Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives, Part 5 by Work Projects Administration
page 25 of 354 (07%)
page 25 of 354 (07%)
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"My grandfather's mother[HW: ?] had a chair and that was hers only. She was named Senia and was about eighty years old. We burned nothing but pine knots in the hearth. You would put one or two of those on the fire and they would burn for hours. We were all in bed and had been for an hour or two. There were some others sleeping in the same room. There came a peculiar knocking on grandmother's[HW: great grandmother?] chair. It's hard to describe it. It was something like the distant beating of a drum. Grandmother was dead, of course. The boys got up and ran out and brought in some of the hands. When they came in, a little thing about three and a half feet high with legs about six or eight inches long ran out of the room. Ku Klux Klan "Whenever there was a man of influence, they terrorized him. They were at their height about the time of Grant's election. Many a time my mother and I have watched them pass our door. They wore gowns and some kind of helmet. They would be going to catch same leading Negro and whip him. There was scarcely a night they couldn't take a leading Negro out and whip him if they would catch him alone. On that account, the Negro men did not stay at home in Sumter County, South Carolina at night. They left home and stayed together. The Ku Klux very seldom interfered with a woman or a child. "They often scared colored people by drinking large quantities of water. They had something that held a lot of water, and when they would raise the bucket to their mouths to drink, they would slip the water into it. |
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