"White folks," said Lindy Patton, from a chair in the Greene County Poor House. "I was born in 1841 an' it taken me fifty years to git to de po' house. Now I is got jus' fo' mo' years to make it an' even fifty dat I been dere. I hopes I makes de grade, caze dat would be some sorta rec'd wouldn't it? Fifty years in de po' house.
Lindy Patton, [TR: Eutaw], Alabama
"I wukked in de fiel's an' I worked hard all day long. De white folks useta gimme de clothes of de lil' white chilluns. I was born in Knoxville, Alabama, in Greene County, an' I belonged to Massa Bill Patton. I remembers a slave on our plantation dat was always arunnin' away. De Massa try beatin' him but dat didn't do no good. Dat nigger would run away in spite of nothin' they could do. One day de massa decided he was goin' to take de nigger to Mobile an' swap him for anudder one. De Misstis tol' him to leave de ole fool alone, said it warn't worth the trouble. Well, de massa started out to Mobile wid de nigger, an' when de got dere an' de train stop, de nigger, he lit out an' de massa runned right behine him. Dey musta runned a mile or mo' till finally de Massa he gib out an' let de nigger go. Two days later de massa he died f'm a-chasin' dat low down burr head.
"Nawsuh, de white folks didn't teach us to read or write. White folks, I can't hardly count none at all. We didn't have no church on dat place neither. We jus' went along wid de massa an' sot in de back. I ain't never ma'ied, an' I ain't never goin' to."
[Simon Phillips]
Interview with Simon Phillips
—J. Morgan Smith
EX-SLAVE LEADER RECALLS OLD DAYS
Simon Phillips, ex-slave, at 90 years is still as clear-thinking as a young man, and a leader among the oldsters of his race in Birmingham and Alabama. He has been for the past twenty-three years president of the union of ex-slaves which is composed of 1,500 Negroes scattered throughout Alabama. He is the only one of the Birmingham organizers of the society living today and though one of the oldest of his group, he shows but few signs of decrepitude. He walks with the aid of a hickory cane which has been in his possession for almost a half century, and his memory is not only accurate but vivid. His physical activity is shown by the fact that he had already spaded his garden and tiny stalks had pushed themselves above the ground on a plot of earth, covering approximately seventy-five yards square, on the Spring morning when he took "a little time off" to talk of the past.
Well does he recall the days when, under Alabama skies in the 1860's, he curried his master's fine carriage horses; the times old Aunt Hannah cured him of "achin's" with vegetable and root herbs; the nights he spent in the slave quarters singing spirituals with his family.