THE FEDERAL Writers Project collection of slave narratives in the Library of Congress is a national treasure.

These first-hand accounts, assembled from 1936 to 1938 by interviewers hired by the Works Progress Administration, offer a realistic view of slavery in America, of a time when blacks and whites lived and worked together, for better or for worse.

Many slaves, while condemning slavery, attested to being well-treated by their masters. Many attested to being whipped. Many were honest about the faults and bad habits of their fellow slaves. In general, it’s hard to imagine these raconteurs partaking of the whiny tears and tantrums of today’s agitators. They often come across as earthy and wise personalities who tell their stories of slavery, war, greedy Yankees and post-war chaos without self-pity, envy or hatred. An early director of the oral history project was John Lomax, a white Southerner, who deserves great credit for insisting the narratives not be edited or censored in any way.

Ex-slave Millie Barber, of Winnsboro, South Carolina, was among those who shared her story. The most egregious part of her colorful narrative relates to her parents being separated on different plantations:

“Hope you find yourself well dis mornin’, white folks. I’s just common; ‘spect I eats too much yesterday. You know us celebrated yesterday, ’cause it was de Fourth of July. Us had a good dinner on dis 2,000 acre farm of Mr. Owens. God bless dat white boss man! What would us old no ‘count niggers do widout him? Dere’s six or seven, maybe eight of us out here over eighty years old. ‘Most of them is like me, not able to hit a lick of work, yet he take care of us; he sho’ does.

“Mr. Owens not a member of de church but he allowed dat he done found out dat it more blessed to give than to receive, in case like us.

“You wants to know all ’bout de slavery time, de war, de Ku Kluxes and everything? My tongue too short to tell you all dat I knows. However, if it was as long as my stockin’s, I could tell you a trunk full of good and easy, bad and hard, dat dis old life-stream have run over in eighty-two years. I’s hoping to reach at last them green fields of Eden of de Promise Land. ‘Scuse me ramblin’ ’round, now just ask me questions; I bet I can answer all you ask.

“My pa name, Tom McCullough; him was a slave of old Marster John McCullough, whose big two-story house is de oldest in Fairfield County. It stands today on a high hill, just above de banks of Dutchman Creek. Big road run right by dat house. My mammy name, Nicie. Her b’long to de Weir family; de head of de family die durin’ de war of freedom. I’s not supposed to know all he done, so I’ll pass over dat. My mistress name, Eliza; good mistress. Have you got down dere dat old marster just took sick and die, ’cause he wasn’t touched wid a bullet nor de life slashed out of him wid a sword?

“Well, my pa b’longin’ to one man and my mammy b’longin’ to another, four or five miles apart, caused some confusion, mix-up, and heartaches. My pa have to git a pass to come to see my mammy. He come sometimes widout de pass. Patrollers catch him way up de chimney hidin’ one night; they stripped him right befo’ mammy and give him thirty-nine lashes, wid her cryin’ and a hollerin’ louder than he did.

“Us lived in a log house; handmade bedstead, wheat straw mattress, cotton pillows, plenty coverin’ and plenty to eat, sich as it was. Us never git butter or sweet milk or coffee. Dat was for de white folks but in de summer time, I minds de flies off de table wid the peafowl feather brush and eat in de kitchen just what de white folks eat; them was very good eatin’s I’s here for to tell you. All de old slaves and them dat worked in de field, got rations and de chillun were fed at de kitchen out-house. What did they git? I ‘members they got peas, hog meat, corn bread, ‘lasses, and buttermilk on Sunday, then they got greens, turnips, taters, shallots, collards, and beans through de week. They were kept fat on them kind of rations.

“De fact is I can’t ‘member us ever had a doctor on de place; just a granny was enough at child birth. Slave women have a baby one day, up and gwine ’round de next day, singin’ at her work lak nothin’ unusual had happened.

“Did I ever git a whippin’? Dat I did. How many times? More than I can count on fingers and toes. What I git a whippin’ for? Oh, just one thing, then another. One time I break a plate while washin’ dishes and another time I spilt de milk on de dinin’ room floor. It was always for somethin’, sir. I needed de whippin’.

“Yes sir, I had two brothers older than me; one sister older than me and one brother younger than me.

“My young marster was killed in de war. Their names was Robert, Smith, and Jimmie. My young mistress, Sarah, married a Sutton and moved to Texas. Nancy marry Mr. Wade Rawls. Miss Janie marry Mr. Hugh Melving. At this marriage my mammy was give to Miss Janie and she was took to Texas wid her young baby, Isaiah, in her arms. I have never seen or heard tell of them from dat day to dis.

“De Yankees come and burn de gin-house and barns. Open de smokehouse, take de meat, give de slaves some, shoot de chickens, and as de mistress and girls beg so hard, they left widout burnin’ de dwellin’ house.

“My oldest child, Alice, is livin’ and is fifty-one years old de 10th of dis last May gone. My first husband was Levi Young; us lived wid Mr. Knox Picket some years after freedom. We moved to Mr. Rubin Lumpkin’s plantation, then to George Boulwares. Well, my husband die and I took a fool notion, lak most widows, and got into slavery again. I marry Prince Barber; Mr. John Hollis, Trial Justice, tied de knot. I loved dat young nigger more than you can put down dere on paper, I did. He was black and shiny as a crow’s wing. Him was white as snow to dese old eyes. Ah, the joy, de fusses, de ructions, de beatin’s, and de makin’ ups us had on de Ed Shannon place where us lived. Us stay dere seven long years.

“Then de Klu Kluxes comed and lak to scared de life out of me. They ask where Prince was, searched de house and go away. Prince come home ’bout daylight. Us took fright, went to Marster Will Durham’s and asked for advice and protection. Marster Will Durham fixed it up. Next year us moved to dis place, he own it then but Marster
Arthur Owens owns it now. Dere is 2,000 acres in dis place and another 1,000 acres in de Rubin Lumpkin place ‘joinin’ it.

“Prince die on dis place and I is left on de mercy of Marster Arthur, livin’ in a house wid two grandchillun, James twelve years, and John Roosevelt Barber, eight years old. Dese boys can work a little. They can pick cotton and tote water in de field for de hands and marster say: ‘Every little help’.

“My livin’ chillun ain’t no help to me. Dere’s Willie, I don’t know where he is. Prince is wid Mr. Freeman on de river. Maggie is here on de place but she no good to me.

“I ‘spect when I gits to drawin’ down dat pension de white folks say is comin’, then dere will be more folks playin’ in my backyard than dere is today.”

Book-length collections of the slave narratives are available for purchase at Amazon and elsewhere.

— Comments —

Terry Morris writes:

I wish to commend you for posting Millie’s interview, as well as for adding the link to the entire collection. I did not before know this particular collection existed, but believe with you that it must be, as you say, a national treasure.

There is a similar (extensive) collection of interviews that is part of the broader Oklahoma Historical Society database that were conducted during the same timeframe. There are interviews with former slaves contained in that collection as well, but it mainly consists of interviews conducted with the early pioneer settlers (white and Indian) of the pre-statehood Indian Territories now known as Oklahoma. That collection too is a treasure that I read from time to time, and almost always glean some new knowledge or insight from.

You wrote in your preface to Millie’s interview that,

The most egregious part of her colorful narrative relates to her parents being separated on different plantations:

Which, with all due respect, seems to be more an emotion-based reaction to that aspect of Millie’s story than a particularly reasoned one. Dr. Dabney (among numerous others from the period) writes fairly extensively about these unfortunate situations in his book, A Defense of Virginia and the South, wherein he explains that, in the vast majority of such cases, the father was separated from the family because of his (and/or his wife’s) abusive and violent nature and tendencies; that in many such cases, it was simply a life or death situation for all involved (father, mother, children and grandparents) that their masters tried to solve and enforce within such families in the best way they could with the means available to them. And of course, we know by first-hand experience living in the imperfect world we all inhabit that these same scenarios play out on a daily basis, even in our “utopian” world.

The obvious difference being of course that we, in our infinite wisdom and (conceited) moral superiority, do not separate these dysfunctional families by a distance of five miles and a strict system of visitation passes issued or denied at a given master’s discretion. No; what we do instead is to put the most egregious offenders in prisons many miles away from their families, and for terms of years. We then put them back in for extended stays when they almost invariably re-offend some short time after release.

Unless we are willing to hold ourselves and our modern methods of dealing with these unfortunate situations to the same standards we apply to Southern plantation owners from days gone by, we should probably be very cautious about leaping to conclusions and judging their actions too harshly. The separation of Millie’s family and strict enforcement of visitation rules may be said to have been “egregious,” only if that action taken by their overseers was unjustifiable. I’m not saying it wasn’t unjustifiable necessarily, but I am ‘going with the odds’ so to speak and asserting that that action was *likely* justifiable in her family’s case and many others. …

Laura writes:

Thank you for elaborating.

Mr. Morris writes:

By the way, Millie’s interview is just one of literally dozens of original sources I have personally read that answers the question of how blacks got their white surnames, as well as corroborates the witness of many other sources. Contrary to the belief that the names were the result of illicit sexual trysts between slaves and owners, during the early part of “Reconstruction,” the Freedman’s Bureau issued an order stating that the then newly freed slaves must adopt surnames connected to a family to whom they had previously been connected. The blacks were given some small latitude in choosing surnames for themselves in this matter; for example, they could choose the surname of their more immediate master, or they could reach farther back in time to choose a name from a previous owner of their ancestors if they liked.

Dabney’s book also addresses the question of illicit sexual trysts between master & slave extensively.

Laura writes:

Interesting. Thank you.

Holly from Southern California writes:

I loved the Millie Barber slave narrative.

Terry Morris’s follow up comment makes a lot of sense to me.

Also, we definitely should be reading these edited and approved slave narratives with a critical eye, what with all the conspiracy truth we’ve been learning/unlearning over the years.

Are you familiar with the Youtube Channel called Soft White Underbelly? Photographer/”privileged middle class white man” Mark Laita interviews people off the streets of Skid Row, in Los Angeles.

Many of them are black (but also just as many white and hispanic,) drug addicts, pimps, prostitutes/sex workers, gang members, homeless, etc. Most of them come from childhood upbringings of violence, neglect, incest, rape, molestation, and are now in adult relationships of abuse, for example prostitute and her pimp.

Watching these interviews pretty much corroborates Mr. Morris’s very enlightening comment!

As always, thank you for your blog.

Laura writes:

You’re welcome, and thank you for writing. No, I wasn’t familiar with that Youtube channel.

Regarding these oral biographies recorded by the Federal Writers Project, I think they are reliable and, as I mentioned, not edited or censored. 

I will post some more in the future, but I encourage readers to go to the link above at the Library of Congress.

For homeschoolers, this is a great resource to learn about that period.

Mr. Morris writes:

You wrote to Holly from Southern California that,

Regarding these oral biographies recorded by the Federal Writers Project, I think they are reliable…

If Millie Barber’s interview is more or less representative of the whole collection, they are indeed reliable accounts. At least in many parts. I haven’t gotten deeper into them yet, but expect that is what I will find when I get around to doing so.

One test of a source’s reliability is of course whether or not the elements of the stories in question can be corroborated by “two or more witnesses” to the same facts; it is a “bonus,” so to speak, when such stories from the era are corroborated by multiple witnesses of the same facts in virtually every detail, unknown to one another and separated by hundreds of miles distance, essentially proving their veracity “beyond a reasonable doubt, and by a preponderance of the evidence.” (An example of what I am alluding to is contained in the attachment below.)

In Millie’s particular case, I can, and have long-since, verified the accuracy of her story in virtually every detail, and by way of having previously read multiple witnesses to the same facts. I do not doubt, for example, that she was subjected to occasional “whippings” during her young life as a slave girl; whippings she admits she had coming to her in her narrative. While it sounds like harsh treatment to whip a girl for merely breaking a plate or spilling a pitcher of milk, etc., she only relates that she deserved the whippings; she does not elaborate on the particulars of *why* she deserved them (perhaps she broke them in a fit of rage, or something like that). But I am in no position to argue with her on the point in any case; if Millie, as an older, wiser woman, believed she deserved that treatment in those particular cases, then that is good enough for me. I can attest to the fact that I thoroughly deserved the majority of whippings I got as a youngster too, both at the hands of my parents, as well as my aunts and uncles. We call them “spankings” today, but they were whippings, and well-earned whippings to boot.

You might like to read in these connections a little book titled, The Wartime Journal of a Georgia Girl, by Eliza Frances Andrews. Her father owned a large plantation in N.E. Georgia (near Washington, GA) that he’d acquired as compensation for his services in the Revolution. And of course the family had many slaves. Among their (favored) slaves and house servants was a young girl named Emily. She and Eliza were close to the same age and had grown up together as playmates. Although Eliza and her sister, Metta, loved Emily dearly, Eliza nevertheless states in her memoirs that Emily possessed a “fierce temper” that sometimes got out of hand and turned violent. Emily’s temper apparently got out of hand one too many times during the early days of “Reconstruction,” whereupon Eliza’s mother told her she would have to leave and not come back. Longer story shortened for brevity’s sake, following the letting of profuse tears all around, Eliza tearfully appealed to her father anxiously begging mercy in Emily’s behalf. To which he laughed and assured her that he had the matter well in hand; that none of his people would ever be thrust into destitution so long as he had means left with which to help or support them.

Anyway, my thanks to Holly for complimenting my initial comments to the thread.

(Incidentally, my Pruitt ancestors’ plantation was only a county away in N.E. Georgia from the Andrews plantation above-mentioned. It was originally acquired by Samuel Pruitt III (a Virginia native, as was Mr. Andrews) exactly as that of Eliza’s father’s plantation – for services rendered in the war of the Revolution.)

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