"When they fed the children, they cook the food and put it in a great
big old tray concern and called up the children, 'Piggee-e-e-e-e,
piggee-e-e-e-e.' My cousin was the one had to go out and call the
children; and you could see them runnin' up from every which way, little
shirt tails flyin' and hair sticking out. Then they would pour the food
out in different vessels till the children could git around them with
those muscle-shell spoons. Many of them as could get 'round a vessel
would eat out of it and when they finished that one, they'd go to
another one, and then to another one till they all got fed.

"My master worked seventy hands they said. He had two colored overseers
and one white one. He didn't allow them overseers to whip and slash
them niggers. They had to whip them right. Didn't allow no pateroles to
bother them neither. That's a lot of help too. 'Cause them pateroles
would eat you up. It was awful. Niggers used to run away to keep from
bein' beat up.

"I knowed one gal that ran away in the winter time and she went up into
the hollow of a tree for protection. When she came in, she was in sich
a bad condition they had to cut off both her legs. They had froze out
there. They taken care of her. They wanted her to work. She was jus' as
nice a seamstress as you ever saw. And she could do lots of things. She
could get about some. She could go on her knees. She had some pads for
them and was just about as high as your waist when she was goin' along
on her hands and knees, swinging her body between her arms.


Ate in the Big House

"The cooks and my mother stayed in the white folks' yard. They weren't