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An Interview With An Ex-Slave
This information was gathered from an interview with an old Negro woman who was a child during the days of slavery. She resides on Raymond Street in Atlanta, Georgia, with a son and a daughter-in-law. Her name is Mrs. Lydia Calhoun Starks. Mrs. Starks does all of her cooking, sewing, and housekeeping in spite of her age. She is quite an interesting person, although she neither reads nor writes. Here is what she says:
"Us li'l nigger chillun use to be treated jes fine on our place. You see we's too li'l to do anything 'cept play an' eat. Sometimes my brother had to bring the cows in from the pasture ... then again, we'd have ter shoo de turkeys back in. Dat's all we ever don'.
"My mother was name Polly Ann Calhoun and my pa was named George Calhoun. He done lived on a plantation 'bout two miles down de road. I had eight brothers and sisters ... Yes'm dey was nine of us!
"I was born in Avonville County in South Carolina. We belonged to Massa James Taggart. He was a real rich white man. He owned about twenty-five or thirty slaves ... an' he was jes' as nice ter 'em as he could be. Far's I can 'member, I don't believe anybody ever got a whippin' on our place. Massa Taggart jes' dared anybody ter look lak dey wanted ter whip any o' us. De "paddle rollers" came on our place one day. Aunt Nanny see'd 'em fust an' she ran an' tole Massa dat dey was dere. He run out of de house an' cussed 'em and tole 'em if he needed any whippin' don' on his place, he'd dawn sho do it hisself. Dey didn't come back dere neither."
Mrs. Starks informed the interviewer that "paddle rollers" didn't necessarily wait for slaves to be caught after dark off their plantations without a pass. They oft time just came on various plantations and whipped slaves. Some slave holders permitted such, others didn't, as was the case of her particular owner. She continued:
"I can remember seeing the ole over-seer on the plantation joining ours, jes' whippin' dem po' ole slaves till de couldn't even stan' up.
"On our place dey was some of ever thin' raised. We had chickens, turkeys, hogs, cows, peas, beans, cotton, syrup and corn ... all on our place. And us colored folks had plenty ter eat. Day didn't hev ter cook either. Uncle Dave cooked for all de slaves. An' de food was good, too, much better'n it is now a days. Cos' now, that was'nt the cas' of all the slaves. Dey was plenty of 'em which didn't hev nothin' hardly to eat.
"In de winter, Massa Taggart tried to give 'em same kind of work which wouldn't make de slaves have ter go outside in de weather. Dey shucked corn and shelled it, dey cleaned de stable. And dere was plenty of weavin' goin' on. There was one great ole fat woman slave dat done de weavin' mos' o' de time. Den de elder people carded and spun too. I used to help my gran'ma put the thread into hanks. Yeah, I she learned how to spin.
"De slaves always had Saturday and Sunday off on our place. An on Sunday Miss 'Lizabeth had Sunday School in de back yard. She really had Sunday School, too. T' wasn't lak dese things dey call Sunday school today. She taught us dat God made us all to serve him. Why dese s'here folks whats going on around here teaching dat dere ain't no God, I'd jes' lak to meet 'em. Yes sir! Why dey must be a fool an' a liar too. I sho em glad I ain't got no chillun to bring up in dese days."
At this point the interviewer interrupted Mrs. Starks to ask whether there were many superstitions among the Negro slaves. She laughed loudly and replied,
"Wal, chile, I jes' don' know. I do know dey's more talk o such things now than t' was then. If dem slaves believed in cunjuration an' things lak dat, sell de kept it to theyselves. Niggers in dem days wuzn't long-tongued lak dey is today. Dey didn't talk none hardly. I 'member dere was one slave on de place, mother used to tell us if we didn't want everbody to know it don' tell ole Jack."
"When a slave did some crime which couldn't be punished by whippin' him dey jes' hung him lak dey always have done folks, 'til these new-fangled ideal 'bout 'electrocution came about."
When de Civil War don broke out, none of my white folks went. But I do member Sherman. He came on our place with 'bout three body guards. He didn't tarry long. Jes' came thru gettin' de lay o de lan, I guess. We didn't hear nothin' bout de war cept whut our white folks don read to us in de newspapers. Didn't 'fect us none. We still got plenty t' eat and wear. An' after de war wal de slaves could stay on our place an' work. Take f'rinstance my gran'ma she got sick right after the war. An' she stayed right in her ole cabin and din't want fer a thing. She had all de wood she needed already cut and hauled to her door. They treated her so nice. She stayed right dere 'til she died. Ma father died de Xmas before de war and my mother married again and moved to Anderson County, South Carolina. I went too.
I jest wish, chile, dat you had seen me 'bout ten years ago. I could a tole you heaps of things, but now my mem'ry kinda fails me, an' I jes' cant think of anything else ter tell you. If I could read then, an' write a little, speck I'd wrote a book. S'too late now.
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