Her Days as a Slave
Year 1925
“He saw my maw on the Kilpatrick place and her man was dead. He told Dr. Kilpatrick, my massa, he’d buy my maw and her three chillun with all the money he had, iffen he’d sell her. But Dr. Kilpatrick was never one to sell any but the old niggers who was part working in the fields and past their breeding times. So my paw marries my maw and works the fields, same as any other nigger. They had six gals: Martha and Pamela and Josephine and Ellen and Katherine and me.
“I was born the same time as Miss Sara Kilpatrick. Dr. Kilpatrick’s first wife and my maw come to their time right together. Miss Sara’s maw died and they brung Miss Sara to suck with me. It’s a thing we ain’t never forgot. My maw’s name was Sallie and Miss Sara allus looked with kindness on my maw.
We sucked till we was a fair size and played together, which wasn’t no common thing. None the other li’l niggers played with the white chillun. But Miss Sara loved me so good.
“I was just about big enough to start playing with a broom to go bout sweeping up and not even half doing it when Dr. Kilpatrick sold me. They was a old white man in Trinity and his wife died and he didn’t have chick or child or slave or nothing. Massa sold me cheap, cause he didn’t want Miss Sara to play with no nigger young’un. That old man bought me a big doll and went off and left me all day, with the door open. I just sat on the floor and played with that doll. I used to cry. He’d come home and give me something to eat and then go to bed, and I slept on the foot of the bed with him. I was scared all the time in the dark. He never did close the door.
“Miss Sara pined and sickened. Massa did what he could, but there wasn’t not peartness in her. She got sicker and sicker, and massa brought another doctor. He say, You li’l gal is grieving the life out her body and she sho’ gwine die iffen you don’t do something about it.’ Miss Sara says over and over; I want Mary.’ Massa says to the doctor, That a li’l nigger young’un I done sold.’ The doctor tells him he had better git me back iffen he wants to save the life of his child. Dr. Kilpatrick has to give a big plenty more to get me back than what he sold me for, but Miss Sara plumps up right off and grows into fine health. Then massa marries a rich lady from Mississippi and they have chillun for company to Miss Sara and seem like for a time she forgits me.
“Massa Kilpatrick wasn’t any piddlin’ man. He was a man of plenty. He had a big house with no more style to it than a crib, but it could room plenty people. He was a medicine doctor and there were rooms in the second storey for sick folks who came to lay in. It would take two days to go all over the land he owned. He had cattle and stock and sheep and more then a hundred slaves and more besides. He bought the best of niggers near every time the speculators came that way. He’d make a swap of the old ones and give money for young ones what could work. He raised corn and cotton and cane and taters and goobers, sides the peas and other feeding for the niggers. I remember I held a hoe handle mighty onsteady when they put a old woman to larn me and some other chillun to scrape the fields. That old woman would be in a frantic. She’d show me and then turn about to show some other li’l nigger, and I’d have the young corn cut clean as the grass. She say, For the love of God, you had better learn it right, or Solomon will beat the breath out of your body.’ Old man Solomon was the nigger driver.
“Slavery was the worst days in the world. There were things past telling, but I got the scars on my old body to show to this day. I seed worse than what happened to me. I seed them put the men and women in the stock with they hands screwed down through holes in the board and their feet tied together and they naked behind to the world. Solomon the [sic] overseer beat them with a big whip and massa looked on. The niggers better not stop in the fields when they heard them yelling. They cut the flesh most to the bones and some they was when they taken them out of stock and put them on the beds, they never got up again.
“When a nigger died, they let his folks come out the fields to see him afore he died. They buried him the same day, took a big plank and bust it with an axe in the middle nough to bend it back, and put the dead nigger in between it. They’d cart them down to the graveyard on the place and not bury them deep nough that buzzards wouldn’t come circling round. Niggers mourn now, but in them days there wasn’t any time for mourning.
“The conch shell blew afore daylight and all hands had better got out for roll call or Solomon bust the door down and got them out. It was work hard, got beatings and half fed. They brought the victuals and water to the fields on a slide pulled by a old mule. Plenty times there was only a half barrel water and it stale and hot, for all us niggers on the hottest days. Mostly we ate pickled pork and corn bread and peas and beans and taters. There was never as much as we needed.
“The times I hated most was picking cotton when the frost was on the bolls. My hands got sore and cracked open and bled. We’d have a little fire in the fields and iffen the ones with tender hands couldn’t stand it no longer, we’d run and warm our hands a little bit. When I could steal a tater, I used to slip it in the ashes and when I’d run to the fire I’d take it out and eat it on the sly. “In the cabins it was nice and warm. They were built of pine boarding and there was one long room of them up the hill back of the big house. Near one side of the cabins was a fireplace. They’d bring in two, three big logs and put on the fire and they’d last near a week. The beds was made out of puncheons fitted on holes bored in the wall, and planks laid cross them poles. We had ticking mattresses filled with corn shucks. Sometimes the men built chairs at night. We didn’t know much bout having nothing, though.
“Sometimes massa let niggers have a little patch. They’d raise taters or goobers. They liked to have them to help fill out on the victuals. Taters roasted in the ashes were the best tasting eating I ever had. I could die better satisfied to have just one more tater roasted in hot ashes. The niggers 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 git a pass to go. They had to go at night, cause they couldn’t ever spare a hand from the fields.
“Once in a while they’d give us a little piece of Saturday evening to wash out clothes in the branch. We hang them on the ground in the woods to dry. They was a place to wash clothes from the well, but they was so many niggers all couldn’t get round to it on Sundays. When they’d get through with the clothes on Saturday evenings the niggers which sold they goobers and taters brought fiddles and guitars and come out and play. The others clapped their hands and stomped their feet and we young’uns cut a step round. I was plenty biggity and liked to cut a step.
“We were scared of Solomon and his whip, though, and he didn’t like frolicking. He didn’t like for us niggers to pray, either. We never heard of no church, but us have praying in the cabins. We’d set on the floor and pray with our heads down low and sing low, but if Solomon heard he’d come and beat on the wall with the stock of his whip. He’d say, I’ll come in there and tear the hide off your backs.’ But some the old niggers told us we got to pray to God that He doesn’t think different of the blacks and the whites. I know that Solomon is burning in hell today, and it pleasures me to know it.
“Once my maw and paw took me and Katherine after night to sleep to another place to a praying and singing. A nigger man with white beard told us a day was coming when niggers would only be the slaves of God.
We prayed for the end of Tribulation and the end of beatings and for shoes that fitted our feet. We prayed that us niggers could have all we wanted to eat and special for fresh meat. Some the old ones say we have to bear all, cause that all we can do. Some say they was glad to the time they’re dead, cause they’d rather rot in the ground than have the beatings. What I hated most was when they’d beat me and I didn’t know what they beat me for, and I hated they stripping me naked as the day I was born.
“When we’re coming back from that praying, I thought I heard the nigger dogs and somebody on horseback. I say, Maw, its them nigger hounds and they’ll eat us up.’ You could hear them old hounds and sluts abaying. Maw listens and says, She knows, them dogs are running and God helps us!’ Then she and paw talk and they take us to a fence corner and stands us up gainst the rails and say don’t move and if anyone comes near, don’t breathe loud. They went to the woods, so the hounds chase them and not get us. Me and Katherine stand there, holding hands, shaking so we can hardly stand. We hear the hounds come nearer, but we don’t move. They goes after paw and maw, but they circle round to the cabins and gets in. Maw say its the power of God.
“In these days I wore shirts, like all the young’uns. They had collars and come below the knees and was split up the sides. That’s all we were in hot weather. The men wore jeans and women gingham. Shoes were the worst of trouble. We wore rough russets when it got cold, and it seemed powerful strange they’d never get them to fit. Once when I was a young gal, they got me a new pair and all brass studs in the toes. They was too little for me, but I had to wear them. The trimmings cut into my ankles and them places got miserable bad. I rub tallow in them sore places and wrops rags around them and my sores got worse and worse. The scars are there to this day.
“I wasn’t sick much, though. Some the niggers had chills and fever a lot, but they hadn’t discovered so many diseases then as now. Dr. Kilpatrick give sick niggers ipecac and asafoetide and oil and turpentine and black fever pills. “There was a cabin called the spinning house and two looms and two spinning wheels going all the time, and two nigger women sewing all the time. It took plenty of sewing to make all the things for a place so big. Once massa goes to Baton Rouge and brings back a yaller girl dressed in fine style. She was a seamster nigger. He builds her a house way from the quarters and she did fine sewing for the whites. Us niggers knew the doctor took a black woman quick as he did a white and took any on his place he wanted, and he took them often. But mostly the chillun born on the place looked like niggers. Aunt Cheyney allus say four of hers were massas, but he didn’t give them any mind. But this yaller gal breeds so fast and gets a mess of white young’uns. She learnt their fine manners and combed out their hair.
“Once two of them goes down the hill to the doll house where the Kilpatrick chillun is playing. They want to go in the dollhouse and one of the Kilpatrick boys says, That’s for white chillun.’ They say, “We ain’t any niggers, cause we got the same daddy you have, 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 her chamber window. She heard them white niggers say, He is our daddy and we call him daddy when he comes to our house to see our mama.’
“When massa came home that evening his wife hardly said nothing to him, and he asked her what the matter and she told him, Since you ask me, I’m studying in my mind about them white young’uns of that yaller nigger wench from Baton Rouge. He says, Now, honey, I fetch that gal just for you, cause she a fine seamster.’ She says, It looks kind of funny they got the same kind of hair and eyes as my chillun and they got a nose like yours.’ He say, Honey, you just paying attention to talk of li’l chillun that ain’t got no mind to what they say.’ She says, Over in Mississippi I got a home and plenty with my daddy and I got that in my mind.’
“Well, she didn’t leave and massa bought her a fine new span of surrey hosses. But she doesn’t have any more chillun and she ain’t so cordial with the massa. Margaret, that yellow gal, has more white young’uns, but they don’t never go down the hill no more to the big house.
“Aunt Cheyney was just out of bed with a suckling baby one time, and she ran away. Some say that was another baby of massa’s breeding. She doesnt’ come to the house to nurse her baby, so they miss her and old Solomon gets the nigger hounds and takes her trail. They get near her and she grabbed a limb and tried to hide herself in a tree, but there dogs grab her and pull her down. The men hollers them onto her, and the dogs tore her naked and the breasts plumbed off her body. She got well and lived to be a old woman, but another woman had to suck her baby and she ain’t got any sign of breasts.
“They give all the niggers fresh meat on Christmas and a plug tobacco all round. The highest cotton picker gets a suit of clothes and all the women what had twins that year gits a outfitting of clothes for the twins and a double, warm blanket.
“Seems like after I got bigger, I remember more than more niggers run away. They’re most allus cotched. Massa used to hire out his niggers for wage hands. One time he hired me and a nigger boy, Turner, to work for some ornery white trash name of Kidd. One day Turner goes off and doesn’t come back. Old man Kidd says I know bout it, and he ties my wrists together and strips me. He hanged me by the wrists from a limb on a tree and spraddled my legs around the trunk and tied my feet together. Then he beat me. He beat me worse than I ever been beat before and I fainted away. When I came back to my I’m in bed. I didn’t care so much iffen I died.
“I didn’t know bout the passing of time, but Miss Sara came to me. Some white folks did get word to her. Mr. Kidd tried to talk himself out of it, but Miss Sara fetches me home when I’m well enough to move. She took me in a cart and my maw takes care of me. Massa looks me over good and says I’ll get well, but I’m ruined for breeding chillun.
“After while I take a notion to marry and massa and missy marries us same as all the niggers. They stand inside the house with a broom held crosswise of the door and we stand outside. Missy puts a little wreath on my head they kept there and we step over the broom into the house. Now, that’s all they were to the marrying. After freedom I get married and have it put in the book by a preacher.
“One day we were working in the fields and heard the conch shell blow, so we all went to the back gate of the big house. Massa was there. He says, Call the roll for every nigger big nough to walk, and I want them to go to the river and wait there. There is going to be a show and I wants you to see it.’ They was a big boat down there, done built up on the sides with boards and holes in the boards and a bit gun barrel sticking through every hole. We ain’t seen nothing like that. Massa goes up the plank onto the boat and comes out on the boat porch. He says, This is a Yankee boat.” He goes inside and the water wheels start moving and that boat goes moving up the river and they say it goes to Natches.
“The boat wasn’t more than out of sight when a big drove of sojers came into town. They say they’re Fed’rals. More than half the niggers go off with them sojers, but I go on back home because of my old mammy.
“Next day when Yankees are swarmins the place. Some the niggers want to show them something. I follow to the woods. The niggers shows them sojers a big pit in the ground, bigger a big house. It has got wooden doors that lifts up, but the top is sodded and grass growing on it, so you couldn’t tell it. In that pit is stock, hosses and cows and mules and money and chinaware and silver and a mess of stuff them sojers takes.
“We just sat on the place doing nothing till the white folks come home. Miss Sara come out to the cabin and say she wants to read a letter to my mammy. It came from Louis Carter, which is brother to my mammy, and he did follow the Fed’rals to Galveston. A white man did write the letter for him. It was torn in half and massa did that. The letter says Louis am working in Galveston and wants mammy to come with us, and he’ll pay our way. Miss Sara says massa swear, Damn Louis Carter. I ain’t going tell Sallie nothing, and he starts to tear the letter up. but she won’t let him, and she reads it to mammy.
“After a time massa takes all his niggers what wants to Texas with him and mammy gets to Galveston and dies there. I go with massa to the Tennessee Colony and then to Navasota. Miss Sara marries Mr. T. Coleman and goes to El Paso. She wrote and told me to come to her and I allus meant to go.
“My husband and me farmed round for times, and then I done housework and cookin’ for many years. I come to Dallas and cooked seven year for one white family. My husband died years ago. I guess Miss Sara been dead these long years. I allus kep’ my years by Miss Sara’s years, count we is born so close. “I been blind and mos’ helpless for five year. I’m gittin’ might enfeeblin’ and I ain’t walked outside the door for a long time back. I sets and members the times in the world. I members now clear as yesterday things I forgot for a long time. I members bout the days of slavery and I don’t lieve they ever gwine have slaves no more on this earth. I think Gawd done took that burden offen his black chillun and I’m aimin’ to praise him for it to his face in the days of Glory what ain’t so far off.
