"The cruelest treatment I know of in the United States and all the other states was done in the Southwestern states. Take New Orleans. Galveston? Was fixing to get to Texas. Texas beat the country for cruelty. They tell me when your Master and Missus in this country want to make you do your task, they threaten to sell you to Texas. Had a regular 'Vanger Range' in New Orleans. Place they keep the slaves and auction them off. Man by the name of Perry Ann Marshall. He was sold out there. He told my father he'd be out in the field in the morning—hoe in hand. Had to get out there 'fore it was light, hoe in hand. Boss man there with whip. When light enough to hoe, give order, 'Heads up!' Then lots of women fell dead over the hoe. Give order. 'Heads up!' you chop! Breakfast bring to you in the field. Set right there by you hoe and eat till he say, 'Heads up!' When women fell dead, lie right there till night where the body drop—till you knock off. That's Texas! I call Texas 'Hell.' Even today black man can't get no first class ticket Texas!
"When you come right down to the truth, we always got up fore day most of time. You could go visiting other plantation, but must have you a ticket. Patrol catch you they whip you."
[Albert Oxner]
Interview with Albert Oxner (75)
Newberry, S.C. RFD
—G.L. Summer, Newberry, S.C.
"I was raised in Newberry County, S.C. on de place of Mr. Chesley Davis, near Indian Creek. I now live in a rented house in 'Helena'. My grandmother come from Virginia. Old man Tom Davis who lived near Indian Creek was a grandson of Chesley Davis. My daddy was Oxner, his first name was Wash. My mother was named Sidney Davis. My first wife was Polly Miller and de second was Mary Mangum.
"Marse would whip his niggers, but he wasn't a hard man. I peeped around de house once when I was a little boy and saw him whipping a slave.
"We got our vegetables from de white folks garden. We never had any of our own. We had plenty home-raised meats and flour. We made our own clothes at home by carding, spinning and weaving. We dyed dem by making dyes from de barks of trees or red clay.
"Marse had a big plantation, and 75 to 100 slaves. My mother was de house-maid. She never learned to read and write, and none of us did, either.
"We use to hunt rabbits, 'possums, wild turkeys and squirrels, and we went fishing, too. We never had to work on Saturday afternoons or Sundays unless we had to take fodder or straw to de barn to keep it from getting wet.
"Corn-shuckings and log-rollings was common in dem days. De workers had supper when dey got through. Niggers went to white folks' churches and set in de back or in de gallery. A few years atter de war, de niggers made brush arbors to use for preaching.