SLAVE NARRATIVES - Library of Congress

Old man Simpson couldn't afford to have him handicapped in his going and
coming* He could go whenever he wanted to go, and come back whenever he
got ready, with a pass or without one* His time was valuable*
n The reason why so many slaves suffered as much as they did as a rule
was not because of the masters but because of the poor white trash over-
seers* I know of several rich white women that had slaves that wouldn't
allow them to be mistreated* They would fire four and five overseers to
keep their slaves from being mistreated*
Mean Masters
"But there were seme mean masters* I have heard that right there in
Georgia there was one white planter—I think it was Brantley--who put one
of his slaves that had been unruly in a packing screw and ran it down on
him till he mashed him to death* The cotton screw was the thing they
pressed cotton gales in* They run it down by steam now, but then* they
used to run it down with two mules* They tell a lot of things like that on
Brantley# Of course, I couldn't personally know it, but I know he was
mighty mean and I know the way he died*
Bushwhacking the Ku Klux
"He belonged to the paterole gang and they went out after the
Negroes one night after freedom* The Negroes bushwhacked them and killed
four or five of them* They give it out that the men that was killed had
gone to Texas* Brantley was one of the killed ones* The pateroles was
awful bad at that time* Ku Klux they called them after the War, but they
was the same people* I never heard of the KLan part till this thing come
up that they have now* They called them Ku Klux back when X was a boy*
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