Although Drucilla does not have any education, she can quote verse after verse from the Bible. She told some gruesome stories of how some of the masters treated their slaves. She said there never was a book printed that really told how some, or in fact the majority of the slaves were beaten and abused. To most masters they were not any more than stock. She said some of the young girls were beaten until they would die. Some of the little colored babies that were born out in the field or on the road were left to starve or be eaten up by the hogs.
Drucilla said some times their master would rent them out to other white men to work them if he didn't have anything for them to do. Some masters would put their feed out in troughs for them just as they were feeding cattle. Some would give them cotton seed to eat. She said they would go home and cry and tell their master how they were treated and their master would tell them they wouldn't have to go work for any one that did them like that.
In 1865 when the slaves were freed, Drucilla said she felt all out in the world as if she did not have a place to go and their master was afraid to let them stay with him even though they begged to stay, as it was then against the law. She was sent to St. Louis to do servant work, for a white family, that was very wealthy, and she stayed with them for twenty years. Drucilla has been married twice, and is the mother of ten children, but knows of only one daughter, or rather, she was the last one she has heard from out of the three that she thinks are still living, and that was fifty years ago.
Drucilla and Richard Martin
Drucilla Martin was a slave in Giles County, Tennessee; Richard Martin was a slave in Memphis, Tennessee.
The aged old couple are going to receive $8.00 apiece per month old age pension, and a check for $80.00 back pay. When worker asked Drucilla what she was going to do with her pension money, she said she was going to build a little house, "As Mammy is tired living in that shack".
When we got up to leave, the old Negro mammy ran out and fell down and kissed our feet. There were two workers stumbling along trying to get down the rocky path that leaves the little shack, with their eyes full of tears, and the muscles of their throats tightened, until they could only wave back, as the feeble voice was heard to ring out over the hill, "Honey chiles come back to see mammy some more, and she'll give yo all somethin' out of her garden."
[Hattie Matthews]
Interview with Mrs. Hattie Matthews,
aged 58, Farmington, Missouri.