"I sho remember when freedom come here. Remember when my boss told me I was free. My father come dere en say he wanted his boys. Boss called, 'Aaron, come here, your daddy wants you. I want you to go.' He told me not to go till de news came though. Please me, I felt like a new man."
"I hate to speak what I think bout slavery. Think it a pity de slaves freed cause I know I'm worried more now den in slavery time. Dere got to be a change made. People got to turn. I belong to de Methodist Church en I think everybody ought to belong to de church. God built de church for de people en dey ought to go dere en be up en doin in de church. Dat dey duty."
Source: Aaron Ford, Ex-Slave, Age 80-90, (No other information
given by interviewer.)
Personal interview by H. Grady Davis, June, 1937.
Project 1885 -1-
District #4
Spartanburg, S.C.
May 28, 1937
FOLKLORE: EX-SLAVES
Six miles east of Spartanburg on R.F.D. No. 2, the writer found Aunt Charlotte Foster, a colored woman who said she was 98 years old. Her mother was Mary Johnson and her father's name was John Johnson. She is living with her oldest daughter, whose husband is John Montgomery.
She stated she knew all about slavery times, that she and her mother belonged to William Beavers who had a plantation right on the main road from Spartanburg to Union, that the farm was near Big Brown Creek, but she didn't know what larger stream the creek flowed into. Her father lived on another place somewhere near Limestone. She and her mother were hands on the farm and did all kinds of hard work. She used to plow, hoe, dig and do anything the men did on the plantation. "I worked in the hot sun." Every now and then she would get a sick headache and tell her master she had it; then he would tell her to go sit down awhile and rest until it got better.
She had a good master; he was a Christian if there ever was one. He had a wife that was fussy and mean. "I didn't call her Mistus, I called her Minnie." But, she quickly added, "Master was good to her, just as kind and gentle like." When asked what was the matter with the wife, she just shook her head and did not reply. Asked if she had rather live now or during slavery times, she replied that if her master was living she would be willing to go back and live with him. "Every Sunday he would call us chilluns by name, would sit down and read the Bible to us; then he would pray. If that man ain't in the Kingdom, then nobody's there."
She said her master never whipped any of the slaves, but she had heard cries and groans coming from other plantations at five o'clock in the morning where the slaves were being beaten and whipped. Asked why the slaves were being beaten, she replied rather vehemently, "Just because they wanted to beat 'em; they could do it, and they did." She said she had seen the blood running down the backs of some slaves after they had been beaten.