Many of the Negroes with whom we talked looked back on those days of plenty with longing. Rations of meal, bacon and syrup were given out once a week by the overseer. Vegetables, eggs and chickens raised in the little plots back of the cabins were added to these staples.
Ellen Campbell, who was owned by Mr. William Eve of Richmond County said, "My boss would feed 'em good. He was killin' hogs stidy fum Jinuary to March. He had two smokehouses. Dere wus four cows. At night de folks on one side de row o' cabins go wid de piggins fer milk, and in de mawnin's, dose on de odder side go fer de piggins o' milk."
"And did you have plenty of other good things to eat?" we asked.
"Law, yas'm. Rations wus give out to de slaves; meal, meat, and jugs o' syrup. Dey give us white flour at Christmas. Every slave family had de gyarden patch and chickens. Marster buy eggs and chickens fum us at market prices."
Another slave told us that when the slaves got hungry before dinner time they would ask the nursing mothers to bring them back hoe-cake when they went to nurse the babies. Those hot hoe-cakes were eaten in mid-morning, "to hold us till dinner-time."
On one plantation where the mother was the cook for the owner, her children were fed from the big kitchen.
A piece of iron crossed the fireplace, and the pots hung down on hooks. "Us cooked corn dodgers," one ex-slave recalled, "the hearth would be swept clean, the ash cakes wrapped up into corn shucks and cooked brown. They sure was good!"
TYPES OF WORK
The large plantations were really industrial centers in which almost everything necessary to the life of the white family and the large retinue of slaves was grown or manufactured. On estates where there were many slaves there were always trained blacksmiths, coopers, carpenters, tanners, shoemakers, seamstresses, laundresses, weavers, spinners, cooks and house servants; all employed in the interest of the community life of the plantation. Those who could not learn to do any of this skilled work were turned into the fields and called, "hands". Both men and women were employed in the fields where cotton, corn, rice and tobacco were cultivated. House servants ware always considered superior to field hands.
Melinda Mitchell, who was born a slave in Edgefield, S.C., said, "My family wasn't fiel' hands. We wus all house servants. My father wus de butler, and he weighed out de rations fer de slaves. My mammy wus de house 'oman and her mother and sister wus de cooks. Marster wouldn't sell none of his slaves, and when he wanted to buy one he'd buy de whole fambly to keep fum havin' 'em separated."