Memories of Slavery

As near as I can calculate, I was born about the year 1858.The way is recon is this:when peace was declared, I was a little fellow about seven or eight years old.I might have been older, cause I was big enough to remember most everything that happened.I was born on the Leabough plantation in Arkansas, about eight miles from Little Rock.

My pa, Anthony Davis, and my ma, Sally Leabough, was brought from Virginia by old Master Cates.I had three brothers, Dave, John Wesley, and Jurden; three half-brothers, Billy, Leabough, and Dan Hackett; three sisters, Calline, Virginia, and Elmira; three half-sisters, Belle, Fannie, and Hallie Hackett.All of my half-sisters and brothers was born after the war.They was all children of my ma's second husband, Hackett.My ma was the mother of eighteen head of children.Some of them died before I was born and I can't tell more about them.

All the slaves lived in the quarters, in warm log houses with brick chimneys.My pa made the brick right there on the place.Our beds was made of canvas, nailed to the wall on one side, and legs on the other side.We had plenty of cover to keep us warm.My grandpa and grandma and all their children came from Virginia, too.They lived until I was about grown, so I remember them well.

I was not old enough to do any work.Ole Miss believed in letting children get big before working them.Them what did work didn't earn no money, they didn't know nothing about such as that.

We always had plenty of something to eat:meat, cornbread, milk, and all kinds of vegetables.The garden was made for the colored and the whites together so each person did not have to worry about making one for himself.My ma cooked for all the slaves, both grown-ups and children.Everybody ate in the big cook kitchen.There was a big brick oven where the bread was baked.The other food was cooked in an open fireplace.We never did have no possum, or game of no kind.Maybe there warn't no hunters on the place.

In the summer time all the clothes we wore was a long rough jeans shirt.The cloth was made on the place, and it wasn't smooth like cloth of today.Everybody went barefooted.When the cold weather came, we wore pants and warm woolen underclothes.The grown folks always had shoes.Sometimes the children didn't have none.My pa was the shoemaker and I speck he couldn't make them fast enough.Shoes was kinda tedious to make, cause the soles had to be put on with wooden pegs, and that took a long time.

Ole Miss and her husband separated long years before I knowed her.Her name was Maria Leabough.Her two boys was named, Henry and Bousy.Her girls names was Helen, Tody, and Celia.They lived in a great big old log house.There wasn't anything fine about it, but it was comfortable and warm.There wasn't no overseer, and my grandpa, Abram was the slave driver.He done all the whipping that was done.There wasn't no poor whites living around in the country in them days.

I just can't say how much land there was in that plantation.You see it was like this.Old Man Cates bought all this land in Arkansas.Him and his family moved down from Virginia and brought all their slaves with them.When his children married, he would give them a part of his place, and enough slaves to run it.My Ole Miss was his daughter, and he gived her the land right next to him.Some of his sons places was a mile or two away.There was hundreds of slaves.The way they done with the work was to take the hands from one place to the other if any of them got behind in their work.

Everybody worked from daylight till dark.The work hands was out before the children got up, and sometimes us would be in bed asleep when they got home.Grandpa went from house to house in the quarters to see that all got up.At dinnertime they blowed a big horn for to stop work and eat.

Never heard no complaint about working too hard.Everybody seemed well satisfied, but sometimes the slaves would kinda play off from their work and grandpa would have to give them a licking.After that everything would be all right.the only other time I ever knowed them to get whipped about was for stealing hogs.One day he did whip my ma, for burning up all the coffee she was parching.She was his own child, but everybody said grandpa whipped justly and they didn't think no more about it than a child who gets a whipping that he needs.

There warn't no jails, and I never even heard about them until after the war.No slave dealers ever passed our way, and I never saw a slave with a chain on, nor is I ever seen one sold.

The only slave I ever heard of that could read and write, was a man by the name of Clayborn.He was the carriage driver, and carried the white children to school.he had to stay all day to bring the children back when school was out.While he was there, he was learning what they was learning.He was kinda kin to me, and he sure could read cause I is heard him.My grandma went to the white folks Methodist church.There wasn't no church on the place, and we didn't hear nothing out of the Bible, no spirituals or baptizings.When a slave died, there wasn't no Christian burial, and there wasn't no ceremony of any kind.

None of the slaves ever ran off to the north.My pa ran off once to keep from going to Texas.Miss' oldest son, Henry, was moving out there to live.He was going to carry some of the slaves with him, but my pa didn't want to go , so he ran off and hid.They searched everywhere for him and had the patrollers looking for him, too.When he thought they had got off, here he comes back.The big covered wagons was already to start when somebody spied my pa.Master Henry called to him to get in one of the wagons and drive it to Texas.they didn't have time to punish him or nothing, he got in the wagon, picked up the reins, and before you could bat your eye, they had left out of there.

There wasn't no way of getting news around, except by what is called the grapevine way.That is, one hands it on to the other.We was allowed to visit on all of the places that had been owned by Old Man Cates, without a pass.They knowed all the slaves, and we could come and go as we pleased.When we made these visits, we exchanged all the news we heard.If we went on anybody else's place, we had to slip off.Saturday night was the time they picked to slip away and do that visiting.None of them ever did get caught, cause they couldn't tell where they was at, and by morning they was in their bed asleep.

The colored and the whites got along mighty peaceful together.There warn't never no trouble of any kind between them.

When the day's work was over, everybody was ready to take his rest.Saturday was the only night we took for frolicking.My pa was a mighty fine banjo picker, and he furnished the music for the folks to dance.He could all but make that old box talk.Slaves from the other places was always slipping over to us dances.That's when the patrollers would get after them, but it was mighty seldom when anybody ever got caught.As far as I can recollect, the work went on all day Saturday, same as other days.Sunday we didn't have to do nothing.We visited around in the quarters, cracked walnuts and eat them.Lolled under the shade trees in the summer time.

Wasn't much difference in the customs then and now except for the church going.The Christmas them days was not like it is now.We knowed when it come, and that was all.The children didn't even know nothing about hanging up their stockings.We had corn shucking, but it wasn't made to be a party.We done the shucking in the daytime, and everybody was sent to the crib together.They would sing and have a good time, but they didn't have no prizes.The song they liked best was:

The only big celebration I can remember was the wedding of Ole Miss' daughter, Miss Celia.She got married to a man by the name of Mason.He didn't have but one leg, but he sure looked fine all dressed up in a dark suit.Miss Celia had on a long white dress made out of some kind of cloth that was real shiny.They let every slave on the place come in the house to see the marriage.Us all had to get bathed and put on clean clothes from the skin out.There warn't so many white folks there, but that house was sure packed with us niggers.When the time come to eat, I stayed in the kitchen.You never seen the like of food there was in that kitchen:turkey, chicken, and hog meat, with all the dressings what goes with each one.There wasn't no decorations or flowers, but everything was cleaned up spick and pan.

The thing us little boys liked better than anything was to shoot marbles.We would get under them big trees and shoot all day.That's the only game we liked to play.

The biggest thing that was used to keep off diseases was asafetida bags.I heard the old folks say that lead was mighty good, too.Lots of folks uses that now, and they say it helped them for lots of ailments.

They used to scare us children with ghosts and haints to make us behave ourselfs.I ain't never seen one, but I was riding a mule one night, and what that mule seen, I ain't never knowed.I rode to the gate of the graveyard, and when I got there, that mule reared and pitched till he fell down.when he fell to ground he trembled and quivered all over.Never seen nothing like it, but I got him up and away from there so quick I didn't have time to see nothing.You couldn't get no nigger to stay in no house where a man had been killed.One fellow was killed in the gin house, and ever after, queer noises could be heard there at night.

When there was any sickness on the place, the old folks cared for the sick persons.Ole Miss always went herself to see about them, and she always gave the medicine, too.Every morning us children took Jerusalem Oak tea for worms, as that was the most what was ever the matter.Sometimes we had chills, but for them we took quinine and calomel.The smallpox hadn't started up in them days like it did later.

Ole Miss told us the very day freedom came.She called us all up, and she says, "You is all free, but nobody don't have to leave here lessen he wants to.Go on about your work now, and stay right where you is."Us was all mighty glad that we had a good place to stay."

We didn't know nothing about no war, there wasn't none of it going on in Arkansas, at least not anywhere near our place.I never heard but one shot in the whole four years, and that came from across the river.When the war was over, the Yankees came riding through our place.They tore down the gate and broke down the fences all around.That was the first time I ever seen a blue jacket.I run in the house and under the bed I went.When they came to the house, I went through the window and down to the cornfield where I stayed all night.Couldn't nobody on the place find me, but next day when I came home, the soldiers had left.I sure was glad, cause I didn't have no business to contract with none of them Yankees.One thing we was thankful for, the Ku Klux Klan never did come our way.We didn't ever hear nothing about them.I stayed on that place until I was about twenty years old.Everybody stayed because we was paid for our work and we was all satisfied.

One change what come after the war was schools for the colored children.White folks did the teaching.My ma bought me a school book, but I never went to school.

About the time I was grown, I got married to a woman by the name of Mary Morgan.We had four children, but she and all the children are dead.I next married Lola Davis, and we have been living together now for thirty-nine years.Her health ain't no good, and she has to stay in bed most of the time.We ain't never had no children and I ain't got no grandchildren.In fact, I can't got no living kin.I didn't have no big "to do" neither time when I was married.The preacher just said the words that made us man and wife.

I knows a lot about Abraham Lincoln.They say he is the man that set the niggers free.He might have done that for some of them, but he wasn't the one to set me free.Ole Miss was the one that set all of us free, and Mr. Lincoln didn't have nothing to do with it.All of us belonged to Ole Miss, and if she hadn't said we was free we would have still belonged to her, regardless of what Mr. Lincoln said.There was another great man in what they called the Rebel Army, his name was Robert E. Lee.Some like him and some don't.Some says it was him that tried to keep the niggers slaves.That wasn't what the war was about.That slavery didn't have nothing to do with it.You see it was this way:Jefferson Davis wanted to let the slaves go up to the north, and Abraham Lincoln wouldn't allow it, cause he didn't want no slaves up there, and that's what the whole thing was about.The colored folks was a lot better off in slavery time than they is now.They needs teaching and caring for.They was made to look after theirself better.Slave holders cared more for their slaves than the slaves cared for theirself.

I don't know nothing about Booker T. Washington.I hears a lot about what he done for the colored race.If you ask me, the man what really done something for them was President Wilson.When that man was in office, us all had plenty of money and we ain't had none since.Another thing I didn't like about Abraham Lincoln, when the war was over, we was told they couldn't make us stay on the places we was at.Ole Miss didn't make us stay, and we didn't receive nothing.If we had to leave, where was we going?Nowhere to go, nothing to eat, if Ole Miss had drove us off we yet wouldn't have been free.She wouldn't do the like of what like them Yankees wanted her to do.

I don't know nothing about reconstruction days, but I can remember heaps of times I is voted.I voted the Republican ticket at first, but afterwards I voted for the Democrats.I don't know whether the colored folks can vote now or not.I don't take no more interest in politics.All my life I is been a farmer.When I left Arkansas, I came to Panola County, Mississippi.But I was only there till cotton picking time, then I came up here to the Sherard place.After several years I bought me a piece of property near Cleveland.I farmed there for a long time and got along mighty well till my wife taken sick.When I found I had to put her in the hospital I sold my place and moved to Memphis.When we left there, we came back to Coahoma County where I has been ever since.First one place then on another.

I is too old to farm now, so I have moved to town.When the weather is good I picks a little cotton.I does all right while I is picking, but the next day I ain't no count at all.Its pretty hard on a man that worked all his life to have to give up cause he's getting old.I wasn't brought up like this present generation.They just come up theirselves, and if they makes three dollars by Saturday night picking cotton, they not got enough to last them through Sunday.

I is a member of the Sanctified Church.I joined it because it teaches you to be dutiful, and too, God's church must be sanctified.

Interview with Sally Dixon

I has just a misty recollection of my first Mistress, Miss Sally White.I was born on her place near Macon, Georgia.She was a widow lady and lived in a great big beautiful house.My ma, Louise, cooked for her, and when I was born she named me Sally after her.That was many years before the Civil War.Ole Miss was old and not very strong, and one morning we got the news that she done died.I never will forget that funeral, cause I ain't never seen one like it.Instead of buring her in the ground, like all folks is buried, they buried her in something what looked like a big brick wall.

Miss had two sons, Mr. Frank and Mr. Crawford.They was living on their farms near Como, Mississippi.We, my family, was left to Mr. Crawford, cause Ole Miss had done put it in her will that he was to have us.He carried us to his place in big covered wagons.Besides my pa, Frank, and ma, Louise, there was four boys and six girls.The boys was named:Larkin, Floyd, Doc, and Ed.The girls was:Dosia, Lucy, Pokie, Tooly, Rebecca, and me.

I never will forget that trip.There was so many children in the wagons that when us comed to the toll gates they would make us all lay down real still int he bottom of the wagon so they wouldn't have to pay toll for us all.Mr. Crawford wasn't married nad he lived most of the time with his brother, Frank, and had an overseer to look after his place.He was clearing this place up on the Bogue, and we went to work at daylight and worked till dark.The nights the big logs was burning, someone would have to sit up and watch the fire.

We stayed there on that place for seven years, and when the big overflow came, they had to take us all back to the hills.I don't know nothing about what year it was, children wasn't taught about years and months like they is now.That's how come I don't know how old I is.Mistress didn't tell me or my ma what date she had put down in the book.I expect if she had told her she couldn't have kept all them children's dates in her head.My grandpa, old Uncle Essex White, knowed a lot about figures, but he stayed down in Georgia, and we never seen him again after we left there.

The house we lived in was made of logs and chinked with clay.The chimneys was made of the same clay, and was good and warm.The women on the place wove the cloth our clothes was made of, and every night my ma had to spin six cuts of cotton before she went to bed.Some of the cloth was dyed in colored stripes, and sure was beautiful, but most of it was left white.We wore the same clothes in the winter that we wore in the summer, except more of them.

Every family cooked for theirself.We didn't have no central kitchen like they had in the old home place in Georgia, except for the children, and my ma cooked for them.There was always plenty to eat; meat, molasses, peas, bread, taters, and greens.The big old smokehouse was always filled with meat, caused we raised hogs and cured the meat.My pa brought home all the game we wanted, and about the only thing the Master had to buy for us was shoes, and he sure did get us good ones.

The overseer was poor white trash, but Master didn't allow him to whip none of us.When any of us done wrong, old Master would tend to us with a light brushing.That was the only form of punishment, cause they wasn't any jails or county farms in them days.Nobody ever came near that place with slaves to sell.I expect it was too far in the back woods.I is seen them slave dealers with many a one for sale down in Georgia.Once they had a big camp filled with them just accross the road from us.They was handcuffed together so they couldn't run away.

I never is heard of no trouble between the colored and whites.We had us a little fiddling and dancing on Saturday night, and just so we didn't kill one another, Master didn't care how much fun we had, because that was the only form of amusement.There wasn't no church except white folks church and that was way off.We didn't know nothing about the Bible, and if we had a Bible none of us knowed how to read it.We didn't even know when Christmas came, there wasn't no celebration of any kind.

Nobody ever studied about running off to the North or to anywhere else for that matter.We knowed well and good them patrollers would catch us if we even started.We would hear about such as that going on once in a while from some of the folks that would come to our dances.That was the only way there was to catch the news.

There wasn't no hoodoo doctors on the place, and if there was ever a haint seen, the one what seen it sure kept it to hisself.It might have been because nobody ever died out there.I don't believe in the like of that nohow.

I don't know how long the war had been going on when we went back to Mr. Frank's place to get away from the overlow.We hadn't been there so very long when the Yankee soldiers came marching by, put us all in wagons, and carried us up to Memphis.They had a place for us to stay and we was fed out of the commissary.Memphis had already been taken by the Yankees.They made my pa a soldier, and he stayed in the army at Memphis till the war was over.The day peace was declared, a big music boat came up the Mississippi River.The band was playing, and everybody on it was singing, "We done hung Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree."Jeff Davis was the rebel man who was trying to keep us slaves, and Abraham Lincoln was the man what freed us.We was told when we got freed we was going to get forty acres and a mule.Instead of that we didn't get nothing.I couldn't tell much difference, we was doing pretty good anyhow.

The KKK started up about that time, but they never once came my way.I think they just got after the folks they didn't like.when my pa got let out of the army, we all came back to Mississippi and went to farming on Mrs. Bullock's place near Senatobia.I was living there when I married Dock Dixon, and from there we moved to Sumner.From there we moved to Mr. Studervant's place.My husband got into trouble there, and was sent to the country farm for two years.After that we separated; he went back to the hills, and we never went back together.We had seven children, six boys and one girl.They is all dead excusing John and Tom.I don't know where John is, he is always moving about.Tom is farming on the Lee place near Clarksdale.

I had saved my money that I made cooking and farming so I decided to buy this little house.I is been living in it twenty or thirty years.It was in the middle of the cotton patch, but now I has neighbors on all sides.These children around me just raises themselves.I is always talking about their mas just putting them in the street and they gone.Heaps of the white folks ain't raising theirs no better.Just yesterday one of them poor white children called me "old nigger."

I can't do much work now, and I can't hear and see so good.I has me a little garden and sometimes I sells greens and sweet potatoes out of it.The government helps me along, but it don't take much for me to live on as I lives here all alone.When I is well enough I goes to the Baptist Church that I has joined, and when I ain't able to go I just stays home where I can be quiet and peaceful.

Interview with Lizzie Norfleet

There ain't no need for me to try to tell you how old I is, cause I don't know, and nobody don't know.When the folks with learning figures it out, one says one thing and one says another, so I just decided if they can't make their calculations come out the same, they don't know a bit more about it than me.While the war was going on I was a good big girl, old enough to carry water to the fields for twenty-five hands, and to drive the mule around to run the gin.Children was more apt in them days, and they learned more.Off-handed, I would say in the neighborhood of twelve years old, but I don't know.

I was born on the Norfleet place in Quitman County.My Pa, Jack Flagg, and my Ma, Sally, came from Tennessee.I never had but one brother, Bob.He died when he was a baby, but I had two sisters, Lou and Nellie.All of us belonged to Mr. Ferd Norfleet, even my grandpa and grandma.I can remember when my grandma, Aggie died, but I can't recall my grandpa, Bob.

All the houses where the slaves lived was made of logs, and was long side of each other.They was known as the quarters.We had homemade beds to sleep in and the mattresses was made of hay.They wasn't bad, because they was thick enough to be soft.

We was fed on whatsoever was raised on the place.Each family had a garden over by the edge of the woods.Our meal was made from the corn raised in the field.It made good bread and we liked it.The smokehouse was always kept full of hog meat.My Pa had good dogs and did a heap of hunting.We was always well supplied with possums, coons, and rabbits.He was a good fisherman, too, and would bring home the prettiest string of fish you ever seen.Everybody did their own cooking in their own house, over the big log fire.Every morning before day, the overseer blowed the horn for to wake the hands up.They had to dress, cook the breakfast, and be ready to work by daybreak.

They had three different overseers that I knowed of:Mr. Dickerson, Mr. Waddell, and the last one, Mr. Polk.They was pretty nice till they got mad, then they was sure fractous.All our clothes was made on the place.The cloth was wove right there, too, that they was made of.The dresses for the women was beautiful, one dark stripe and one bright stripe.Folks them days knowed how to mix pretty colors.In the summer we didn't wear nothing but slip-on shirts, but in the winter we had real heavy underclothes to keep us warm.Our shoes was bought, and they was made of thick leather with brass tips over the toes.The brass sure did dress them off.they don't put brass on shoes anymore and I can't see why; they lasted heaps longer and looked so much better.

Master Ferd Norfleet, and his wife, Miss Elvira, had three children.One girl, Miss Boyd, and two sons, George and Tom.They lived in Memphis and only come now and then occasionally down to the place to see how things was going.Master built a big house where the overseer lived, and kept part of it for hisself and family whensoever they cared to come to the plantation.

Mister Tom always come down for New Years and brought a lot of young folks with him.He would invite all the neighbors in, get the old fiddler to play for them to dance, and call they self seeing the new year in.The house looked mighty pretty all glowing with lights.It was a nice house, built out of lumber like they use now, but no log house like the ones we lived in.The yard was filled with pecan trees and the grass was always mowed.Master's place wasn't no scrubbery place, I tell you that, and there wasn't no poor whites living no where near us, nothing but niggers.How many I don't know, but there was sure a heap of them.The place was so big it took a many a one to work it.I wouldn't have no idea how many acres Master owned.

During cotton picking time everybody stopped work before dark, so as to get the cotton they had picked to the gin house to be weighed.They carried in in wheel barrows, and everybody had to stay until his cotton was weighed to see if they had enough for a day's work.Sometimes the lanterns would have to be lit to see to weight the last of the cotton.

When the cotton was ginned, all the seed that was kept for planting was put in the seed house, and the rest of them was piled up outside.Whenever my feet got cold I would dig a hole in the seed pile and put my feet in it.They will get just as warm that way as putting them to the fire.Old Sterling Flagg, who helped me drive the mule to run the gin learned me that.

The overseer was the one that done the punishing.We never heard of such things as jails.If a person wouldn't work, or if he ran off, he would get whipped for that, and if he did it the second time, he got whipped harder.I can remember two that ran off; one was a cripple woman, and one was my Uncle.They got them both back and both of them got whipped.I never is seen no slave with chains on, nor has I ever seen any bought or sold.I is heard my Ma tell how she was put on the block and auctioned off to the highest bidder, but I never seen none of that.

None of us could read or write, and we never had nobody to learn us.When Master and Ole Miss came down from Memphis, they always brought us shoes and clothes.Old Master call himself giving us a lecture.He would get us all together and tell us we must be good.He say he is a Christian and he ain't going to be cruel to nobody, nor allow no mistreatment to none of his slaves.

There wasn't no church of no kind on the place, but the old people would go to one another's house and sing and pray.There was an old man on the place that was a kind of preacher.They whipped him one day but he wouldn't deny.He said that was his victory over hell, and if they whipped him to death, when they turned him loose he was going on the same way.We didn't have no Bible readings, no baptizings, and no preaching.If a slave died there wasn't no Christian burial, just a box with the corpse in it that was taken to the grave yard in a wagon.All the slaves went to the grave, and from there they went back to work.There wasn't no song, no prayer, or no nothing over the dead.

Another thing I is never heard of is any trouble of no kind between the whites and the colored.If a slave ran off, he didn't go to the North, he only went to the woods and hid.The patrollers and night riders didn't interfere on our place, we didn't know nothing about them.

The Fourth of July was the day for the big barbecues.First on one place then on another.Like this year we would hold it on our place,.and the neighbors would all come.Next year they would hold it, and us all would go.We liked that getting together because it was the only way we had of passing the news, then we meet up one to the other.At that time it was mighty little we ever heard.Sometimes we held dances on the place Saturday nights, and for the music one man would beat on a tin pan and two would blow quills.That was fine to dance by, so we would cup up and have a good time.

No work was done on Saturday after dinner, except washing the clothes, and none at all on Sunday.We would do whatever we wanted to on that day.In the fall of the year we liked to go to the woods and gather nuts and persimmons.Christmas day was just like Sunday.We didn't work and we didn't have no celebration, not even for the children.On rainy days we had corn shuckings, but that wasn't no party.Course we liked it cause we was all together, laughing, singing, and having a good time.At that the corn had to be shucked just the same.

Slaves didn't have no weddings with a preacher and all that.Had nothing to do but let Master know it, and he tell you can be man and wife.

The children on the place had a good time.They was carefree till they get old enough to work.They was looked after careful and made to obey.They wasn't allowed to be sassy and impertinent to old folks.The girls would ring up their little games and the boys play marbles.The old folks told them ghost stories that scared them most to death.Our house was near a graveyard, and on rainy nights I wouldn't take my eyes off that graveyard looking out for some of them haints that walk at night.Some folks can't see them, and I is one of that kind.Even when I hears them I can't see them.One night I was sick and was staying at my Ma's house so she could take care of me.I heard something fall in the middle of the floor, and I sat up straight in bed and I couldn't see nothing.I just says to myself, "If you is a spirit you ain't going to do nothing to me and I cain't going to do nothing to you."He was passing on wheresoever he was going to.

When the slaves got sick, a doctor from Friar's Point was sent for to tend them.The old women on the place looked after them till they was up and about.The old women looked after the babies and children, too, cause they had done learned about different herbs, and how to make tea out of them for the babies.The older children had their worm medicine put in molasses so they wouldn't mind eating it.Every child wore an asafetida bag round the neck to keep from catching disease, for in them days they didn't know nothing about no charms or nothing of the kind.The asafetida bag was the only dependence.

There wasn't no big to do when freedom come.We knowed it by the change in the work.Instead of working for nothing, we was told we was going to get two-thirds of the crop.Outside of that we didn't know no difference.Old Master didn't even come down to the place, and we never seen no Yankee soldiers, but the Rebel soldiers camped in Master's house.The Ku Klux Klan and the night riders never came to interrupt the Norfleet place.I heard of them, but never seen them.We only made one crop on the place after freedom, cause we moved on Mrs. Page's place.Dr. Peace wanted to get us on his place, cause he had knowed all my family on account of being the doctor for the Norfleet's.He made some sort of satisfaction agreement with Mrs. Page, and moved us all on to his place.I lived there till I was grown and married, and all my children was born there.Years later, my husband bought a forty acre block on the Irvin place, but after we moved up there, he found in place of buying, we was paying ten dollars an acre, and they couldn't sell cause there was too many heirs.My husband then bought this little home on the Reinhart place, and I has been living in it ever since.

I married Jim Norfleet some years after the war.We didn't have no big wedding, we just got the license from the courthouse at Friar's Point, and Nat Black, the preacher, married us at Berry Moore's house where prayer meeting was held.After the meeting we stayed and was married.I had six children, three boys:Henry, Tom, and Richard; and three girls:Nellis, Jettie, and Charity.Nellie and Richard are dead.Henry lives here in the house with me; Tom across the road; Jetting at Lyon; and Charity at Shufordsville.All of them farms by the day.How many grandchildren I got I couldn't begin to tell.These little ones playing around is my great-grandchildren.I has got a heap of them, too, and I keeps some of them while their Ma is picking cotton.

I ain't never met my husband till after the surrender, when he come to the Peace place when we was attached.He bought in the war on the North side, and when he died, twelve years ago, he left me this house in the clear.The government pays me a pension of forty dollars a month.I was getting fifty but they has done cut it to forty.

The report came out after the war that every family was going to get forty acres and a mule to start them out, but I ain't never seen nobody what received nothing.All I seen is transferring from plantation to plantation.You wasn't made to stay nowhere, so they all moved about.

There was a lot of talk after the war about Abraham Lincoln.Lord, that's been so far back I can't recollect much about it, except he worked for freedom.The colored was all under bondage, and they was afraid to speak till after freedom, and for that cause very little was said.If we heard a cannon go off, we speak low about it, just kinda whisper it under our hands, one to another.There wasn't much said about Jefferson Davis.According to the Bible, he was wrong.The Lord said, "The world was made sufficient for all to have a living."He never intended bondage for nobody, that's why he made the world big enough for everybody to have a home.Booker T. Washington's occupation was right.He taught slavery was no good.I don't know nothing about that reconstruction.The men folks might know, because I is heard them say they voted, but I don't know if they did or not.There was colored man by the name of Brown that held a big public office at Friar's Point.If I don't mistake, he was the High Sheriff.That caused a big riot, and they made him leave out of there, and he ain't never been heard of in this part of the country since.

Long after the war, schools was started for the colored, and lots of them went, and learned to read and write.Nearly all of this younger generation is got some education, but with that, they ain't brought up like I come.The world done changed, and the young ones brings their own self up now.The women don't tend to their children no more.Not none of them.

Ever since I was a young woman I has been a church member.I belongs to the Liberty Baptist Church, but I don't go to services very often now, cause I is getting old and don't get about much.Everbody is better off if they have a good rebellioin to depend on, so when they go away from here, they will be ready to find that better place.

Interview with Smith Simmons

I came to Coahoma County from the hills.I was born in Montgomery County, about six miles from Winona.I never heard anybody say what year I was born, and I don't know how old I was when the Civil War was fought, but I wasn't big enough to work, I knows that, but I had sense enough to know what was going on.Seems like all the little things stays with me better than the bigs ones do.I can remember good and well going out with one of the Master's sons and catching birds under a trap and cooking them in the field.I will never forget that because it was the most fun I ever had.

My Pa, Charles, and my Ma, Calline, was both from North Carolina.I had four brothers:Frank, Sollie, Murry, and Bryan; and four sisters:Minerva, Susie, Mollie, and Margaret.The last time I heard from my brother Murry, he was living somewhere up North.He may be dead now, if so, I ain't heard of it.All of the rest of my brothers and sisters is dead.The place we lived on was small.There was only three large families on it, and each family ate in their own house.There wasn't no quarters or eating kitchen like the big places had.Our beds was homemade steads, with rope cords to hold the mattress.I never seen my grandpa and grandma, and never heard much about them.The place had a great big garden for the white folks and the slaves.We was always fed mighty good; peas, greens, meat, lasses, and plenty of milk.I liked everything to eat and still does.Above everything, I is a crank about my milk.I likes it yet as well as I did then.We didn't have no game like possum and rabbits; didn't have no way to kill them.

In them days they wasn't no money paid for work, cause everybody worked for their owner for their keep.The clothes we had wasn't nothing to brag on, the children wore shirt tails the year round.When the weather was cold, they put one on over the others.The grown folks had good shoes, cause they had to go outside to work.

My master's name was Mr. Dick Blaylock, and his wife's name was Miss Janie.They had seven children.I don't remember the names of all them children, but I remembers well the oldest daughter, Miss Mollie, cause me and her was the same age.My white folks lived in a common box house, and they was very respectable people, but they don't care for no fine doings.They didn't have no overseer or driver, cause Master looked after everything hisself.I don't believe there was more than one hundred acres on the place.Master blowed the horn at daylight for the field hands to get up, but the children lay in bed as long as they pleased.Master sure wasn't hard on nobody, and there was very little punishment that went on; if any of the slaves got whipped I is never heard of it.Such a thing as jails was not known.They didn't need such as that for slaves.They was taught better than to do all the things people is put in jail for now.

The folks was always telling about slave dealers travelling around auctioning off their slaves.I is heard my Ma tell about it a many a time but I is never seen it.None of them ever came anywhere near us.

None of the slaves on our place could read or write.None of them knowed so much as the A.B.C., cause there wasn't nobody to teach them.Ole Miss and Master couldn't so much as write their own name, and the only person with any learning was one of Master's daughters.She was the one that visited around, and in that way she got her learning just catch as could.

We didn't know nothing about religion.There wasn't no church to go to, and we never as much as heard about the Bible and baptizings.None of the slaves died to my memberance, so I can't say how a funeral would be held.

It was very seldom a slave ever ran off.My oldest brother tried that once, but he was caught by the patrollers and brought back so quick he never tried that no more.My Pa lived on a different place from us, cause my Master didn't own him.He had a pass to come to our place so there wasn't no trouble about that.Any of us could visit around if we had a pass, and when we do the visiting, we tell all the news we knowed and received news the same way.We kept up pretty good with what was going on.The white folks and the colored got along mighty peaceful together, and never has been no trouble between them.

Saturday at twelve o'clock we was let off from work, and the women did the washing, but the men didn't do nothing.Saturday nights we most always had a dance.The banjo and the pat of the hands was the music we had.Sundays was rest and play do, no church to go to, no work to do.In the summer the grown folks walked about and visited, and the children had a rail they skinned the cat on, and a plant across a long for to see-saw.My Ma sang a song she had learned in North Carolina:

Everything was lazy like and peaceful the whole day Sunday, and the old folks told ghost stories to the children.They would think about them ghosts every time dark would come, and that's how come folks grow up to believe in them.I am going to come clean and say straight out, I got no faith in such as that.If them things could be seen, I would run across one of them some time or another, but I ain't, so I telling you, I got no faith in it.I don't believe in them hoodoo doctors neither.I don't pay them no attention when I hears all this and that about what they can do.I just says to myself, "Seeing is believing," and I ain't never seen.All that came along after slavery.When a slave got sick a white doctor was sent for to cure him, and they always did it.If they was just a little sick, the old women what nursed them could cure them with tea made from the bark of a dogwood tree or with wild sage tea.They didn't use no charms, they came out in later years.The asafetida bags that was worn was different.They could keep off sickness and they would sure do it.

We never did have no sort of celebration on our place.Christmas and New Years was spent like Sundays.On a place about a mile away from us they held big corn shuckings.We would about the enjoyment of it, but none of us didn't never get to go.While the war was going on, I remember one day my Ma was working in the field, and who should come riding up on beautiful horses but two black soldiers.Everybody said they was Yankees, and they stop right where Ma was working and said they had come to get all our horses.My Ma called herself hiding the horses, but that didn't do no good, cause they got them just the same.When the soldiers got to the big road a flock of geese was crossing, them soldiers shot every goose and left them there in the big road.That was as much as I seen of the war.The fighting wasn't near enough to ever hear it, and we didn't know much about it till it was all over.Master called all the slaves up and said, "You is just as free as I am, you can stay and go as you please."We all stayed, but my Pa left his Master and come to live at my Ma's home.The story got around, the colored folks was going to get twenty acres and a mule, but they didn't get it.Master gave my Ma a head of corn and a right smart meat, but I didn't see no money pass, I recon she used that for money, but we all understood if we didn't like that we could go.

About that time the Ku Klux Klan started up, and if you get into something you got no business, or be where you don't belong, that Klan catch you and whip you.They said they was to keep order.School started up for colored folks, and they had white teachers.

The colored was allowed to vote, but I wasn't old enough for that so I didn't pay no attention.I is voted, but not for several years.They stopped the colored folks from voting, but I ain't never heard the reason for it.

I has farmed all my life, and most of the time right around Winona.When I was grown I married Ella Wilson.No big wedding, the preacher married us at home.We had three children, but all of them is dead.I is got one grandchild that is farming near Indianola.In 1925 me and my wife moved to Coahoma County.We lived first on Mr. Myers place and then on Mr. Herrins.Six years ago my wife died, and since that time I has been working by the day and picking cotton.I never is been much of a hand to keep up with the great men like Abraham Lincoln, and Mr. Jefferson Davis.I known who they is and what they each done and I know that of the two, Mr. Lincoln was liked the best cause he was for freedom.Sometimes I think freedom is better and sometimes I don't.In slavery times the old folks was cared for and now there ain't no one to see to them.I belongs to the Baptist Church, and I thinks everybody is better off if they joins it.When you see a fellow got no religion, as a rule he ain't no good, but the better ones outnumbers the poor members.There is such a big stir in the church now about money that it keeps it all tore up.

The younger generation that is coming on is the same as old ones.Some is nice and some ain't.I sees a whole lots and I can't explain it all, about the rough company some of them keeps.Its mighty bad, but I just goes ahead on and pays them no mind.Someday they might get the true light.Until then I got no comment to make.

Interview with Maria White

Is you ever heard of a paralysis stroke?That's what they say struck me about sixteen years ago, and since that time I done lost my power in half my body.I was born in the year 1853.The folks all say I don't know how old I is, and I don't, but I is certain I was born in the year 1853, cause my Ma always kept up with it.She gave the number to me, and told me, don't never forget it.

My Ma's name was Judai and my Pa's name was William.They didn't have but two children, me and my sister Hannah.We was both born on Mr. Low Fletcher's place near Kosciusko.Master Low was a mighty fine man, and treated us all good.He looked after his place hisself, and didn't have no overseer or driver till the war broke out.

Soon as that war started, Master Low joined the Army, and he was a captain in it.That kept him away from home all the time except when he could slip away at night and come home to see his family.Master Low's wife, Miss Nancy, was the boss of things after Master left.She got an oversser to see that the work went on.He was old poor white trash, but he sure would do what Miss told him.He got the slaves up at the crack of dawn, and worked them till dark.

Miss Nancy had six children when the war was over.I don't know how many she had after that.She took me in the house to learn me how to nurse the baby, but she sure was a fractious lady.When I didn't do things to suit her, she would whack me over the head with whatever she had in her hand.I slept on the floor by the baby's crib, and when she called me to get up, if I didn't hear her, she would throw a glass of water in my face, no matter how cold the weather was.

You couldn't never leave the place unless Ole Miss gave you a pass to go.If you did leave, them patrollers would sure bring you back, and they wouldn't take no foolishness off nobody.One day Miss gave the order to have one of them women whipped.The next day Master came home, and he sure got mad about the whipping.He said they was his slaves, that they came from his folks, and he wouldn't stand for having nobody whip them.

Master's place wasn't very large, but it was big enough to raise all the food we needed.Us had a garden, cows, and hogs.There was plenty of game such as possums, rabbits, and coons.Old Aunt Minta cooked for all of the slaves.She fed all the children before night so they would rest well.My Grandma, Charity, and my Ma, did the spinning of the thread and the weaving of the cloth.They had a big loom that the cloth was made on.Besides making the cloth for our clothes, they made it for soldiers, too.They used dye to color the soldier's clothes, but ours was just left natural.We wore the same little slips in winter that we wore in the summer.The hardest thing to get was shoes.They would buy them for the work hands in the winter, but us children had to go barefooted.

My owners was kinda young folks.They wasn't so rich and the house they lived in wasn't nothing to brag on, but they was good livers.I is heard my Ma tell many times about the slave dealers.She said they would take the slaves from place to place all chained together, and they would make them sing to attract attention.Some of them would be crying about leaving their children.Ma said my Pa was put on a block and sold just like stock would be.One day a dealer brought a big drove of slaves, and among them was a real yellow nigger that could read and write.The folks wouldn't believe he was a nigger cause he could read and write, and they wouldn't let the man stop there long.They kept him going.

None of us had ever been taught anything in the way of book learning.We wasn't taught no Bible neither.The grown ups could go to the white folks church on Sunday, but they wouldn't let the children go.The whites and the colored got along mighty peaceful together.I never is heard of any trouble between them.There was one man on the place named Henry, and he was the terriblest fellow about running off.He had been caught many times by the patrollers and brought back.The last time he ran off, he went to the North and we never seen that man again.

When we had our quilting parties, we invited our neighbors to come, same way with the dances on Saturday nights.Nobody ever attended what ain't got no pass, cause them patrollers is sure looking out for that.Everbody would tell the news they heard on their place, as that was the only way we had for the word to get about.There wasn't much celebration on Christmas like there is these days.The children was given some cakes and candy, and that was about all there was to it.Maybe that's why we had so little sickness, as there wasn't all that trash to eat.Then, too, the children all wore asafetida bags around their necks, which helped to keep off diseases.We didn't wear charms and all such as that like they do now.I never even heard about a hoodoo doctor till long years after the war.The only person that ever died was Old Aunt Minta and my Pa.They was carried off the place somewhere to be buried, but I can't recollect much about it, except that it was the second year of the war.

We often saw big regiments of Yankee soldiers passing by.Once when Master was home, some of them came on the place looking for him, but they never did catch him.He always managed to dodge them somehow.I heard the old folks say the white folks tried to keep us from hearing about freedom, but they couldn't keep that from our ears, because there was so much talk going on.Quick as my Ma heard it she left that place and took me and my sister with her.Ole Miss was in the bed with a young baby, but none of us didn't go hear her to say goodbye, cause none of us didn't care if we never seen her again.

We didn't get any land like we thought we was going to get, but we found a home on another big plantation where they was in need of hands.I stayed there until I married Louis Jefferson.I had one child by him named Emma, but she died when she was eleven months old, and I has never had no more children.After my first husband died I married Columbus White, and he had one child, Lucille when I married him.I is living with her now, and has been ever since Columbus died.All my days I has done nothing but farm.You know how colored folks is about going here and yonder.Well, that's how we happened to come to the Delta, just changing about, trying to better ourselves.

I has lived here now about sixten years.I is a member of the Methodist Church, but before I joined it, I was a Baptist, but confusion and one thing and another caused me to change.I still like the Baptist religion best of all.This younger generation that's coming on now sure is much better brought up than us was.They is got fine schools where they can get learning, and nice brick churches where they hears the word of God.If they don't turn out right, there ain't no excuse for them.I sometimes wonder what I would have thought when I was young, if I could have waked up some morning and seen the world just like it stands today.

Interview with Callie Rolley

I was born in Shelby County, Tennessee.What year I just can't say, but it was before the Civil War broke out.When that war started I was old enough to plow, so I must have been somewhere in the neighborhood of fourteen or fifteen years old.My ma came from Atlanta, Georgia, and she was sold, with her two children to Mister Thomas Saddler.Her husband didn't have the same Master as my Ma had, so he was not sold with her.Mr. Saddler's wife was Miss Beckie, and they had a big family of children:three girls and five boys.

They lived in an old log house, which wasn't much better than the old shack what we lived in.Them white folks was poor white trash, and they worked in the field same as the slaves, and they sure didn't know nothing about how to treat a nigger.Their little old place wasn't much account, and they didn't even have enough money to buy a man to work it.Us was the only family he owned.I never is heard how my Master in Atlanta happened to seel us to such folks as the Saddlers.I expect we must have been bought by slave dealers, who brought us to Tennessee.

My Pa's name was Isam Books.He lived on the place next to us, and his white folks was the same kind that we had.I had four sisters:Minnie, Maline, Mary, and Belle.And four brothers:Isaac, Jhonah, Phiet, and Tom.All of them children was born right there except the two what came from Atlanta.My Mistress, Miss Beckie, had such a big family of her own to care for, she didn't have much time for anything else.

Every Sunday morning the rations for the week was weighed out for us.When my ma came in from the field she done the cooking, till we got big enough to help.The children was left in the house by theirself, with the older ones taking care of the younger ones.Mr. Saddler sold one of my little sisters when she was five years old, and we ain't never seen her since.My Master sure was a mean man.One Christmas day he sent my little brother to keep the cows out of the wheat.He was a little chap, not more than nine years old, and while he was watching them cows, the little children on the next place started shooting some little firecrackers.Childlike, he went where they was at and forgot all about the wheat patch.But them cows didn't forget it.The first thing you knowed they was all in there tearing that field to pieces, and when my Master seen that, he was so mad he beat that child near to death.That was on a Monday when they brought that boy in and put him in the bed.That blood ain't never stopped running out of his mouth and nose till he died on Friday.

Master always had plenty for us to eat, and his smoke house was filled with meat.Every time the Yankee soldiers came by, they stole some of the meat out of that smoke house, and they stole everything else they could find to eat.

One day Master's boys caught two Yankees.They carried them to the house and put them upstairs where they could guard them.After two nights them boys got mighty sleepy, just sitting there watching them Yankees take their rest, and the first thing they knowed, they had dropped off to sleep, and when they woke up, them Yankees had left out of there.That was shortly before the war ended.

When peace was declared Master told us about it.He didn't try to smother it or nothing of the king, he just said, "You is all going to be set free, and if you want to stay on you can."We didn't have no place in particular to go, so we said we would finish out the year.We could come and go as we pleased, and make plenty of money picking cotton all around.

The next year us all left, and my family moved on to another and better farm.I started cooking for a white gentleman what had just got married, and he had a mighty nice wife.They sure was good, kind people, but I had to see to their cow.Old Red was the worst cow I ever seen about breaking out, and one day she got away.While I was out looking for her, I came to the place where Mr. Puryear used to tie his slaves to the trees and whip them.The folks had done told me to stay away from there, but I didn't pay them no mind, besides I had to find old Red, so I walked on careless like till I approached them trees.Then I heard something go, "Swasher!M--M--M--Swasher!M--M--M!"You ain't never heard such moans as them in your life.I says, Lord, let me get away from here.Lord I sure ain't the one what done that whipping, and so I gets myself away from them trees, and never again is I been by that neck of the woods.

I is seen a many a ghost in my life.One used to follow me every night when I was keeping company what I knowed was wrong.When I would open the gate and go in, that haint would step right back, which meant I better not go in.The nearest I ever came to being hoodooed was by a man that was trying to make me marry him.He fixes a bag with some hair, a bone from a dead man's finger, and some dirt from the graveyard.He put it under the ground under my doorsteps.I didn't know it was there, so I walked right up them steps into the house.Pretty soon that man came along to see what had happened, but he walked over it hisself.He hadn't got in the house good when he fell out, and said he was dying.I called myself doing everything for him I knowed how, but he didn't get no better till he told my ma about that bag and she went and dug it out.We had to get an old lady to come break that spell before he got entirely well.

After Master Saddler died, colored folks moved into his house, but they couldn't stay there, the haints bothered them so.Some folks said he had money buried there, but if he did its sure going to stay there, cause there ain't nobody going to that haunted house after it.They even have Squinch Owls in that yard.The kind what shivers when they calls.You sure better leave them birds along, because when they starts that shivering, there ain't no iron in the fire or turning of shoes what's going to keep you from dying.

I remember how come us to move to the Delta, cause we came such a long time ago.I has been married three times, and two of my husbands is dead.Andy, the one is is living with now is making a crop here on the Stovall place.He says he ain't so old as he is, but he looks like he is older.I has two girls living, they is both married and making a crop on the place, too.My three grandchildren all live in Memphis.

We is all good Baptist people.I didn't get no religion learning in my young days, but now the church done give me light to live right, and I don't know nothing else.It is outrageous the way the young folks is brought up now.They is grown before they gets away from the floor.

I is been on this place thirty or forty years, and let me tell you what happened to me when I was on my way home from church the other Sunday.When I gets nearly home, my feets sorter gets to trembling, and they ain't so steady no way.One of these young boys was coming along in his car, and I asks him how much he charge me for to take me on up to my house.He said he would take me for twenty-five cents.I ain't made him no reply till yet, I just put my foot in the road and started for home.Such as him is the ones that say they got all the knowledge.They can tell you all about Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, and Booker T. Washington, folks I just knows the name of, but when it comes to knowing about manners and politeness, Old Callie could learn them more than their little heads could ever hold.