Page content
Oral History Excerpt—Charley Williams
Interview
From the Federal Writer's Project (1936-1938), United States Work Projects Administration
Charley Williams, " a great big hulking buck of a boy" on the eve
of the Civil War, worked in the fields of the larger of is owner's two plantations
near Monroe, Louisiana. Interviewed at his home in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1936,
he vividly remembered the regimentation of work, beginning at daybreak.
"When de day began to crack de whole plantation break out wid all kids of noises, and you could tell what going on by de kind of noise you hear.
Come de daybreak you hear de guinea fowls start potracking down at de edge of de woods lot, and den de roosters all start up 'round de barn and de ducks finally wake up and jine in. You can smell de sow belly frying down at the cabins in de "row", to go wid de hoecake and de buttermilk.
Den purty soon de wind rise a little, and you can hear a old bell donging way on some plantation a mile or two off and de more bells at other places and maybe a horn, and purty soon younder go old Master's old ram horn wid a long toot and den some short toots, and here come de overseer down de row of cabins, hollering right and left, and picking de ham out'n his teeth wid a long shiny goose quill pick.
Bells and horns! Bels for dis and horns for dat! All we knowed was go and come by de bells and horns!
Old ram horn blow to send us all to de field. We all line up, about seventy-five field... [slaves], and go by de tool shed and git our hoes,or maybe go hitch up de mules to de plows and lay de plows out on de side so de overseer can see iffen de points is sharp. Any plow gits broke or de point gits bungled up on de rocks it goes to de blacksmith nigger, den we all git on down in de field.
Den de anvil start dangling in de blacksmith shop: "Tank! Deling! Tank! Deling-ding!", and dat ole bull tongue gitting straightened out!
Course you can't hear de shoemaker awling or pegging and de card spinners andde old mammy sewing by hand, but maybe you can hear de ole loom going "frump, frump," and you know it all right iffen your clothes do be wearing out, 'cause you gwine git new britches purty soon!
We had about a hundred niggers on dat place, young and old, and about twenty on de little place down below. We could make about every kind of thing but coffee and gunpowder dat our whitefolks and us needed.
When we needs a hat we gits inside cornhucks and weave one out, and makes horse collars de same way. Jest tie two little soft shucks together and begin plaiting.
All de cloth 'cepting a de Mistress' Sunday dresses come from de sheep to de carders and de spinners and de weaver, den we dye it wid "butternut" and hickory bark and indigo and other things and set it wid copperas. Leather tanned on de place made de shoes, and I never see a store boughten wagon wheel 'cepting among de stages and de freighters along de big road.
We made purty, long back-combs out'n cow horn and knitting neddles out'n second hickory. Split a young hickory and put in a big wedge to prize it open, then cut it down and let it season, and you got good bent grain for wagon hames and chair rockers and such."
Source: Charley William's narrative is one of 2,300 collected
in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration
(WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives:
A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves.
(The full Charley Williams narrative appears in volume 13, pages 330-43.) This
and several other slave narratives selected from the original records are available
online at the Library of Congress "American Memory" Web site: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html
Shop Online
Receive e-mail updates
Historic Triangle
iCitizenForum
