Quotes: Books 1 and 2 from I WAS A SLAVE
Slave Plantations and Slave Men
I WAS A SLAVE: Book 1:
Descriptions of Plantation Life
BETTY POWERS:
" ’Twas lak [It was like] a town wid de diffe’nt businesses. Thar am de blacksmith shop, shoe shop, carpenter shop, de milk house, de marster had ’bout 100 milk cows, de weavin’ room, de gin, an’ de feed mill. ... De cullud fo’ks lives in de cabins. Now, in each cabin lives one fam’ly. ’Twas de father, mother an’ de chilluns. Ise can shut my eyes now, an’ see dem rows of cabins. Thar am three rows, an’ de rows am ’bout ha’f a mile long. Mammy, Pappy, an’ their 12 chilluns lives in our cabin, so Mammy have to cook fo’ 14 people, ’sides her field work. ... De marster am a sweet, fine man. ’Twas his wife an’ de overseer dat am tough. Dat womens had no mercy. ... How Ise hates her. Yous see dem long ears Ise have? Well, dat’s f’om de pullin’ dey gits f’om her. Ise am wo’kin’ ’round de house, keepin’ flies off de fo’ks, gittin’ wautah [water] and sich [such]. Fo’ ever’thin’ she don’t lak [like], ’twas a ear-pullin’ Ise gits. ’Twas pull, pull, an’ some mo’ pull ever’ time she comes neah me."
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I WAS A SLAVE: Book 2:
The Lives of Slave Men
WES BRADY:
"We lived in log houses and slep’ on hay mattress with lowell covers, and et [ate] fat pork and cornbread and ’lasses [molasses] and all kinds garden stuff. If we et flour bread, our women folks had to slip the flour siftin’s from Missy’s kitchen and darsn’t [dare not] let the white folks know it. We wore one riggin’ lowell clothes a year. I never had shoes on ’til after surrender come. ... The overseer was ’straddle his big horse at three o’clock in the mornin’, roustin’ the hands off to the field. He got them all lined up and then [he] come back to the house for breakfas’. The rows was a mile long and no matter how much grass was in them, if you leaves one sprig on your row, they beats you nearly to death. Lots of times they weighed the cotton by candlelight. All the hands took dinner to the field in buckets and the overseer give them fifteen minutes to git dinner. He’d start cuffin’ some of them over the head when it was time to stop eatin’ and go back to work."
Books 3 and 4 >