SLAVE NARRATIVES - Library of Congress

I've got the tax receipts for sixty years bank* I ain f t never counted the
ones I paid since he 1 s been dead*
!, I was the mother of three children and none of them are living* All
of them dead but me*
"They made like they was goin' to give old slave folks a pension* They
ain't gimme none yit* I'm just livin* on the mercy of the people* I can't
keep up the taxes now* I wish I could git a pension* It would help keep me
up till I died* They won't even as much as give me nothin' on the relief*
They say these grandchildren ought to keep me up* I have to depend on them
and they can't hardly keep up their selves*
""When the Civil War broke out, sy baby was about seven years old* Ity
mother was hero when the stars fell* She had one child then*
W I remember a war before the Civil War* I heard the white folks
talking about it* They wouldn't tell colored folks nothin'* They'd work
them to death and beat them to death* They' d sell them just like you sell
hogs* Itiy mother was sold from me when I was little* Old lady Ef ord, she
was my mistress and mammy too* If she ever slapped me, I don't know nothin'
'bout it*
"2$r daddy made his farm jus' like colored people do now* White man.
would give him so much ground if he'd a mind to work it* He had a horse he
used*
"We lived a heap better than the people live now* They fed you then*
You ate three times a day* When twelve o'clock come, there dinner wasi
cooked and ready* Nothin' to do but eat it, and then set down and res' with
the other people* There was them that was goodt
"But them what was mean done the colored folks bad*
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