Opinions
"The young people today ain't worth a shit. These young people going to school don't mean good to nobody. They dance all the night and all the time, and do everything else. That man across the street runs a whiskey house where they dance and do everything they're big enough to do. They ain't worth nothing."
Interviewer: Pernella M. Anderson
Person interviewed: Sarah Douglas
Route 2, Box 19-A, El Dorado, Arkansas
Age: 82?
[TR: Original interview where photograph inserted notes photograph of "Sarah and Sam Douglas." The Library of Congress photo archive notes "'Tom' written in pencil above 'Sam' in title.">[
"I was born in Alabama. I don't know when though. I did not find out when I was born because old miss never told me. My ma died when I was real small and my old miss raised me. I had a hard time of my life. I slept on the floor just like a cat—anywhere I laid down I slept. In winter I slept on rags. If I got sick old miss would give me plenty of medicine because she wanted me to stay well in order to work. My old master was name John Buffett and old misses name was Eddie Buffett. She would fix my bread and licker in a tin lid and shove it to me on the floor. I never ate at the table until I was twelve and that was after freedom.
"To whip me she put my head between the two fence rails and she taken the cow hide whip and beat me until I couldn't sit down for a week. Sometimes she tied our hands around a tree and tie our neck to the tree with our face to the tree and they would get behind us with that cow hide whip with a piece of lead tied to the end and lord have mercy! child, I shouted when I wasn't happy. All I could say was, 'Oh pray, mistress, pray.' That was our way to say Lord have mercy. The last whipping old miss give me she tied me to a tree and oh my Lord! old miss whipped me that day. That was the worse whipping I ever got in my life. I cried and bucked and hollered until I couldn't. I give up for dead and she wouldn't stop. I stop crying and said to her, 'Old miss, if I were you and you were me I wouldn't beat you this way.' That struck old miss's heart and she let me go and she did not have the heart to beat me any more.