STORIES FROM EX-SLAVES
"I was born near Broad River in de Dutch Fork of Newberry County. I was a slave of Cage Suber. He was a fair master, but nothing to brag about. I was small at slavery time and had to work in de white folks' house or around the house until I was big enough to go to de field and work.
"Old Marse Cage always made me fan flies off of him when he lay down to take a nap. The fan was made out of brushes.
"De white folks had cotton-pickings, corn-shuckings and quiltings. Dey allus had something to eat at the frolics and I had to help wid 'em.
"I married John Riser. I moved to town several years ago."
Source: Susie Riser (80), Newberry, S.C.
Interviewer: G.L. Summer, Newberry, S.C., May 17, 1937.
Project #1655
Henry Grant,
Columbia, S.C.
ISOM ROBERTS
EX-SLAVE 80 YEARS OLD
Isom Roberts rents one room at 1226 Waverly Street, Columbia, S.C., and lives alone. However frail he appears, he is able to support himself by working in the yards about the city.
"Well, sir, white folks, I is eighty years old, or leastwise I is so close to it, dat it don't make much difference. But even if I is dat old, it don't seem so long since I was a little boy. Years flies by mighty fas' to old folks, 'cause deir 'memberance is shorter, while young folks 'members everything, and in dat way months and years drags 'long slower to them.