SLAVE NARRATIVES - Library of Congress

Good Masters
*The Adamses were good to my mother* And they help her even after
freedom* % Charlie Adams and Mack Adams of Malvera, Arkansas* John was the
sheriff and ran a store * Mack was a drummer for the Penal Grocery* When
my mother was ill, he used to bring her thirty dollars at a time* Every
two months she had to go down to Malvern when she was well and carry an
empty trunk and when she would come back it would be full* My mother was
wet-nurse to the Adamses and they thought the world and all of her*
Marriage
"They had a good opinion of their house servants* That is how she and
my father came to belong to different families* One white man would say to
the other, *I got a good boy* I f m going to let him come over to see your
girl* 1 He would be talking about a Negro man that worked around his house
and a Negro girl that worked for the other man* That would be all right*
So that's the way my father went to see my mother* He was married in the
v/ay they always married in those days# You know how it was* There was no
marriage at all* They just went on out and got the woman and the white man
said, f There she is* Tou are man and wife* 1
Right After the War
*My father died before freedom* My mother lived with him until her
folks moved away from his folks* Then she was separated from him and left
him in Mississippi* She belonged to one white man and he to another, and
that could happen any time*
"Right after freedom, she stayed with these white people, doing the
house work* She had the privilege of raising things for herself* She made
a garden, and raised vegetables and such like*
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