Richard Miller was the son of an Indian mother and an enslaved father. In the following excerpts, he describes two examples of violence. The first is an example of an enslaved person being burned alive. The second describes a former enslaved person defending himself after the KKK murdered his wife.
He remembers a slave by the name of Brown, in Texas, who was chained hand and feet to a woodpile, oil thrown over him, and the wood, then fire set to the wood, and he was burned to death.
After the fire smoldered down, the white women and children took his ashes for souvenirs.
. . . George Band was a very powerful slave, always ready to fight, never losing a fight, always able to defend himself until one night a band of Ku Kluxers came to his house, took his wife, hung her to a tree, hacked her to death with knives. Then went to the house, got George, took him to see what they had done to his wife. He asked them to let him go back to the house to get something to wrap his wife in, thinking he was sincere in his request, they allowed him to go. Instead of getting a wrapping for his wife, he got his Winchester rifle, shot and killed fourteen of the Kluxers. The county was never bothered with the Klan again. However, George left immediately for the North.
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Richard Miller
1843
Sarah H. Locke
Unknown
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Marion County, IN
Indiana
Danville, KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Violence
Third person, witnessed extreme cruelty, Klan/mob violence
Samuel Bell was an enslaved person in Kentucky for 12 years before Emancipation. In this excerpt, he describes how the enslaved didn’t truly have rights under the law, and because of this, the enslaver’s rules were the only laws that mattered.
“[John Bell] … was a good and a just man and fed his slaves well. He only used the lash when it was absolutely necessary. You know how it is in the court! Well, it was the same way on the plantations in slavery days. A good slave was seldom punished, but mean ones had to be punished to prevent their taking advantage of their master and the other slaves. Slaves were not subject to the laws of the land, and this punishment had to be governed by a slave’s deeds and errors. The master’s will was the only law he was compelled to obey. When a slave refused to work, he was flogged until he was willing to work. The master had to feed and clothe him and expected him to repay with work.
Evall had about 200 slaves on a big plantation and fine race horses. He raised cane, wheat, and corn, and he had a big stillhouse to make his own whiskey, and he made it to sell, too.
We did our cooking in our cabin, and it wasn’t much except jowl bacon, cornbread, and syrup. I and part of our family were sold once, and ole Miss Evall’s mother brought us back the same day.
I saw slaves whipped at the whipping post in Paris, Kentucky, until their backs bled. And then they sprinkled the cuts with salty water.
Different slave owners would take their slaves to help other slave owners cut their winter’s wood, or husk corn, or shear their sheep. We got good food then and sometimes they used to let their slaves have dances together whilst they were working to get the work done.
Evall bought our shoes in Paris, (Kentucky) and if they were too big, we wore them, and if they were too little we wore them just the same, But sometimes we cut the toes out of the shoes to make them long enough.
Sarah Frances Shaw Graves’ enslaver moved her from Kentucky to Missouri at a young age. In this excerpt, she gives details about what it’s like to be whipped by an enslaver. She then tells a story of how she was blamed for something one of the enslaver’s children did, and was nearly whipped twice for this.
Yes ma’am. Some masters were good and some were bad. My mama’s master whipped his slaves for pastime. My master was not so bad as some were to their slaves. I’ve had many a whipping, some I deserved, and some I got for being blamed for doing things the master’s children did. My master whipped his slaves with a cat-o’-nine-tails. He’d say to me, ’You ain’t had a currying down for some time. Come here!!!’ Then he whipped me with the cat. The cat was made of nine strips of leather fastened onto the end of a whip. Lots of times when he hit me, the cat left nine stripes of blood on my back. Yes ma’am . . .
. . . I belong to the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and I ain’t never cussed but once in my life, and that was one time I nearly got two whippings for something I didn’t do. Some of the master’s kin folks had a wedding, and we walked to the church, and somebody kicked dust on the bride’s clothes, and I got blamed but I never kicked it. The master’s daughter Puss, she kicked it. Ole mistress she whipped me. Yes ma’am, she whipped me. It was the worst whipping I ever got. The worst whipping in my whole life, and I still got the marks on my body. Yes ma’am. I have them yet. When the master came home, he was going to whip me again, and I got mad and told him it was a lie, and if Puss said I kicked dust on the white folks she was a DAMNED LYIN’ DEVIL. He took the switch and gave Puss a whipping for telling a lie. Yes ma’am. That’s the only time I ever cussed in my life. Yes ma’am, and that’s about all I know about slavery and folks’ ways hereabouts.
Sebert Douglas lived in Kentucky before and during the Civil War. In this excerpt, he gives several brief recollections: of Morgan’s raid, enslaved persons who joined the Union Army, examples of KKK violence, and what he did after emancipation.
I remember [Confederate General John Hunt] Morgan’s Raid. I don’t remember what year it was but I remember a right smart about it. Cumberland Gap was where they met. The Rebs and Yankees both came and took things from old master. I remember three horses they took as well. Yankees had tents in the yard. They were in the yard right in front of the Methodist church.
My mother was Mrs. Hood’s slave, and when she married she took my mother along and I was born on her place. I was the carriage boy in slave times. My father did the driving and I was the waiting boy. I opened the gates.
I remember Billy Chandler and Lewis Rodman ran off and joined the Yankees but they came back after the war was over.
Pattyrollers were about the same as the Ku Klux. The Ku Klux would take the roof off the colored folks’ houses and take their bedding and make ’em go back where they came from.
We stayed right there with old master for two or three years, then we went to the country and farmed for ourselves.
I went to school just long enough to read and write. I never seen any use for figures until I married and went to farming.
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Sebert Douglas
82 years old
Bernice Bowden
Gover Hood
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Pine Bluff, AK
Arkansas
Lebanon, KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Civil War, Emancipation, Violence,
First person, dialect, Klan/mob violence, Union soldiers,
Sophia word spent the first nearly 20 years of her life enslaved. In this excerpt, she tells several stories of extreme cruelty and their results. The first is an example of her being whipped for trying to take food from the kitchen of her enslaver. The next set of stories describes the cruelty of a neighboring enslaver and the suicides of the enslaved that resulted from this treatment.
The mistress had an old parrot and one day I was in the kitchen making cookies. I decided I wanted some of them, so I took me out some and put them on a chair, and when I did this the mistress entered the door. I picked up a cushion and threw it over the pile of cookies on the chair. Mistress came near the chair and the old parrot cries out, ‘Mistress burn, Mistress burn’, then the mistress looked under the cushion and she had me whipped. But the next day I killed the parrot, and she often wondered who or what killed the bird.
My master wasn’t as mean as most masters. Hugh White was so mean to his slaves, that I know of two gals that killed themselves. One n***** gal, Sudie, was found across the bed with a pen knife in her hand. He whipped another N***** gal most to death for forgetting to put onions in the stew. The next day she went down to the river and for nine days they searched for her and her body finally washed upon the shore. The master could never live in that house again as when he would go to sleep he would see the n***** standing over his bed. Then he moved to Richmond and there he stayed until a little later when he hung himself.
Scott Mitchell lived through the Civil War, though he does not know his age. Here, he briefly describes his recollection of the war and stories of lynchings and hangings that took place during that time.
*Historically-used terms that are offensive, marginalizing and/or disparaging have been removed from the transcripts and replaced with [redacted]. See more information.
Yes, I remember the Civil War, because I was living in Christian County where I was born, right with my master and mistress, Captain Hester and his wife. I was raised on a farm right with the, then I left there.
Yes, Captain Hester traded my mother and my sister, ’twas in 1861, he sent them to Mississippi. When they were away from him about two years, he bought them back. Yes, he was good to us. I was my mistress’ boy. I looked after her, and she made all of my clothes, and she knitted my socks, because I was her [redacted].
Yes, I was twenty years old when I was married.
I remember I was a boy when they had the Civil War. I remember there was a brick office where they hanged colored folks. Yes, the blood was a-streaming down. Sometimes they hung them by their feet, sometimes they hung them by their thumbs.
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Scott Mitchell
Unknown
Margaret Bishop
Captain Hester
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Breathitt County, KY
Kentucky
Christian County, KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Civil War, Violence,
First person, witnessed extreme cruelty, Klan/mob violence,
America Morgan and her entire family were enslaved by a cruel enslaver named Clark Rudd. Here, Mrs. Morgan describes various instances of extreme cruelty she witnessed in her time on the plantation.
*Historically-used terms that are offensive, marginalizing and/or disparaging have been removed from the transcripts and replaced with [redacted]. See more information.
She [Mrs. Morgan] remembers very clearly the happenings of her early life. Her mother, Manda Rudd, was owned by Clark Rudd, and the “devil has sure got him.” [Her father] became a Rudd, because he was married to Manda on the Rudd plantation. There were six children in the family, and all went well until the death of the mother; Clark Rudd whipped her to death when America was five years old. Six little children were left motherless to face a “frowning world.”
…Aunt Catherine, who looked after all the children on the plantation, was very unruly, no one could whip her. Once America was sent for two men to come and tie Aunt Catherine. She fought so hard, it was as much as the men could do to tie her. They tied her hands, then hung her to the joist and lashed her with a cowhide. It “was awful to hear her screams.”
She remembers one slave, who had been given five hundred lashes on his back, thrown in his cabin to die. He laid on the floor all night, at dawn he came to himself, and there were bloodhounds licking his back.
When the overseers lashed a slave to death, they would turn the bloodhounds out to smell the blood, so they would know “[redacted] blood,” that would help trace runaway slaves.
Aunt Jane Stringer was given five hundred lashes and thrown in her cabin. The next morning when the overseer came, he kicked her and told her to get up, and wanted to know if she was going to sleep there all day. When she did not answer him, he rolled her over and the poor woman was dead, leaving several motherless children.
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
America Morgan
1852 (85)
Anna Pritchett
Clark Rudd
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Marion County, IN
Indiana
Kentucky
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Family, Violence
Third person, whipped, witnessed extreme cruelty, sold (self or family), bound out after war
The excerpts below provide teachers a unique opportunity to consider perspective and decisions made by an interviewer. The interviewer Archie Koritz submitted two separate documents for his interview with John Eubanks.
The first, featured in “Part 1” below is written in the third person. In the excerpt, Archie Koritz describes John Eubanks life during slavery, calling him “one of hte more fortunate slaves in that his mistress and master were kind.”
The second interview is labeled “Part 2” and is written in the first person. The excerpt from this interview covers the same content as that in “Part 1” but is a far more detailed version of John Eubanks life that goes into great detail about the cruelty of his enslaver. The details included in this part of the interview do not appear at all in “Part 1.” The reader can speculate that “Part 2” is similar to a transcript of the interview and “Part 1” is closer to a report of the interview submitted by interviewer Archie Koritz.
[Part 1: Recorded by the interviewer in the third person.]
Following the custom of the south, when the children of the Everrett family grew up, they married and slaves were given them for wedding presents. John was given to a daughter who married a man of the name of Eubanks, hence his name, John Eubanks. John was one of the more fortunate slaves in that his mistress and master were kind and they were in a state divided on the question of slavery. They favored the north. The rest of the children were given to other members of the Everrett family upon their marriage or sold down the river and never saw one another until after the close of the Civil War.
[Part 2: What follows is a different version of the interview, recorded by the same interviewer, but this time in the first person. The examples John Eubanks shares here about how violently his enslaver treated enslaved people do not appear at all in the full version of the interview recorded in Part 1. The brackets used below were inserted by the interviewer at the time the interview was recorded. ]
…I remember well, us young’uns on the Everett plantation. I have worked since I can remember, hoeing, picking cotton and other chores around the farm. We didn’t have many clothes, never underwear, no shoes, old overalls and a tattered shirt, winter and summer. Come the winter, it’d be so cold my feet were plumb numb most of the time, and many a time—when we got a chance—we drove the hogs from out in the bogs and put our feet in the warmed wet mud. They were cracked and the skin on the bottoms and in the toes were cracked and bleeding most of time, with bloody scabs, but the summer healed them again.
“Do you all remember, Grandpap,” [his daughter prompted] “your master—did he treat you mean?”
“No.” [His tolerant acceptance apparent in his answer] “It was done thataway. Slaves were whipped and punished and the young’uns belonged to the master to work for him or to sell. When I was about six years old, Master Everett gave me to Tony Eubanks as a wedding present when he married master’s daughter Becky. Becky wouldn’t let Tony whip her slaves who came from her father’s plantation. ‘They are my property,’ she says, ‘and you can’t whip them.’ Tony whipped his other slaves but not Becky’s.
I remember how they tied the slave around a post, with hands tied together around the post, then a husky lashed his back with a snakeskin lash until his back was cut and bloodened, the blood spattered [gesticulating with his unusually large hands] and his back all cut up. Then they’d pour salt water on him. That’d dry and then stick to him. He’d never take it off till it healed. Sometimes I’d see Master Everett hang a slave tip-toe. He’d tie him up so he stood tip-toe and left him thataway…
Master Everett whipped me once, and Mother, she cried. Then Master Everett says, ‘Why do you all cry?—You cry, I’ll whip another of these young’uns. She tried to stop. He whipped another. He says, ‘If you all don’t stop, you will be whipped too!’, and Mother, she’s trying to stop but tears roll out, so Master Everett whips her too.
I wanted to visit Mother when I belonged to Master Eubanks, but [enslaver Master Eubanks’s wife] Becky said, ‘You all best not see your Mother, or you’ll want to go all the time, then explaining that she wanted me to forget Mother, but I never could…
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
John Eubanks
1836 or 1839 (approx 98)
Archie Koritz
Everett Family, Tony Eubanks
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Gary, IN
IN
Glasgow, KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Violence, Family, Interviewer
Barron County, First Person, Third Person, Dialect, Whipped, Witnessed Extreme Cruelty, Union Troops, Veteran or Widow, Notable
In this excerpt, which the interviewer records in the first person, Jane Simpson describes how her enslaver whipped her, how her enslaver responded to Union troops during the Civil War, and how enslaved people were treated upon emancipation. The excerpt ends with Jane Simpson telling of a metaphor enslaved people used to describe the end of enslavement.
*Historically-used terms that are offensive, marginalizing and/or disparaging have been removed from the transcripts and replaced with [redacted]. See more information.
… I never got more than three or four whippings, but they cut the blood out of me every one of them times. If ole Miss got mad about something, just anything at all, she’d have you whipped, when maybe you had not done a thing, just to satisfy her spiteful feeling. I never can forget, I was sitting upstairs in ole Miss’ house, quilting, when the first Yankee army boat went to Vicksburg, Mississippi. Ole Miss made me get right up and go get her children out of school and bring them right home. She was scared to death mostly, but the boat went right on. It didn’t even stop…
I had an uncle who was buying his freedom from Master Chris and was almost paid out when Master Chris died, but he didn’t know anything about keeping receipts, so he was put on the auction block and sold again…
The [redacted] didn’t expect nothing from the white folks when they got set free. They were so glad to get set free, they were just glad to be loose. I never even heard of white folks giving [redacted] nothing. Most of the time they didn’t even give them what they were supposed to give them after they were free. They were so mad because they had to set them free, they just stayed mean as they would allow them to be anyhow, and are yet, most of them. I used to hear old slaves pray and ask God when would the bottom rail be the top rail, and I wondered what on earth they were talking about. They were talking about when they are going to get out from under bondage. Course I know now…
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Jane Simpson
Unknown (over 90)
Unknown
Chris Ellis, John Emerson, Jessie Cook, Dr. Hart
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
St. Louis, MO
MO
Burkesville, KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Violence, Civil War, Emancipation
Cumberland County, First Person, Dialect, Sold
Simpson_J_1
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