Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves | Page 6

hard time. I have worked hard. I been ploughing, hoeing, cradling grain, picking cotton all my life. I love to plough and cradle grain. I love to work.
"There is a big difference now and the way I was raised up. They used to be whooped and made mind. They learned how to work. Now the times run away from the people. They used to buy what they couldn't raise in barrels. Now they buy it in little dabs. I ain't used to it. White folks do as they pleases and the darkies do as they can. Everybody greedy as he can be it seem like to me. Laziness coming on more and more every year as they grow up. I ain't got a lazy bone in me. I'm serving and praising my Lord every day, getting ready to go over in the next world."

JAN 14 1938 Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed: Mike Genes Holly Grove, Ark. Age: 72
"I heard folks talk is all I know bout slavery. I was born in Arkansas. My mother was Sara Jane Whitley. My father was ___ Genes. My mother came here from Tennessee wid Henderson Sanders. I was raised on the Duncan place. My mother raised us a heap like old times. I got fire tongs now she had. She made ash cakes and we had plenty milk. I got her old pot hooks too. She cooked cracklin' bread in the winter and black walnut bread the same way. We made palings and boards for the houses and barns. Jes gradually we gittin' away from all that. Times is changing so fast.
"I heard 'em say in slavery they got 'em up fore day and they worked all day. Some didn't have much clothes. I can remember three men twisting plow lines. They made plow lines.
"I vote if I have a chance, but I really don't care bout it. I don't know how to keep up to vote like it ought to be.
"This young generation may change but if they don't they air a knock out. They do jes anyway and everyway. They don't save and cain't save it look like, way we got things now. Folks don't raise nothin' and have to buy so much livin' is hard. Folks all doin fine long as the cotton is to pick. This is two reconstructions I been through. Folks got used to work after that other one and I guess they have to get used to work this time till it get better. I don't know what causes this spell of hard times after the wars."

#653 Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed: Jennie Wormly Gibson Biscoe, Arkansas Age: 49
"Gran'ma was Phoebe West. Mama was Jennie West. Mama was a little girl when the Civil War come on. She told how scared her uncle was. He didn't want to go to war. When they would be coming if he know it or get glimpse of the Yankee soldiers, he'd pick up my mama. She was a baby. He'd run for a quarter of a mile to a great big tree down in the field way back of the place off the road. He never had to go to war. Ma said she was little but she was scared at the sight of them clothes they wore. Mama's and grandma's owners lived at Vicksburg a lot of the time but where that was at Washington County, Mississippi. They had lots of slaves.
"Grandma was a midwife and doctored all the babies on the place. She said they had a big room where they was and a old woman kept them. They et milk for breakfast and buttermilk and clabber for supper. They always had bread. For dinner they had meat boiled and one other thing like cabbage, and the children got the pot-liquor. It was brought in a cart and poured in wooden troughs. They had gourds to dip it out with. They had gourds to drink their cool spring water with.
"Daylight would find the hands in the field at work. Grandma said they had meat and bread and coffee till the war come on. They had to have a regular meal to work on in the morning.
"Grandma said their something to eat got mighty slim in war times and kept getting slimmer and slimmer. They had plenty sorghum all the time. Them troughs was hewed out of a log and was washed and hung in the sun till next mealtime. They cooked in iron pots and skillets on the fire. Grandma worked where they put her but her main trade was seeing after the sick on that place.
"They had a fiddler on the place and had big dances now and then.
"This young generation won't be advised no way you can fix it. I don't know what in