SLAVE NARRATIVES - Library of Congress

"Henry Powell was jailer here once. Sam Wilkins, a roan that weighed
about three hundred pounds, was the turnkey at the penitentiary. He lived
in one of the finest houses in the town at that time. Nigger bands had all
the music then* I have seen white organizations like the Odd Fellows and
Masons follow Negro bands. Nigger orchestras played here all the big
to-dos among white people. White people used to get nigger dancers to come
here to dance and show them so that they could learn the late steps•
"Colored caterers had the big jobs. Henry Miller was one of them.
He's going pretty strong still* You get some smart niggers f round the
Marion Hotel right now. We used to have some smart cooks. But they did
too much peddling out of the back door. Dishonesty put them back. White
people have taken all that work now. The nigger ruined himself in this
town. They are paying white men now for what they know. They used to pay
diggers for what they knowedo
Opinions
*If the government would give you a job today, niggers would be up to
take you out of it tomorrow. Niggers are dirty, and these f round here are
ignorant.
"The parents don't teach the children, and the children can f t amount
to anything. If children are not taught to work, they will never have
nothing. A bunch of these young people don't mean tp work. They just lay
'round waiting for the old people to die so they can get what little the
old folks accumulated and run through it. But a man never keeps what he
himself doesn't earn. He can't.
"The children are raised now without manners. When I have
to go past Capitol Hill School, I have to get off the sidewalk*
e. 278