“My father spoke of a pass.  That was when they wanted to see the girls they would have to get a pass from the old mars.  My father would speak to his mars and get a pass.  If he didn’t have a pass, the other mars would give him a whipping and sent him back.  I told you about how they whipped them.  They used to use those cat-o-nine tails on them when they didn’t have a pass.

“They lived in a log cabin dobbed with dirt and their clothes were woven on a loom.  They got the cotton, spun it on the spinning-wheel, wove it on the loom on rainy days.  The women spun the thread and wove the cloth.  For the boys from five to fifteen years old, they would make long shirts out of this cloth.  The shirts had deep scallops in them.  Then they would take the same cloth and dye it with indigo and make pants out of it.  The boys never wore those pants in the field.  No young fellow wore pants until he began to court.

“My mother was a girl that was sold in Lenoir County, near Kenston, [HW:  Kinston?] North Carolina.  My father met her in a place called Buford, [HW:  Beaufort?  Carteret Co.] North Carolina.  My father was sold several times.  The owner sold her to his owner and they jumped over a broomstick and were married.  My daddy’s mars bought my mother for him.  Her name was Penny.”

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Sarah Whitmore, Clarendon, Arkansas
Age:  100

Note—­The interviewer found this ex-slave in small quarters.  The bed, the room and the Negro were filthy.  A fire burned in an ironing bucket, mostly papers and trash for fuel.  During the visit of the interviewer a white girl brought a tray with a measuring cup of coffee and two slices of bread with butter and fruit spread between.  When asked where she got her dinner she said “The best way I can” meaning somebody might bring it to her.  Her hands are too stiff and shaky to cook.  Her eye sight is so bad she cannot clean her room.  Two WPA county visitors, girls, bathe her at intervals.

“I was born between Jackson and Brandon.  Sure I was born down in Mississippi.  My mother’s name they tole me was Rosie.  She died when I was a baby.  My father named Richard Chamber.  They called him Dick.  He was killed direckly after the war by a white man.  He was a Rebel scout.  The man named Hodge.  I seed him.  He shot my father.  Them questions been called over to me so much I most forgot ’em.  Well some jes’ lack ’em.  My father’s master was Hal Chambers and his wife Virginia.  Recken I do ’member the Ku Klux.  They scared me to death.  I go under the bed every time when I see them about.  Then was when my father was killed.  He went off with a crowd of white men.  They said they was Rebel scouts.  All I know I never seed him no more since that evening.  They killed him across the line, not far from Mississippi.  Chambers had two or three farms.  I was on the village farm.  I had one brother.  Chambers sent him to the salt works and I never seed him no more.  I was a orphant.