“Mr. Hector tol’ me if I’d come an’ live wid’ em here, he’d gimme dis house here in de back yard an’ paint it an’ fix it all up lak you see it.  It’s mighty pleasant in de shade.  Folks used to always set dey houses in a grove, but now dey cuts down more trees dan dey keeps.  Us don’t cut no trees.  Us porches is always nice an’ shady.

“I’se got fo’ boys livin’.  One son were in de big strike in de automobile plant in Detroit an’ couldn’ come to see me las’ Chris’mus.  He’ll come to see me nex’ year if I’s still here.

“Maybe folks goin’ a-think hard o’ me for tellin’ what aint never been tol’ b’fore.  I been asked to tell what I seen an’ I done it.

“Dat’s tellin’ what I never thought to tell.”

Charlie Moses, Ex-slave, Lincoln County
FEC
Esther de Sola
Rewrite, Pauline Loveless
Edited, Clara E. Stokes

CHARLIE MOSES
Brookhaven, Mississippi

Charlie Moses, 84 year old ex-slave, lives at Brookhaven.  He possesses the eloquence and the abundant vocabulary of all Negro preachers.  He is now confined to his bed because of the many ailments of old age.  His weight appears to be about 140 pounds, height 6 feet 1 inch high.

“When I gits to thinkin’ back on them slavery days I feels like risin’ out o’ this here bed an’ tellin’ ever’body ’bout the harsh treatment us colored folks was given when we was owned by poor quality folks.

“My marster was mean an’ cruel.  I hates him, hates him!  The God Almighty has condemned him to eternal fiah.  Of that I is certain.  Even the cows and horses on his plantation was scared out o’ their minds when he come near ’em.  Oh Lordy!  I can tell you plenty ’bout the things he done to us poor Niggers.  We was treated no better than one o’ his houn’ dogs.  Sometimes he didn’ treat us as good as he did them.  I prays to the Lord not to let me see him when I die.  He had the devil in his heart.

“His name was Jim Rankin an’ he lived out on a plantation over in Marion County.  I was born an’ raised on his place.  I spec I was ’bout twelve year old at the time o’ the war.

“Old man Rankin worked us like animals.  He had a right smart plantation an’ kep’ all his Niggers, ‘cept one house boy, out in the fiel’ a-workin’.  He’d say, ’Niggers is meant to work.  That’s what I paid my good money for ’em to do.’

“He had two daughters an’ two sons.  Them an’ his poor wife had all the work in the house to do, ‘cause he wouldn’ waste no Nigger to help ’em out.  His family was as scared o’ him as we was.  They lived all their lives under his whip.  No Sir!  No Sir!  There warnt no meaner man in the world than old man Jim Rankin.

“My pappy was Allen Rankin an’ my mammy was Ca’line.  There was twelve o’ us chillun, nine boys an’ three girls.  My pa was born in Mississippi an’ sol’ to Marster Rankin when he was a young man.  My mammy was married in South Carolina an’ sol’ to Marster Rankin over at Columbia.  She had to leave her family.  But she warnt long in gittin’ her another man.