SLAVE NARRATIVES - Library of Congress

First Pair of Shoes
"I can remember the first pair of shoes my uncle gave me* They had a
little brass on the top of the toes to keep you from kicking them out and
skinning them up* That was way back yonder in the fifties*
Bible and Church in Slave Time
"White people taught their niggers what Bible they wanted them to know*
" f V/ho made you? 1
" f God. f
" r iJhy did He make you? 1
" 'For his own glory* f
n f Why ought you to love God? 1
" f Because He made me and takes care of me**
n That was all the Bible they wanted you to learn* That, and just a
few more things. I could state them all.
Education
"In 1866, everybody that was less than sixteen years old in South
Carolina had to go to school* The little fellows that had been slaves had
to 50 to school, and they got some education. You will hardly find an old
nan from South Carolina around my age who can't read and write* There was
one hundred sixty pupils in my school. All boys* I never went to a mixed
school—a school where they had boys and girls both*
"The first school I attended was in Ebenezer* I went to high school
in i.acklenburg* Miss bailie Good and Miss Mat tie Train, Elias Hill, and
Savid G. Y/allace—all of these were my teachers* They were all white
except Elias Hill*> He was the only colored teacher in that section of the
country—at that time.
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