or try to learn. They say we get smarter than they was if we learn anything. He slips around, gets a hold of that Webster's old blueback speller. He hides it till way in the night, and then he lights a little pine torch and studies that spelling book. We learn it too. Oh Lord, you better not be caught with a book in your hand. If you did, you were sold. Oh, no, no, no, they didn't lie that. If you just looked like you wanted to learn to read or write, oh, you got a lickin'. By the age of 12, most children were working in the fields. Only a very small number stayed on to become house servants. Slaves who worked in the house were almost always better fed and clothed than the field hands. But they lived under the constant scrutiny of their masters. Mistress Miller, she used to make my Aunt Carolyn knit all day. And when she gets so tired after dark that she gets sleepy, she make her stand up and knit. Mistress would work her so hard that she'd go to sleep standing up. And every time her head gnawed and her knees sagged, that lady come down across her head with a switch. That's the way white folks was. Some had hearts. Some had gizzards instead of hearts. Mrs. Savituliti, a giant in Lola Dea. More than one quarter of the slave population lived on large plantations with 50 or more slaves, some with several hundred. George, Eggleston, Robert, Waggoner. Very few were highly skilled ruckers. Magruder, Blacksmith, Sam. There was just two classes to the white folks. Bucra, the slave owners, and poor white folk that didn't own no slaves. There was more classes amongst the slaves. The first class was the house servants. This was the butler, the maids, and the cooks. Then come the cratlers of the wheat, the threshers, and the millers of the corn and the wheat. The lowest class was the common field hand niggas. Back in Alabama, Mr. Adelaide Carter took me when I was past my creeping days, living in the big house with the white folks. And they was always good to me because I was one of their blood. They never hit me a lick or slap me once. And they told me that they would never sell me from them. My brother and sister, they lived with the niggas though, because they was mostly nigger. My master used to give me a little money to buy what I wanted. I always bought fine clothes. Oh, when they bought the red shoes from the town, I cried and cried. I say, I don't want to wear no rawhide shoes. So they took them back. I guess they had a weakness for my crying. I drove a carriage, uh-huh, with the white folk. And I was about the most dude-ish nigga in these parts. Once, two youngins goes down the hill to the dollhouse where Master Kilpatrick's children are playing. They want to go in the dollhouse and one of the Kilpatrick boys says, that's for white children. They say, we ain't no niggas, because 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 fussing, and Missy Kilpatrick is listening out of her chamber window. She heard them white niggas say, he is our daddy, and we call him daddy when he comes to our house to see our mama. Many owners and overseers believe that sexual access to slave women was one of their prerogatives. The rape of black women also served to humiliate their husbands and undermine the integrity of slave families. Lord, child, that was common. Masters and overseers used to make slaves that was with their husbands get up and do as they say. Send husbands out on the farm milking cows or cutting wood. Then he gets in bed with the slave himself. Some women would fight and tussle. Others would be humble, feared of that beating. If they told their husband, he was powerless. I was one slave that the poor white man had his match. These here old white men said, what I can't do by fair means, I'll do by foul. One tried to throw me, but he couldn't. We tussled and knocked over chairs, and when I got a grip, I snatched his face all to pieces, and there was no more bothering Fanny from him. But, oh, honey, some slaves would be so beat up when they resisted. And sometimes, if you rebel, the overseas kill you. Us colored women had to go through plenty, I tell you. My mother's mistress had three boys. 121, 119, and 117. Old mistress had gone away one day, and mother always worked in the house. While she was alone, the boys came in and threw her down on the floor and tied her down so she couldn't struggle. And one after the other used her as long as they wanted for the whole afternoon. Mother was sick when her mistress came home. And when old mistress wanted to know what was the matter with her, she told her what the boys had done. And she whipped him. And that's the way I came to be here. Where is Adam? Oh, Eve? Adam in the dark, taking out Eve. God call Adam. Even Adam, even Adam, I don't call him Adam. Adam won't answer. Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam won't answer. Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam won't answer. Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam won't answer. Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam won't answer. I used to have to pick cotton. Sometimes I picked 300 pounds and towed it a mile to the cotton house. Some pick 300 to 800 pounds of cotton and have to tote the bag the whole mile to the gin. If they didn't do their work, they get whipped till they have blisters on them. I never get whipped, because I always get my 300 pounds. Cut. Excuse me, I'm sorry about laughing at that. I'm sorry. That always gets me at the pride of... She's bright. Yes! Whew, they just... Hmm. Sometimes, slaves who had picked their quota added some of their pickings to those who had been slower or ill. But it wasn't always enough. White folks sure would whip you in them days. They lay you flat on the ground on your face, then they stake you. And so you couldn't get through the ground, much less than get up and fly. Take every rag off of you and leave you. plumb naked and then they whip you till the blood come. They whip you straight like this, see? Straight up and down. And then they checker you. In other words, they beat you crosswise and so your flesh would cut up in squares. You understand? On many plantations, whippings were public spectacles. Owners use the lash to terrorize as well as to punish their slaves. My brother January was a big fine nigger. Finest I ever seen. He was just four years older than me. When Masa began beating him, January never said a word. The master got mad and madder cause he couldn't make January holler. What's the matter with you, nigga? He say. Don't it hurt? January, he never said nothing. And the master keep up beating till little streams of blood started flowing down January's chest. But he never holler. His lips was a-quivering and his body was a-shaking, but his mouth, it never opened. And all the while, I sat on my mammy and pappy's steps a-crying. The niggas was all gathered about, and some of them couldn't stand it, and they go inside their cabins. After a while, January, he couldn't stand it no longer himself. And he's saying a hoarse, loud whisper. Massa. Massa. Have mercy on this poor nigga. Then they take the salt and red pepper and put it in the wounds. The skin jerk and quiver and the mane slobber and puke. We little niggas stand around and see it done. After he lie in the sun a while, they whip him again. But when they finish with him, he was dead. When a slave die, master make the coffin and send a couple of niggas to bury the body and say, don't be long and no singing or praying allowed. Put them in the ground, cover them up, hurry on back to that field. They put the coffin on the ox court and carried it to the graveyard. They just had a burial that day. They waited to have the funeral sermon on Sunday or some other time when the crops had been laid. God and the other slaves could be on hand. For enslaved people, funerals were extremely important. The ceremonies reinforced their sense of community and kept alive their African past. I'm going to pray till I die. I'm going to seek and never rise. I'm going to pray, I'm going to pray. I'm going to seek and never rise. I'm going to pray till I die. If my faith arise again. I'm gonna pray, I'm gonna pray. If my faith arise again. I'm gonna pray till I die. Oh, Lord have mercy. I'm gonna pray, I'm gonna pray. Lord have mercy. The S and the nigga used to sing to nearly everything he did. It was just the way he expressed his feelings that made him relieved. I'm gonna pray till I die. It is a nigger's most joy and his most comfort when he needs all these things. They sing about the joys in the next world and the trouble in this. Roll me anywhere, Lord In the field, niggas like to sing and make up songs. A bunch of going one side, lift up their head and roll out. On the other side, pick it up and go the same way and just make up some words. There was lots of just make-up songs. Jai, you oughta hear them niggas singin'when they go to work in the mornin'. Just a-singin'to beat the band. A cold and frosty mornin'. The niggas mighty good. Take your axe upon your shoulder, niggas. talk to the wood. Through the woods. This time tomorrow night. Sometimes they sing this sorrowful cause some niggas have been beat or whipped or sold away. Down to Tennessee. Been down over, been beneath, Stuck into the man from Galilee. During the hard times of the depression, when the slave narratives were collected, most ex-slaves were still living in extreme poverty. Great God, the mighty, let me tell you what he said. Yes, I was born a slave. And so was Rosa. We got out of the chat of slavery and I was better off for getting out. But Rosa don't think so. She says all we got freed for is to starve to death. She says her white folks were good to her. But don't you expect me to love my white folks. I love them like a dog loves a hickory switch. I can say these things now. I'd say them anywhere. In the courthouse, before the judge, before God. Because they done done all to me they can do. I'm done past everything. but worrying about Rosa. Of course, she don't get enough to eat, and of course, she feels bad all the time. But there ain't no complaining in her. Mama, how you feeling, the son? Best to be expected this time of year. I was born in Georgia on a farm. My mother's name was Lucinda. I heard other Negroes say she was a good woman, but she died when I was a little boy, not more than three or four. She left my little brother a crawling baby. I'm 11 months old. I can remember crying for my mama, being lonesome for her. My little brother was pitiful. Plum, beautiful. We had to sleep on the floor in the cabin, huddled together in the cold weather, so we wouldn't freeze to death. Our life was a misery. I hate the white man every time I think, being no more than animals. My father was a blacksmith. Rosa never did know much about her father. Eh, Mama? Mm, that's right. I never did know nothing about my pa, but I looked on my mama like a savior. Her name was Hannah Clemon, and Dr. Andrews, my master, had always owned her. Now, Dr. Andrews was a good man and a good liver. Dr. Andrews had about 12 slaves. The neighbors used to say, there goes old Andrews'free niggers. That's because he never hardly whipped them and gave them rest and playtime. And he doctored us when we were sick and took good care of us. We had good-look cabins, and we had cotton mattresses and blankets. We had enough to eat, too. Slave quarters were usually a group of log cabins with dirt floors. Although living conditions varied from place to place, slaves were provided with only the bare minimum. Beds might be planks with rope slats and grass mattresses. Food supplies were usually given out weekly. Cornmeal, molasses, and sometimes a little pork. Sometimes, master let niggas have a little patch. They'd raise taters or goobers. Peanuts. They liked to have them to help fill out on the vitriols. The niggas 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 get a pass to go. They had to go at night because they couldn't have a spare hand from the fields. We got one pair of shoes a year. When they wore out we went barefooted. Sometimes we tied them up with strings and they were so raggedy that the tracks looked like bird tracks when we walked in the road. My brother wore his shoes out and had none all through the winter. His feet Cracked open and bled so bad you could track him by the blood. Get up children, roll down the wall. Don't wanna try my little wonderful, now get up children. I remember quite well how those polar children used to have to eat. They were fed in boxes and troughs under the house. They were fed cornmeal mushroom beans. When this was poured into their box, they would gather around it. The same as we see pigs, horses, and cattle gather around troughs today. Us never got enough to eat, so us keep stealing stuff. Us had to. Course we knowed it was wrong to steal, but the niggas had to steal. To get something to eat. I know I did. I got so hungry I steal chickens off they roost. Yes, I did. Chickens used to roost on the fence, then. Right out in the night. We'd cook the chicken at night, eat him, and burn the feathers. They talks a heap about the niggas stealing. Well, you know what was the first stealing done? It was in Africa. When the white folks stole the niggas just like you go get a drove of horses and sell them. But since the Lord saved me from a life of sin, I don't think about them things. The first enslaved people in America were reluctant to accept the religion of their masters, but during the 19th century thousands of slaves began turning to Christianity. They infuse this adopted religion with a new spirituality and with African traditions. Many owners hope that Christianity might make their slaves more docile and encourage them to convert. On Sundays, niggas had to sit and listen to the white man's sermon. Obey your master, be good servant. Can't tell you how many times I done heard that text preached on. They tell a slave that if he be good, work hard for his master, that he would go to heaven and that he gonna live a life of ease. They never tell him he gonna be free in heaven. Steal away. Steal away. When the niggas go around singing, steal away to Jesus, that mean they gonna be a religious mutant that night. The master didn't like them religious meetings, and so us naturally slips off at night, down in the bottoms or somewheres. Swing low, sweet chariot. Sometimes us sing and pray all night. Sweet chariot, come for to carry me home. Swing low, sweet chariot. Coming for to carry me home We pray for the end of tribulation And the end of beating And for shoes that fit our feet We pray that us niggas could have all we want to eat And special for fresh meat Some of the old ones say we have to bear all Because that's all we can do Some say they was glad to the time they did, cause they rather rot in the ground than have the beatings. Okay, now, all my life I've heard of the patty rollers. Now you have the paddle rollers. I know patty rollers is the common term. Yeah, I think you should say patty rollers. My grandparents were from Georgia and they both said patty rollers. In fact, when they were really angry with white people, they referred to them as patties. Action. Marshall Butler, Slave Narratives, Volume 4, Georgia. I's Marshall Butler, 88 years old and was born on December 25th. I knows it was Christmas Day for I was a gift to my folks. Mammy was a Frank collar nigga and her mane was of the tribe of Ben Butler some miles down the road It was one of them trial marriages these tried so hard to see each other but old Ben Butler said two passes a week were enough to see my mammy on the collar plantation. Now, if a nigga went out without a pass, the Patty Rolls would get him. The white folks were the Patty Rolls. They used... Straps with the belt buckle fastened on. Oh, yes, sir. I got paddle. Have them this way. I left home one Thursday to see a gal on the Palmer Plantation, oh, five miles away. Some gal, no, no, no, I ain't getting no pass. The boss was so busy. Everything was fine till my return trip. I was two miles out, three miles to go. There come the patty rollers. I was so scared, I couldn't move. Oh, they gave me 30 licks, and I ran to the west of the way home. There's belt buckles all over me. Ate my vittles off the porch railings. Some gal Was worth that paddling to see that gal do it all over again to see Mary the next night Oh, Jane, love me like you used to. Jane, chew me like you used to. Every time I figure, my heart get bigger. Sorry, sorry, can't be your piper no more. Mm, mm, that's some gal. Slaves had an opportunity to go courting on Saturday nights on their own or on neighboring plantations. Girls would put on a spare dress if they had one, and men would put on a dress. on a clean shirt. Girls always try to fix up for partying even if they ain't got nothing but a piece of ribbon to tie in their hair. Was none of this sinful dancing where you partner off with man and woman squeezed up close to one another? Mm-mm, that's respectable, the slaves did. Shifting round from one partner to another and holding one another out at arm's length. Saturday night, Sunday too, young girl's on my mind. I remember that when us caught it, us went to walk and hunted chestnuts. We strangled them and put them around our necks and smiled at our fellas. Oh Peggy, do you love me now? My pa'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 saw my ma in the Kilpatrick place and her man was dead. He told Dr. Kilpatrick, my master, he'd buy my ma and her three children with all the money he had, if he'd sell her. But Dr. Kilpatrick was never one to sell any but the old niggas who was past working in the fields and past their breeding times. So my pa marries my ma and works the fields, same as any other nigga. Sometimes the wedding ceremonies were held in the slave cabins. Other times, they were orchestrated by the owners. I married Exeter Durham. He belonged to Master Snipes Durham, who had the plantation in Orange County. Oh, we had a big wedding. We was married on the front porch of the big house. I had a white dress, white shoes, gloves that came up to my elbow, and Miss Betsy Dunn made me a wedding dress. made me a wedding veil out of a white net window curtain. After Uncle Edmund said the last words over me and Exeter, Master George say, come on, Exeter. You and Tempe got to jump over the broomstick. You got to do that to see which one of you gonna be the boss of the household. I jumped first and you ought to see me. I sailed right over that broomstick same as a cricket. But when X to jump his feet were so big and clumsy that they got all tangled up in that broom and he fell headlong. After the wedding we went down to the cabin Miss Betsy done all dressed up. But Exeter couldn't stay no longer than that night, because he belonged to Mars Snipes Durham, and he had to go back home. He left the next day for his plantation. He'd come back every Saturday night and stay till Sunday night. And we had 11 children. Some owners respected slave marriages. The marriages had no legal standing and could be broken apart at the owner's whim. Owners had their own reasons for pairing up certain slaves. After I'd been at his place about a year, the master come to me and say, you're gonna live with Rufus in that cabin over yonder. Go fix it for living. I was about 16 years old and had no learning, and I was just an ignorant child. I say to myself, I's not gonna live with that, Rufus. Well, the next day, the master calls me and tells me, Woman, I's paying big money for you, and I's done that because I wants you to... You raise me children. You a big portly gal. Rufus is a big portly man. I wants y'all to bring forth portly children. I's put you to live with Rufus for that purpose. Now if you don't want whipping at the stake, you do what I wants. Oh, I thinks about Master bide me from the block, saving me from being separated from my folks. And then I thinks about being whipped at the stake. What am I to do? So I decides to do as the Master wish. So I yields. Many people interviewed for the slave narratives lived far from the plantations where they were born. As children, a large number had been relocated to other parts of the country. I was born in Kentucky somewhere near Louisville. I was brought to Missouri when I was six months old with my mama who was a slave. owned by a man named Shaw, who had allotted her to a man named Jimmy Graves. When a slave was allotted, somebody made a down payment and gave a mortgage for the rest. A chattel mortgage. A down payment. Hmm. Times don't change, just the merchandise. As cotton became more and more profitable, plantations spread to the deep south, as well as states and territories to the west. Between 1800 and 1860, one million slaves were forcibly transported to new locations. Sale of valuable slaves. Sarah, age 45 years. Dennis, her son. About a third of slave families were split apart. And a fifth of the children were sold away from one or both parents. When I was about six or seven years old, I reckon it was Mr. Garrett bought ten of us children in North Carolina and sent two white men to fetch us back in wagons. And he fetched old Julie Powell to look after us. They never bought my mammy, so I had to leave her behind. Mammy said to old Julie, take care of my baby child. That was me. And if I never sees her no more, raise her for God. Then she fell off the wagon where it was all of us was sitting and just rolled over on the ground just a crying But us was eating candy that they done give us to keep us quiet I didn't have sense enough for the know what ill mammy but I Knows now And I never seen her no more in this life Her name was Rachel Powell. Negroes Wanted. The undersigned wish to purchase a large number of negroes for which they will pay the highest prices in cash. Lord Child, I remember when I was a little boy about ten years. The speculators come through Newton with droves of slaves. The poor critters nearly froze to death. Just run along on the ground, all spewed up with ice. The speculators always rode on horses and drove the poor knick. When they get cold, they make them run till they are warm again. Lord, miss, them slaves look just like droves of tickets running along in front of them horses. There was a Trader Yard in Virginia, and one in New Orleans. Sometimes a thousand slaves were waiting to be sold. Great sale of slaves. There will be offered for sale at public auction three bucks, strong table body, one wench, salad, age 42, one buck, age 52, good kennel man. When the traders knew men were coming to buy, they made the slaves all clean up and greased their mouths with meat skins to look like they were feeding them plenty of meat. Talk about something awful. You should have been there. The slave owners was shouting and selling children to one man and the mama and pappy to another. It was just a little thing. Tooked away from my mammy and papi just when I needed most. I remember that I was took up on a stand, and a lot of people come around and felt my arms and legs and chest, and asked me a lot of questions. I remember when they put them on the block to sell them. The ones between 18 and 30 always bring the most money. The auctioneer, he stand off at a distance and cry them off as they stand on the block. I can hear his voice as long as I live. If they put up a young nigga woman, the auctioneer would cry out, and here's a young nigga wench. How much am I offering for her? How much am I offering for her? The seller would have her turn around and plump her. Plump. to show how fat she was and her general condition. They would also take her by her breasts and pull them to show how good she was built for raising children. Give me 16. Give me 16. Sold! $1,500. Louisa, age 24. If the one they was going to sell was a young Negro man... This is what he say. Now gentlemen and fellow citizens, here's a big black buck negro. This is a big black buck negro. He's stout as a mule and good for any kind of work. And he'll never give you any trouble. How much more for him? And then the sale would commence, and the nigger would be sold to the highest bidder. 28, 28, no, 27, 27, sold for $2,700. Anderson, the number one bricklayer in Mason, being in full for the purchase of said slave for life. Run, Mary, run! Whoa! Run, Martha! Tell Mary right I say, you got a right to be a fly. Little Mary, you got a right. You got a right to be a fly. You got a right, you got a right. You got a right. If I had my life to live over, I would die fighting rather than be a slave again. I want no man's yoke on my shoulders no more. Now my father, he was a fighter. He was as mean as a bear. He was so bad to fight. and so troublesome, he was sold four times to Manoa, and maybe a heap more times. I fooled old master seven years, fooled the old seer three. Hand me down my banjo, I'll tickle your belly. Slaves who owe... who openly defied their masters received the harshest punishment. But one act of resistance ran the greatest risk of all. I'm gonna run to the deep of the ratchets, I'm gonna run. Escape from slavery was extremely difficult, and the penalty for being caught could be mutilation or death. In spite of such risks, about 50,000 slaves ran away each year. But patty rollers were well rewarded. for capturing escaped slaves, and very few runaways succeeded. There was a nigger working in the field, and he kept joiking the mules, and that's all. Got mad, and he give me a gun and said, Cato, go out there and kill that man. I say, Mr. Orr, please don't tell me that. I ain't never killed nobody, and I don't want to. He said, Cato, you do what I tell you to do. I said, Cato, you do what I tell you to do. And he meant it. So I go out to the nigga and I say, You gotta leave this place this minute and I is too. Because I supposed to kill you and I ain't. And Master Arl, he gonna kill me. So it dropped his rain and we run and we crawl through the fence and we ran away. I hated to go, but today I is an old man and my hands ain't stained with no blood. $600 reward for three Negro slaves named Henry Morsell ran away from the subscriber, a Negro man about 22 years old, of dark color, several of his jaw teed out, and a... On his body are several marks of the whip. I mix up my mind. I was going to run off the first chance I gets. When the meat supply run low, Master send me to go kill a deer or a wild hog and bring home some meat. He says not to go off the plantation too far. It's the chance I've been wanting. I crosses the river and goes north. I's going to free country where there ain't no slaves. I travels all that day and night up the river and follows the North Star. Several times I think the bloodhounds am training me and I gets in a big hurry. I so tired I can hardly move. I'm hoping all the time I meet up with that Harriet Tubman woman, is she the colored woman that would take slaves to Canada? The Underground Railroad was an informal network of safe houses and assistance for runaway slaves. I didn't have no idea of ever getting mixed up in any sort of business like that until one special night. I'd gone over to another plantation, courting, ha, ha, ha, yeah. And an old woman told me she had a real pretty girl there who wanted to go across the river to the free state of Ohio and would I take her. Now, I was scared, and I backed out in a hurry. But then I saw this girl, and she was such a pretty little thing. Wasn't long before I was listening to the old woman tell me when to take her and where to leave her on the other side. Now, I don't know how I ever rode that boat across that river. That current was so strong, and I was trembling, and I couldn't see a thing there in the dark. But I felt that girl's eyes. It was a long time rowing there in the cold and worrying. But it was a short time because as soon as I did get on the other side, that big-eyed girl would be gone. There in Ripley, Ohio, it was a regular station for escaping slaves. It always meant freedom for a slave if he could get to that big lighthouse. Pretty soon I saw a tall light. When I got up to it, two men reached down and grabbed it. I started trembling all over again and praying and then one of the men took my arm. I just felt down inside of me that the Lord had got ready for me. You hungry, boy? Is what he asked me. And if he hadn't been holding on to me, I think I would have fell backward into the river. That was my first trip. Took me a long time to get over my scared feeling. But I finally did, and I soon found myself going back across the river with two and three people, and sometimes a whole boatload. It got so high, I used to make three and four trips a month. Now, I never saw my passengers. It would have to be the black nights of the moon when I would carry them. Didn't many of them stay around that part of Ohio because there was too much danger that you would be walking along free one night, feel a hand over your mouth, be back across the river and in slavery again in a moment. And nobody in the world ever got a chance to know as much misery as a slave that had escaped and been caught. Your mama gone away and my daddy gone to stay didn't leave nobody but the baby Aunt Jeannie was just out of bed with her suckling baby one time and she ran away. She don't come to the house to nurse her baby so they misses her and old Solomon gets the nigga hounds to take a trip. They gets near and she grabs a limb and tries to hoist herself in a tree. But them dogs grab her and pull her down. The men hollers them on to her and the dogs tore her naked and ate the breast plumb of her body. She got well, lived to be an old woman. But another woman had to suck her baby. And she ain't got no sign of breasts no more. Finally, I decided to take my freedom, too. I had a wife by this time. One night, we quietly slipped across. I could see the light, but the harder I rode, the farther away it got. But finally I pulled up by the lighthouse and went on to my freedom just a few months before all the slaves got there. I didn't stay in Ripley though. I wasn't taking no chances. I went on to Detroit and I still live there with most of 10 children and 31 grandchildren. The bigger ones, they don't care much about hearing it now. The little ones never get tired of hearing how their grandpa brought emancipation to loads of slaves he could touch and feel, but never see. So he would do three or four trips a month, but that would be when the moon, before the moon came back out. So when the moon went in, that's when they'd have to move. Never saw their faces, don't know who they are. I know their voices, you know. And sometimes not even that, just touch, because they had to be quiet too. What a disconnect. What an amazing disconnect that we, people that we're here and our folks are saved by people that we'll never know who they're, who it was. Can't actually say thank you. Exactly, exactly. The outbreak of the Civil War opened the way for thousands more slaves to escape bondage. But in large areas of the South, the freedom promised by the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 still depended on a Union victory. Ooh, old Mazza, he get boiling mad when the Yankees scattered the Confederates all down through our country. Then he tell us the law. You all ain't going to get free by them. When they get here, they're going to find you. already free. Because I'm going to line you up on the bank of the creek and free you with my shotgun. Anybody miss just one lick with the hoe or one step in the line and you're going to be free and talking to the devil long before he ever see a pair of blue britches. One morning soon, one morning soon, my lord, one morning soon. Despite threats of slave owners, many slaves fled their masters to fight for the North. 200,000 slaves and former slaves enlisted as Union soldiers and sailors. Benton Barracks Hospital, St. Louis, Missouri. September 3rd, 1864. My children. I take my pen in hand to write you a few lines to let you know that I have not forgot you and that I want to see you as bad as ever. On the 28th of the month, 800 white and 800 black soldiers expects to start up the river. When they come, I expect to be with them. and expect to get you both in return. Be assured that I will have you if it costs me my life. Oh, my dear children. How I do want to see you. Spotswood Rice. Blue Juddment I want to blow your comment Juddment by There's a lot you can't Juddment I want to wake my people Juddment by Where you're gonna be Hello! I'm in the persimmons room, eating persimmons, and my sister Mary just come running. She said, us niggas am free. I looked over to the house and seen the niggas piling their little. bunch of clothes and things outside the cabins. Then Mammy come running with some other niggas. I climbed down out that tree and run to meet her. We gets up to the house and all the niggas standing there with the little bundles on their heads. And they all say, where we going? We all cries and sings and prays and was so excited. We ain't eatin'no supper! Ha ha ha ha ha! That morning, we all go to the cotton field early. And after a while, the old horn blow. And we all stop and listen. Cause it's the wrong time of the day for the horn. We start choppin'again. There goes the horn again. The lead role nigga holler, hold up. We better go on in. That our horn. So we line up and go in. We're sitting on the gallery in a high bottom chair. was a man we'd never see before. He had on a big, broad, black hat, you know, like the Yankees wore. His hair was plum gray. And so was his beard. And it come down, right down there, down on his chest. The man say, You doc, you know what day this is? And the head man say, No, we don't know. Well, this is the fourth day of June, and this is 1865. And I want you all to remember the date, because you always going to remember the day. Today, you is free, just like I is, and Mr. Saunders, and your misters, and all us white people. I come to tell you, he say, I wants to be sure you all understand. Cuz you don't have to get up and go by the horn no more. You is your own boss as now. And I wants to bless you and hope you always is happy and tell you you got all the right in life that any white people got. And then get on this horse and ride off. It was the fourth day of June in 1865. I begins to live, begins to live, begins to live. Even though the slaves had been emancipated, their struggle to escape the oppression of slavery was just beginning. But they were finally free to reunite with their families, Legalize their marriages and live and work for themselves. Master Ingram had 350 slaves when the war was over, but he didn't turn us loose till a year after surrender. He told us the government was going to give us 40 acres of land and a pair of mules, but we didn't get nothing. I remember so well how the roads was full of folks walking And walking along when the niggas were free Didn't know where they was going Just going to see about something else Somewhere else Meet a body in the road and they ask Where you going? Don't know What you gonna do? Don't know Then I begins to think and to know I never had to be a slave no more No more action block for me. No more. No more action block for me. Many. thousand long a pint of salt for me long A pint of salt for many thousand gone. No more driver's lash. For me no more And no more drivers Lash for me Though a thousand Oh

My mammy say, alright Jim, you be a good boy. That the last time I ever heard her speak or ever see her. The Library of Congress is home to most of the slave narratives.

multi-volume collection of interviews with former slaves. What's that? You want me to tell you about slavery days? Lots of old slaves closed the door before they tell the truth about their days of slavery.

I could tell you about it all day but even then you couldn't guess the awfulness of it. My life was filled with heartache. Thanks and despair. We was married on the front porch of the big house. Then they put them on the block to sell them.

The ones between 18 and 30 always bring the most money. The boys came in and threw her down on the floor and tied her down so she couldn't struggle. Lord, Lord, child, what make you folks this wait so long before you get this stuff by way back yonder?

When the Civil War ended in 1865, more than 4 million slaves were set free. By the late 1930s, 100,000 ex-slaves were still alive. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Federal Writers Project hired journalists and writers to travel the country and record the memories of this last generation of African Americans born into bondage.

Most former slaves were still living in the rigidly segregated South, a society deeply rooted in its Confederate past and that still treated black people as inferior. Never turn back Some ex-slaves were reluctant to speak openly with their mainly white interviewers for fear of retaliation for telling the truth. But many others, approaching the end of their lives, were willing to tell their stories. Never, never turn back Although these ex-slaves did not all speak in one voice, they were the last African Americans able to give a first-hand account of what it was like to be a slave in the years before the Civil War. Over 2,000 interviews were transcribed as spoken, in the vernacular of the time, to form this unique historical record.

Sarah Gudger. Gudger? Yes. Sarah apparently went blind a year before this interview was taken. I mean, there's nothing written to describe her, but that pretty much says it all.

You know. this her mouth yeah the set of mouth when they did these are these like did they ask them some questions or did they just say just talk to the question but there was a set of subjects on a list that they would ask the ex-slaves about Okay. Action.

Sarah Gudger, Slave Narratives, Volume 11, North Carolina. I sure has had a hard life. Just work, work and work.

I never know nothing but work. I never knows what it was to rest. I just work all the time, from morning to late at night. Working field, chop wood, hoe comb. Sometimes, I... Feels like my back's surely breaking.

Honey, you can't know what a time I had. All cold and hungry. Oh no, I ain't telling no lies.

It's the gospel truth. Bells and horns, bell for this, horn for that. All we know is go and come by the bells and the horns. Old Ramhorn blowed a sentence all to the field.

We all line up, about 75 field niggas, and go by the tool shed and get our hoes, or maybe go hitch up the mule to the plows. Come get another nigga tomorrow, get another nigga tomorrow. On most plantations, slaves worked from sunrise till sundown six days a week.

Some worked into the night and on Sunday too. The overwhelming majority toiled in the fields, growing crops like tobacco, rice, sugar cane, and cotton. For every field hand, ten acres of cotton were produced.

Cotton became the United States'greatest export, making plantation owners, the South, and America rich. Everyone but the slaves profited from it. For all of the ex-slaves, a lifetime of labor began at a very young age. Many started work in the master's house, often as playmates for white children. Let it fly, We be playing in the barn and Jimmy always say to me, come on nigga, let's ride around the farm.

I say, I ain't no nigga. He say, yes you is. My pa paid $200 for you.

He bought you for the play with me. I have about 85 years of good memory to call on. I'm 90, and so I'm not counting my first five years of life.

My earliest recollection is the day my old boss presented me to his son, Joe, as his property. I was about five years old, and my new master was only two. No sir, I never went into books.

I used to handle a big dictionary three times a day, but it was only to put it on a chair so my young master could sit up higher at the table. I never went to school. I learned to talk pretty good by associating with my masters in their big house. Well, my master and all the other big white folks, they raised peafowls.

We'd catch them wild things at night when they roost in the pine trees. Then my ma, she would pull the long feathers out of the tails and make fly brushes. In them days, the dining room was big and had the windows open all the summer long. Quick as a mess of billows come on the table, my ma fetched me in and I'd get put up in a swang over the table to fan the flies and gnats off the mistress'food.

Well, they had to show me just how to hold the brush, cause them feathers was so long, if you didn't mind your business, the ends of them feathers would splash in the gravy and the mistress'table would be all. Don't splat it up! Wasn't long before I got used to it, and I took to going to sleep up there. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Let me see a picture.

One more time. Let me see a picture. Thank you. That's so wonderful. I was gonna say, Jenny's house might be a little better than mine was.

Jenny, that's a very nice porch. I think our porch was bigger. So we had a room, we had two rooms. Jenny got an outhouse, we had an outhouse in the back.

Okay, Jenny. Action. Jenny Proctor, Slave Narratives, Volume 16, Texas. I was here telling them good slave days, but I ain't never seen no good times then.

My mother's name was Liza. I don't recollect nothing about my daddy. If I had any brothers and sisters, I didn't know it. I tended to the chilling when I was a little gal and tried to clean the house just like Ole Miss tells me to.

I recollect once when I was... I was trying to clean the house. I finds me a biscuit.

And I so hungry, I eat it. Because we never see such thing as a biscuit. But when I ate that biscuit, she comes in and say, where that biscuit?

I say, miss, I ate it because I so hungry. Then she grabbed that broom and start to beating me over the head with it and calling me. Low down, nigga.

I guess I just clean lost my head, because I know better than the fighter if I know anything at all. But I start to fight her, and the driver, he comes in, grabs me and starts beating me with that cat-of-nine-tails, beats me till I fall to the floor nearly dead, cut my back all to pieces. Then they rub salt in the cuts for more punishment. Lord, Lord, honey, them was some awful days.

In most states, it was against the law for slaves to be educated. Slave children might play with their young masters and mistresses at home, but they could not go to school with them. None of us was allowed to see a book or try to learn.

They say we get smarter than they was if we learn anything. He slips around, gets a hold of that Webster's old blueback speller. He hides it till way in the night, and then he lights a little pine torch and studies that spelling book.

We learn it too. Oh Lord, you better not be caught with a book in your hand. If you did, you were sold.

Oh, no, no, no, they didn't lie that. If you just looked like you wanted to learn to read or write, oh, you got a lickin'. By the age of 12, most children were working in the fields. Only a very small number stayed on to become house servants. Slaves who worked in the house were almost always better fed and clothed than the field hands.

But they lived under the constant scrutiny of their masters. Mistress Miller, she used to make my Aunt Carolyn knit all day. And when she gets so tired after dark that she gets sleepy, she make her stand up and knit. Mistress would work her so hard that she'd go to sleep standing up. And every time her head gnawed and her knees sagged, that lady come down across her head with a switch.

That's the way white folks was. Some had hearts. Some had gizzards instead of hearts.

Mrs. Savituliti, a giant in Lola Dea. More than one quarter of the slave population lived on large plantations with 50 or more slaves, some with several hundred. George, Eggleston, Robert, Waggoner. Very few were highly skilled ruckers.

Magruder, Blacksmith, Sam. There was just two classes to the white folks. Bucra, the slave owners, and poor white folk that didn't own no slaves. There was more classes amongst the slaves.

The first class was the house servants. This was the butler, the maids, and the cooks. Then come the cratlers of the wheat, the threshers, and the millers of the corn and the wheat. The lowest class was the common field hand niggas.

Back in Alabama, Mr. Adelaide Carter took me when I was past my creeping days, living in the big house with the white folks. And they was always good to me because I was one of their blood. They never hit me a lick or slap me once. And they told me that they would never sell me from them. My brother and sister, they lived with the niggas though, because they was mostly nigger.

My master used to give me a little money to buy what I wanted. I always bought fine clothes. Oh, when they bought the red shoes from the town, I cried and cried. I say, I don't want to wear no rawhide shoes. So they took them back.

I guess they had a weakness for my crying. I drove a carriage, uh-huh, with the white folk. And I was about the most dude-ish nigga in these parts.

Once, two youngins goes down the hill to the dollhouse where Master Kilpatrick's children are playing. They want to go in the dollhouse and one of the Kilpatrick boys says, that's for white children. They say, we ain't no niggas, because 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 fussing, and Missy Kilpatrick is listening out of her chamber window.

She heard them white niggas say, he is our daddy, and we call him daddy when he comes to our house to see our mama. Many owners and overseers believe that sexual access to slave women was one of their prerogatives. The rape of black women also served to humiliate their husbands and undermine the integrity of slave families. Lord, child, that was common.

Masters and overseers used to make slaves that was with their husbands get up and do as they say. Send husbands out on the farm milking cows or cutting wood. Then he gets in bed with the slave himself.

Some women would fight and tussle. Others would be humble, feared of that beating. If they told their husband, he was powerless.

I was one slave that the poor white man had his match. These here old white men said, what I can't do by fair means, I'll do by foul. One tried to throw me, but he couldn't. We tussled and knocked over chairs, and when I got a grip, I snatched his face all to pieces, and there was no more bothering Fanny from him. But, oh, honey, some slaves would be so beat up when they resisted.

And sometimes, if you rebel, the overseas kill you. Us colored women had to go through plenty, I tell you. My mother's mistress had three boys. 121, 119, and 117. Old mistress had gone away one day, and mother always worked in the house.

While she was alone, the boys came in and threw her down on the floor and tied her down so she couldn't struggle. And one after the other used her as long as they wanted for the whole afternoon. Mother was sick when her mistress came home. And when old mistress wanted to know what was the matter with her, she told her what the boys had done. And she whipped him.

And that's the way I came to be here. Where is Adam? Oh, Eve?

Adam in the dark, taking out Eve. God call Adam. Even Adam, even Adam, I don't call him Adam.

Adam won't answer. Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam won't answer. Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam won't answer.

Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam won't answer. Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam won't answer. I used to have to pick cotton.

Sometimes I picked 300 pounds and towed it a mile to the cotton house. Some pick 300 to 800 pounds of cotton and have to tote the bag the whole mile to the gin. If they didn't do their work, they get whipped till they have blisters on them. I never get whipped, because I always get my 300 pounds. Cut.

Excuse me, I'm sorry about laughing at that. I'm sorry. That always gets me at the pride of...

She's bright. Yes! Whew, they just...

Hmm. Sometimes, slaves who had picked their quota added some of their pickings to those who had been slower or ill. But it wasn't always enough.

White folks sure would whip you in them days. They lay you flat on the ground on your face, then they stake you. And so you couldn't get through the ground, much less than get up and fly. Take every rag off of you and leave you. plumb naked and then they whip you till the blood come.

They whip you straight like this, see? Straight up and down. And then they checker you. In other words, they beat you crosswise and so your flesh would cut up in squares.

You understand? On many plantations, whippings were public spectacles. Owners use the lash to terrorize as well as to punish their slaves. My brother January was a big fine nigger.

Finest I ever seen. He was just four years older than me. When Masa began beating him, January never said a word.

The master got mad and madder cause he couldn't make January holler. What's the matter with you, nigga? He say. Don't it hurt?

January, he never said nothing. And the master keep up beating till little streams of blood started flowing down January's chest. But he never holler.

His lips was a-quivering and his body was a-shaking, but his mouth, it never opened. And all the while, I sat on my mammy and pappy's steps a-crying. The niggas was all gathered about, and some of them couldn't stand it, and they go inside their cabins. After a while, January, he couldn't stand it no longer himself.

And he's saying a hoarse, loud whisper. Massa. Massa. Have mercy on this poor nigga. Then they take the salt and red pepper and put it in the wounds.

The skin jerk and quiver and the mane slobber and puke. We little niggas stand around and see it done. After he lie in the sun a while, they whip him again. But when they finish with him, he was dead.

When a slave die, master make the coffin and send a couple of niggas to bury the body and say, don't be long and no singing or praying allowed. Put them in the ground, cover them up, hurry on back to that field. They put the coffin on the ox court and carried it to the graveyard.

They just had a burial that day. They waited to have the funeral sermon on Sunday or some other time when the crops had been laid. God and the other slaves could be on hand. For enslaved people, funerals were extremely important.

The ceremonies reinforced their sense of community and kept alive their African past. I'm going to pray till I die. I'm going to seek and never rise.

I'm going to pray, I'm going to pray. I'm going to seek and never rise. I'm going to pray till I die. If my faith arise again. I'm gonna pray, I'm gonna pray.

If my faith arise again. I'm gonna pray till I die. Oh, Lord have mercy. I'm gonna pray, I'm gonna pray. Lord have mercy.

The S and the nigga used to sing to nearly everything he did. It was just the way he expressed his feelings that made him relieved. I'm gonna pray till I die.

It is a nigger's most joy and his most comfort when he needs all these things. They sing about the joys in the next world and the trouble in this. Roll me anywhere, Lord In the field, niggas like to sing and make up songs. A bunch of going one side, lift up their head and roll out. On the other side, pick it up and go the same way and just make up some words.

There was lots of just make-up songs. Jai, you oughta hear them niggas singin'when they go to work in the mornin'. Just a-singin'to beat the band. A cold and frosty mornin'.

The niggas mighty good. Take your axe upon your shoulder, niggas. talk to the wood.

Through the woods. This time tomorrow night. Sometimes they sing this sorrowful cause some niggas have been beat or whipped or sold away. Down to Tennessee. Been down over, been beneath, Stuck into the man from Galilee.

During the hard times of the depression, when the slave narratives were collected, most ex-slaves were still living in extreme poverty. Great God, the mighty, let me tell you what he said. Yes, I was born a slave. And so was Rosa. We got out of the chat of slavery and I was better off for getting out.

But Rosa don't think so. She says all we got freed for is to starve to death. She says her white folks were good to her.

But don't you expect me to love my white folks. I love them like a dog loves a hickory switch. I can say these things now.

I'd say them anywhere. In the courthouse, before the judge, before God. Because they done done all to me they can do. I'm done past everything.

but worrying about Rosa. Of course, she don't get enough to eat, and of course, she feels bad all the time. But there ain't no complaining in her.

Mama, how you feeling, the son? Best to be expected this time of year. I was born in Georgia on a farm. My mother's name was Lucinda.

I heard other Negroes say she was a good woman, but she died when I was a little boy, not more than three or four. She left my little brother a crawling baby. I'm 11 months old. I can remember crying for my mama, being lonesome for her.

My little brother was pitiful. Plum, beautiful. We had to sleep on the floor in the cabin, huddled together in the cold weather, so we wouldn't freeze to death.

Our life was a misery. I hate the white man every time I think, being no more than animals. My father was a blacksmith.

Rosa never did know much about her father. Eh, Mama? Mm, that's right.

I never did know nothing about my pa, but I looked on my mama like a savior. Her name was Hannah Clemon, and Dr. Andrews, my master, had always owned her. Now, Dr. Andrews was a good man and a good liver. Dr. Andrews had about 12 slaves.

The neighbors used to say, there goes old Andrews'free niggers. That's because he never hardly whipped them and gave them rest and playtime. And he doctored us when we were sick and took good care of us.

We had good-look cabins, and we had cotton mattresses and blankets. We had enough to eat, too. Slave quarters were usually a group of log cabins with dirt floors.

Although living conditions varied from place to place, slaves were provided with only the bare minimum. Beds might be planks with rope slats and grass mattresses. Food supplies were usually given out weekly.

Cornmeal, molasses, and sometimes a little pork. Sometimes, master let niggas have a little patch. They'd raise taters or goobers. Peanuts.

They liked to have them to help fill out on the vitriols. The niggas 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 get a pass to go.

They had to go at night because they couldn't have a spare hand from the fields. We got one pair of shoes a year. When they wore out we went barefooted.

Sometimes we tied them up with strings and they were so raggedy that the tracks looked like bird tracks when we walked in the road. My brother wore his shoes out and had none all through the winter. His feet Cracked open and bled so bad you could track him by the blood. Get up children, roll down the wall. Don't wanna try my little wonderful, now get up children.

I remember quite well how those polar children used to have to eat. They were fed in boxes and troughs under the house. They were fed cornmeal mushroom beans. When this was poured into their box, they would gather around it. The same as we see pigs, horses, and cattle gather around troughs today.

Us never got enough to eat, so us keep stealing stuff. Us had to. Course we knowed it was wrong to steal, but the niggas had to steal.

To get something to eat. I know I did. I got so hungry I steal chickens off they roost. Yes, I did.

Chickens used to roost on the fence, then. Right out in the night. We'd cook the chicken at night, eat him, and burn the feathers. They talks a heap about the niggas stealing. Well, you know what was the first stealing done?

It was in Africa. When the white folks stole the niggas just like you go get a drove of horses and sell them. But since the Lord saved me from a life of sin, I don't think about them things.

The first enslaved people in America were reluctant to accept the religion of their masters, but during the 19th century thousands of slaves began turning to Christianity. They infuse this adopted religion with a new spirituality and with African traditions. Many owners hope that Christianity might make their slaves more docile and encourage them to convert. On Sundays, niggas had to sit and listen to the white man's sermon. Obey your master, be good servant.

Can't tell you how many times I done heard that text preached on. They tell a slave that if he be good, work hard for his master, that he would go to heaven and that he gonna live a life of ease. They never tell him he gonna be free in heaven.

Steal away. Steal away. When the niggas go around singing, steal away to Jesus, that mean they gonna be a religious mutant that night.

The master didn't like them religious meetings, and so us naturally slips off at night, down in the bottoms or somewheres. Swing low, sweet chariot. Sometimes us sing and pray all night.

Sweet chariot, come for to carry me home. Swing low, sweet chariot. Coming for to carry me home We pray for the end of tribulation And the end of beating And for shoes that fit our feet We pray that us niggas could have all we want to eat And special for fresh meat Some of the old ones say we have to bear all Because that's all we can do Some say they was glad to the time they did, cause they rather rot in the ground than have the beatings.

Okay, now, all my life I've heard of the patty rollers. Now you have the paddle rollers. I know patty rollers is the common term. Yeah, I think you should say patty rollers.

My grandparents were from Georgia and they both said patty rollers. In fact, when they were really angry with white people, they referred to them as patties. Action.

Marshall Butler, Slave Narratives, Volume 4, Georgia. I's Marshall Butler, 88 years old and was born on December 25th. I knows it was Christmas Day for I was a gift to my folks. Mammy was a Frank collar nigga and her mane was of the tribe of Ben Butler some miles down the road It was one of them trial marriages these tried so hard to see each other but old Ben Butler said two passes a week were enough to see my mammy on the collar plantation.

Now, if a nigga went out without a pass, the Patty Rolls would get him. The white folks were the Patty Rolls. They used... Straps with the belt buckle fastened on. Oh, yes, sir.

I got paddle. Have them this way. I left home one Thursday to see a gal on the Palmer Plantation, oh, five miles away. Some gal, no, no, no, I ain't getting no pass. The boss was so busy.

Everything was fine till my return trip. I was two miles out, three miles to go. There come the patty rollers. I was so scared, I couldn't move.

Oh, they gave me 30 licks, and I ran to the west of the way home. There's belt buckles all over me. Ate my vittles off the porch railings. Some gal Was worth that paddling to see that gal do it all over again to see Mary the next night Oh, Jane, love me like you used to.

Jane, chew me like you used to. Every time I figure, my heart get bigger. Sorry, sorry, can't be your piper no more. Mm, mm, that's some gal. Slaves had an opportunity to go courting on Saturday nights on their own or on neighboring plantations.

Girls would put on a spare dress if they had one, and men would put on a dress. on a clean shirt. Girls always try to fix up for partying even if they ain't got nothing but a piece of ribbon to tie in their hair.

Was none of this sinful dancing where you partner off with man and woman squeezed up close to one another? Mm-mm, that's respectable, the slaves did. Shifting round from one partner to another and holding one another out at arm's length. Saturday night, Sunday too, young girl's on my mind. I remember that when us caught it, us went to walk and hunted chestnuts.

We strangled them and put them around our necks and smiled at our fellas. Oh Peggy, do you love me now? My pa'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 saw my ma in the Kilpatrick place and her man was dead. He told Dr. Kilpatrick, my master, he'd buy my ma and her three children with all the money he had, if he'd sell her. But Dr. Kilpatrick was never one to sell any but the old niggas who was past working in the fields and past their breeding times. So my pa marries my ma and works the fields, same as any other nigga. Sometimes the wedding ceremonies were held in the slave cabins.

Other times, they were orchestrated by the owners. I married Exeter Durham. He belonged to Master Snipes Durham, who had the plantation in Orange County. Oh, we had a big wedding.

We was married on the front porch of the big house. I had a white dress, white shoes, gloves that came up to my elbow, and Miss Betsy Dunn made me a wedding dress. made me a wedding veil out of a white net window curtain.

After Uncle Edmund said the last words over me and Exeter, Master George say, come on, Exeter. You and Tempe got to jump over the broomstick. You got to do that to see which one of you gonna be the boss of the household.

I jumped first and you ought to see me. I sailed right over that broomstick same as a cricket. But when X to jump his feet were so big and clumsy that they got all tangled up in that broom and he fell headlong. After the wedding we went down to the cabin Miss Betsy done all dressed up. But Exeter couldn't stay no longer than that night, because he belonged to Mars Snipes Durham, and he had to go back home.

He left the next day for his plantation. He'd come back every Saturday night and stay till Sunday night. And we had 11 children. Some owners respected slave marriages.

The marriages had no legal standing and could be broken apart at the owner's whim. Owners had their own reasons for pairing up certain slaves. After I'd been at his place about a year, the master come to me and say, you're gonna live with Rufus in that cabin over yonder. Go fix it for living.

I was about 16 years old and had no learning, and I was just an ignorant child. I say to myself, I's not gonna live with that, Rufus. Well, the next day, the master calls me and tells me, Woman, I's paying big money for you, and I's done that because I wants you to...

You raise me children. You a big portly gal. Rufus is a big portly man. I wants y'all to bring forth portly children. I's put you to live with Rufus for that purpose.

Now if you don't want whipping at the stake, you do what I wants. Oh, I thinks about Master bide me from the block, saving me from being separated from my folks. And then I thinks about being whipped at the stake.

What am I to do? So I decides to do as the Master wish. So I yields. Many people interviewed for the slave narratives lived far from the plantations where they were born.

As children, a large number had been relocated to other parts of the country. I was born in Kentucky somewhere near Louisville. I was brought to Missouri when I was six months old with my mama who was a slave. owned by a man named Shaw, who had allotted her to a man named Jimmy Graves. When a slave was allotted, somebody made a down payment and gave a mortgage for the rest.

A chattel mortgage. A down payment. Hmm. Times don't change, just the merchandise.

As cotton became more and more profitable, plantations spread to the deep south, as well as states and territories to the west. Between 1800 and 1860, one million slaves were forcibly transported to new locations. Sale of valuable slaves. Sarah, age 45 years. Dennis, her son.

About a third of slave families were split apart. And a fifth of the children were sold away from one or both parents. When I was about six or seven years old, I reckon it was Mr. Garrett bought ten of us children in North Carolina and sent two white men to fetch us back in wagons. And he fetched old Julie Powell to look after us. They never bought my mammy, so I had to leave her behind.

Mammy said to old Julie, take care of my baby child. That was me. And if I never sees her no more, raise her for God. Then she fell off the wagon where it was all of us was sitting and just rolled over on the ground just a crying But us was eating candy that they done give us to keep us quiet I didn't have sense enough for the know what ill mammy but I Knows now And I never seen her no more in this life Her name was Rachel Powell.

Negroes Wanted. The undersigned wish to purchase a large number of negroes for which they will pay the highest prices in cash. Lord Child, I remember when I was a little boy about ten years. The speculators come through Newton with droves of slaves.

The poor critters nearly froze to death. Just run along on the ground, all spewed up with ice. The speculators always rode on horses and drove the poor knick. When they get cold, they make them run till they are warm again.

Lord, miss, them slaves look just like droves of tickets running along in front of them horses. There was a Trader Yard in Virginia, and one in New Orleans. Sometimes a thousand slaves were waiting to be sold.

Great sale of slaves. There will be offered for sale at public auction three bucks, strong table body, one wench, salad, age 42, one buck, age 52, good kennel man. When the traders knew men were coming to buy, they made the slaves all clean up and greased their mouths with meat skins to look like they were feeding them plenty of meat. Talk about something awful.

You should have been there. The slave owners was shouting and selling children to one man and the mama and pappy to another. It was just a little thing.

Tooked away from my mammy and papi just when I needed most. I remember that I was took up on a stand, and a lot of people come around and felt my arms and legs and chest, and asked me a lot of questions. I remember when they put them on the block to sell them. The ones between 18 and 30 always bring the most money. The auctioneer, he stand off at a distance and cry them off as they stand on the block.

I can hear his voice as long as I live. If they put up a young nigga woman, the auctioneer would cry out, and here's a young nigga wench. How much am I offering for her? How much am I offering for her?

The seller would have her turn around and plump her. Plump. to show how fat she was and her general condition. They would also take her by her breasts and pull them to show how good she was built for raising children.

Give me 16. Give me 16. Sold! $1,500. Louisa, age 24. If the one they was going to sell was a young Negro man... This is what he say. Now gentlemen and fellow citizens, here's a big black buck negro.

This is a big black buck negro. He's stout as a mule and good for any kind of work. And he'll never give you any trouble.

How much more for him? And then the sale would commence, and the nigger would be sold to the highest bidder. 28, 28, no, 27, 27, sold for $2,700. Anderson, the number one bricklayer in Mason, being in full for the purchase of said slave for life.

Run, Mary, run! Whoa! Run, Martha! Tell Mary right I say, you got a right to be a fly. Little Mary, you got a right.

You got a right to be a fly. You got a right, you got a right. You got a right.

If I had my life to live over, I would die fighting rather than be a slave again. I want no man's yoke on my shoulders no more. Now my father, he was a fighter. He was as mean as a bear. He was so bad to fight.

and so troublesome, he was sold four times to Manoa, and maybe a heap more times. I fooled old master seven years, fooled the old seer three. Hand me down my banjo, I'll tickle your belly.

Slaves who owe... who openly defied their masters received the harshest punishment. But one act of resistance ran the greatest risk of all.

I'm gonna run to the deep of the ratchets, I'm gonna run. Escape from slavery was extremely difficult, and the penalty for being caught could be mutilation or death. In spite of such risks, about 50,000 slaves ran away each year. But patty rollers were well rewarded. for capturing escaped slaves, and very few runaways succeeded.

There was a nigger working in the field, and he kept joiking the mules, and that's all. Got mad, and he give me a gun and said, Cato, go out there and kill that man. I say, Mr. Orr, please don't tell me that. I ain't never killed nobody, and I don't want to.

He said, Cato, you do what I tell you to do. I said, Cato, you do what I tell you to do. And he meant it. So I go out to the nigga and I say, You gotta leave this place this minute and I is too. Because I supposed to kill you and I ain't.

And Master Arl, he gonna kill me. So it dropped his rain and we run and we crawl through the fence and we ran away. I hated to go, but today I is an old man and my hands ain't stained with no blood.

$600 reward for three Negro slaves named Henry Morsell ran away from the subscriber, a Negro man about 22 years old, of dark color, several of his jaw teed out, and a... On his body are several marks of the whip. I mix up my mind. I was going to run off the first chance I gets. When the meat supply run low, Master send me to go kill a deer or a wild hog and bring home some meat.

He says not to go off the plantation too far. It's the chance I've been wanting. I crosses the river and goes north. I's going to free country where there ain't no slaves. I travels all that day and night up the river and follows the North Star.

Several times I think the bloodhounds am training me and I gets in a big hurry. I so tired I can hardly move. I'm hoping all the time I meet up with that Harriet Tubman woman, is she the colored woman that would take slaves to Canada? The Underground Railroad was an informal network of safe houses and assistance for runaway slaves. I didn't have no idea of ever getting mixed up in any sort of business like that until one special night.

I'd gone over to another plantation, courting, ha, ha, ha, yeah. And an old woman told me she had a real pretty girl there who wanted to go across the river to the free state of Ohio and would I take her. Now, I was scared, and I backed out in a hurry. But then I saw this girl, and she was such a pretty little thing. Wasn't long before I was listening to the old woman tell me when to take her and where to leave her on the other side.

Now, I don't know how I ever rode that boat across that river. That current was so strong, and I was trembling, and I couldn't see a thing there in the dark. But I felt that girl's eyes.

It was a long time rowing there in the cold and worrying. But it was a short time because as soon as I did get on the other side, that big-eyed girl would be gone. There in Ripley, Ohio, it was a regular station for escaping slaves.

It always meant freedom for a slave if he could get to that big lighthouse. Pretty soon I saw a tall light. When I got up to it, two men reached down and grabbed it.

I started trembling all over again and praying and then one of the men took my arm. I just felt down inside of me that the Lord had got ready for me. You hungry, boy?

Is what he asked me. And if he hadn't been holding on to me, I think I would have fell backward into the river. That was my first trip.

Took me a long time to get over my scared feeling. But I finally did, and I soon found myself going back across the river with two and three people, and sometimes a whole boatload. It got so high, I used to make three and four trips a month.

Now, I never saw my passengers. It would have to be the black nights of the moon when I would carry them. Didn't many of them stay around that part of Ohio because there was too much danger that you would be walking along free one night, feel a hand over your mouth, be back across the river and in slavery again in a moment.

And nobody in the world ever got a chance to know as much misery as a slave that had escaped and been caught. Your mama gone away and my daddy gone to stay didn't leave nobody but the baby Aunt Jeannie was just out of bed with her suckling baby one time and she ran away. She don't come to the house to nurse her baby so they misses her and old Solomon gets the nigga hounds to take a trip.

They gets near and she grabs a limb and tries to hoist herself in a tree. But them dogs grab her and pull her down. The men hollers them on to her and the dogs tore her naked and ate the breast plumb of her body. She got well, lived to be an old woman. But another woman had to suck her baby.

And she ain't got no sign of breasts no more. Finally, I decided to take my freedom, too. I had a wife by this time.

One night, we quietly slipped across. I could see the light, but the harder I rode, the farther away it got. But finally I pulled up by the lighthouse and went on to my freedom just a few months before all the slaves got there.

I didn't stay in Ripley though. I wasn't taking no chances. I went on to Detroit and I still live there with most of 10 children and 31 grandchildren. The bigger ones, they don't care much about hearing it now. The little ones never get tired of hearing how their grandpa brought emancipation to loads of slaves he could touch and feel, but never see.

So he would do three or four trips a month, but that would be when the moon, before the moon came back out. So when the moon went in, that's when they'd have to move. Never saw their faces, don't know who they are.

I know their voices, you know. And sometimes not even that, just touch, because they had to be quiet too. What a disconnect.

What an amazing disconnect that we, people that we're here and our folks are saved by people that we'll never know who they're, who it was. Can't actually say thank you. Exactly, exactly. The outbreak of the Civil War opened the way for thousands more slaves to escape bondage. But in large areas of the South, the freedom promised by the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 still depended on a Union victory.

Ooh, old Mazza, he get boiling mad when the Yankees scattered the Confederates all down through our country. Then he tell us the law. You all ain't going to get free by them. When they get here, they're going to find you.

already free. Because I'm going to line you up on the bank of the creek and free you with my shotgun. Anybody miss just one lick with the hoe or one step in the line and you're going to be free and talking to the devil long before he ever see a pair of blue britches.

One morning soon, one morning soon, my lord, one morning soon. Despite threats of slave owners, many slaves fled their masters to fight for the North. 200,000 slaves and former slaves enlisted as Union soldiers and sailors. Benton Barracks Hospital, St. Louis, Missouri. September 3rd, 1864. My children.

I take my pen in hand to write you a few lines to let you know that I have not forgot you and that I want to see you as bad as ever. On the 28th of the month, 800 white and 800 black soldiers expects to start up the river. When they come, I expect to be with them. and expect to get you both in return.

Be assured that I will have you if it costs me my life. Oh, my dear children. How I do want to see you.

Spotswood Rice. Blue Juddment I want to blow your comment Juddment by There's a lot you can't Juddment I want to wake my people Juddment by Where you're gonna be Hello! I'm in the persimmons room, eating persimmons, and my sister Mary just come running.

She said, us niggas am free. I looked over to the house and seen the niggas piling their little. bunch of clothes and things outside the cabins. Then Mammy come running with some other niggas. I climbed down out that tree and run to meet her.

We gets up to the house and all the niggas standing there with the little bundles on their heads. And they all say, where we going? We all cries and sings and prays and was so excited. We ain't eatin'no supper! Ha ha ha ha ha!

That morning, we all go to the cotton field early. And after a while, the old horn blow. And we all stop and listen.

Cause it's the wrong time of the day for the horn. We start choppin'again. There goes the horn again.

The lead role nigga holler, hold up. We better go on in. That our horn. So we line up and go in. We're sitting on the gallery in a high bottom chair.

was a man we'd never see before. He had on a big, broad, black hat, you know, like the Yankees wore. His hair was plum gray. And so was his beard.

And it come down, right down there, down on his chest. The man say, You doc, you know what day this is? And the head man say, No, we don't know. Well, this is the fourth day of June, and this is 1865. And I want you all to remember the date, because you always going to remember the day.

Today, you is free, just like I is, and Mr. Saunders, and your misters, and all us white people. I come to tell you, he say, I wants to be sure you all understand. Cuz you don't have to get up and go by the horn no more.

You is your own boss as now. And I wants to bless you and hope you always is happy and tell you you got all the right in life that any white people got. And then get on this horse and ride off.

It was the fourth day of June in 1865. I begins to live, begins to live, begins to live. Even though the slaves had been emancipated, their struggle to escape the oppression of slavery was just beginning. But they were finally free to reunite with their families, Legalize their marriages and live and work for themselves.

Master Ingram had 350 slaves when the war was over, but he didn't turn us loose till a year after surrender. He told us the government was going to give us 40 acres of land and a pair of mules, but we didn't get nothing. I remember so well how the roads was full of folks walking And walking along when the niggas were free Didn't know where they was going Just going to see about something else Somewhere else Meet a body in the road and they ask Where you going? Don't know What you gonna do? Don't know Then I begins to think and to know I never had to be a slave no more No more action block for me.

No more. No more action block for me. Many.

thousand long a pint of salt for me long A pint of salt for many thousand gone. No more driver's lash. For me no more And no more drivers Lash for me Though a thousand Oh

Transcript for:Insights from Slave Narratives and Experiences

Transcript for:
Insights from Slave Narratives and Experiences