During the Great Depression, writers and journalists working under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) interviewed more than 2,300 former slaves across the American South. The leaders of this Federal Writers’ Project believed, as historian Norman R. Yetman has written, that “slavery could best be described by those who had … experienced it personally.” Thus, the writers recorded the stories of the former slaves, most of whom had been born in the 1850s and 1860s, and then published their original, first-hand accounts in a book titled, “Slave Narratives: A Folk History in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves.”
The account of slavery provided by Ellen Evans Payne featured prominently among the Texas narratives. Born into slavery in Marshall, Texas, Payne was owned by Dr. William F. Evans, a pioneering physician, who moved to the Lone Star State from Tennessee in 1842. Dr. Evans was the first medical doctor to settle in Marshall, and he operated both a pharmacy and a grocery store. By 1850, he had accumulated more than $7000 in property and held twenty-six slaves. He used this wealth and the connections it created to win election in 1851 to the Texas House of Representatives.
At roughly the same time, Evans’ daughter, Martha, married the prominent Marshall attorney Edward Clark. Clark was a delegate to the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1845, a member of the first state House of Representatives, and a senator in the Second Legislature. Following a distinguished course of service in the Mexican War, he also served as the Texas secretary of state under Governor Elisha M. Pease, and won election as lieutenant governor of the state in 1859. Later, when Governor Sam Houston was deposed by the Secession Convention in 1861 due to his unionist sympathies, Clark was briefly elevated to the governor’s position, but lost his bid for a full term in the fall of 1861.
Despite her connection to these powerful Anglo Texans, Ellen Evans Payne did not enjoy any of the rights and privileges that they took for granted. For example, Ellen’s family lost any record of her birth date, when Dr. Evans loaned out his family Bible and failed to get it back. At the end of the Civil War, Ellen and the other African Americans on the Evans property were thus forced to simply guess their ages.
Ellen worked on the Evans farm, located a few miles from Marshall proper, minding the smaller livestock, though she and her mother occasionally went into town to work in the Evans household, located on Marshall’s North side. Ellen and her mother worked part time for Evans’ daughter, who married a future governor.
The Evans slaves were seemingly well cared for, with real beds, unlike slaves on other farms, who had “’Damn-it-to-hell’” beds. The Evans’ did allow their slaves to make goods to sell and let them work a small patch of land in order to raise vegetables for sale. Of her owner, she said that Mr. Evans did not allow the overseer to “cut and slash” his slaves, and that she “loved all my white folks and they was sweet to us.”
Mrs. Payne remembers the Civil War, though she did not see much of it firsthand. When the end of war came, recalled Mr. Evans saying, “You is free, and I’m mighty glad, but I’m mighty sad.” Ellen and her mother stayed until the end of the year and then went out into town to be hired on. She worked until she married at age twenty-five to a farmer; her former mistress even sent her a blue wedding dress to wear at her wedding.
Ellen and Nelson Payne farmed the land together for fifty-two years and raised four sons, all deceased. At the time of her interview, she had been widowed going on eleven years, but was still working the family farm on Port Caddo Road and attending camp meetings. The spirit still moved her, and though her fervent praying was made light of by the younger generations, she didn’t care, saying “Style am crowded all the grace out of ‘ligion, today.”
]]>During the Great Depression, journalists and writers working under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) interviewed more than 2,300 former slaves across the American South. The stories these writers recorded were then published in a landmark book titled, “Slave Narratives: A Folk History in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves.”
Eda Rains, a 94-year-old native of Little Rock, Arkansas, was living in Douglassville, Texas, when she was interviewed in the late 1930s. Her story involved a number of long-distance moves, changes in ownership, and the occasional joys that could be experienced even in the slave regime.
Born in 1853, Rains had lived in Little Rock until the age of seven, when she was sold to a man named Carter and brought to Douglassville. Unlike many other slaves, Rains had been sold along with her family, and so had not had to experience the terrible pain that accompanied separation from loved ones.
When she arrived in Texas, Rains was sent to do “parchin’ coffee” work for another family in Douglassville, the Tomlins. The injection site of the small pox vaccine she had received before leaving Little Rock was causing her a sore arm, and as a result she was charged with tending to the Tomlins’ children. She once fell asleep while doing her work and was struck in the face for her infraction with a “turkey wing fan.”
Later, the Tomlins sold Rains and her family as a unit to a man named Roack. The Rains lived together in a small cabin, and Roack fed them the same thing every morning that he fed his own family: “milk and mush.” At Christmas, Roack gave each of his slaves some money so that they could buy “a string of beads" or other small gifts. And on Christmas morning, he presented his slaves with their yearly ration of new clothes and shoes. Despite these acts of kindness, Rains recalled that Roack also chained any runaways that came into his possession until their masters could be located.
When the Civil War ended and Roack gave his slaves the option of leaving or staying on his property. Since Rains had no money or property of her own, she chose to stay, at least until she married and moved to Jacksonville, Florida. She outlived most of her friends and acquaintances by the time of the interview.
]]>The Federal Writers' Project entitled "Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves" encompasses a rich oral history of slavery from those who experienced it. Completed between 1936 and 1938 during the Great Depression, this Works Project Administration endeavor had two goals: to employ writers and to record the stories of still-living former slaves. Daphne Williams is one of those former slaves who shared her story.
Daphne Williams, uncertain of her exact age, was estimated to be about 100 in 1937 when she spoke to the Writers' Project from her home near Hillister in Tyler County, Texas. She was born in Tallahassee, Florida, and came to Texas as a girl around the time that the Civil War began. Most of her recollections of slavery centered on her years in Florida, where her owner Nancy Herring lived. From her earliest recollections, she was a caretaker for the Herring children and was seldom allowed to interact with the other slave children. Her job was to make sure no harm came to her charges, and she told of having to “be careful not to let the briar scratch him or he git a scar on him," or her owners would "put a scar" on her. Williams later became the cook when her mother died.
Williams recalled that her widowed mistress sent most of her slaves to Texas just before the Civil War began, in what Williams recalled as an attempt to "smuggle," and Williams was also moved to Texas, traveling in a boat "as big as a house." Williams recalled arriving and seeing "all the pretty trees" in East Texas, a site unfamiliar on the bare and flat landscape around Tallahassee. The Herrings and their slaves settled about five miles from Woodville in Tyler County.
When freedom came to Texas after the war's end, Herring let the former slaves stay on for a bit and then gave an allowance to those who wanted to move on. Williams' uncle told her to "go and look out for number one" and so she moved on. Records indicate that she remained in Tyler County and lived there until her death in 1941.
]]>In an effort to chronicle the experiences of people who had once been enslaved, the Federal Writers' Project collected interviews and photographs of more than 2,300 former slaves. The results of this initiative, organized to provide employment during the Depression for out-of-work writers, were published in multiple volumes of "Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves." Writers documented the memories of nearly 700 former slaves living in Texas, including Charlotte Beverly, who was living with one of her adult children in a small house between Cleveland and Shepherd in 1937.
Beverly was unsure of her own age and the interviewer estimated her to be around 90 years old. Born in Montgomery County, Texas, Beverly was owned by Captain Francis B. Pankey and his wife Martha, as was her mother Phillis, but another man owned her father, who lived nearby.
Beverly recalled her responsibilities in the Pankey household, such as cleaning the silver collection and Martha Pankey's snuff box. Captain Pankey allowed his slaves, in their limited free time, to work some of his land and grow their own cotton crop to sell. He also allowed one of the slaves to act as a preacher to the rest. As long as the man preaching was not too loud, Beverly recalled, then there was no reason for someone from the "big house" to make him quit because he was making a disturbance.
Beverly spoke highly of her former owners, saying, "Lawd, they was good to us. Us didn' know nothin' 'bout bad times and cutting and whipping and slashing." The slaves were permitted to participate in holiday rituals and meals, and sometimes they attended the white church with their owners. Beverly also recalled that Martha Pankey, without children of her own, seemed to take special interest in the approximately 40 slaves they owned. She would often care for the children of the field workers herself, and she did not allow Charlotte to "do any heavy work." Beverly remembered that as Martha Pankey was dying, the mistress expressed concern for her and said, "You take care of Charlotte."
Despite the fairly favorable memories Beverly shared more than 70 years after slavery ended, records show that the Pankeys considered young Charlotte, her mother and others as property. Before Martha Pankey offered words of concern for Beverly on her deathbed, she had arranged in her will for Beverly and other slaves to be passed to her niece. Martha Pankey died in early 1861, just as the Civil War began and four years before Beverly, her mother, and other slaves were legally emancipated.
]]>During the Great Depression, the U.S. Government funded a special Federal Writers' Project to support authors like John Steinbeck and Ralph Ellison. As part of this effort, the government also paid interviewers to record the personal stories of African Americans who had experienced slavery during the nineteenth century. One former slave, Betty Simmons, was, by her own estimation, between 100- and 102-years-old at the time of her interview in Beaumont, Texas around 1937.
Like many of the other people interviewed for the Slave Narratives project, Simmons had vivid memories of her time as a slave. She was born in Macedonia, Alabama, to a free man, yet Betty was not free. She and her mother belonged to Leftwidge Carter until he was financially ruined. At that time, she was sold and resold to slave traders. She eventually made her way to Texas via the slave market in New Orleans, and never again saw her family in Alabama.
As the property of Colonel Fortescue in Liberty, Texas, Simmons led a simple life. She related that her master had been good to her and had even allowed her to keep a garden and animals where she lived. She also recalled a darker moment, however, when a young slave boy ran away and the dogs were sent after him. After Colonel Fortescue saw how the dogs had mangled the poor boy's body, he refused to pay the recapture fee.
Simmons married George Fortescue at some point during her time as a slave. The couple had at least fourteen children, seven of whom lived into adulthood. And, Simmons remembered well when freedom came, and with it, the relief that her toddler would not be sent out into the fields to work.
At the end of the Civil War, Colonel Fortescue gave his former property some of the crops from the fields they worked as slaves, but little else. As Betty recollected, “We gits on all right after freedom, but it hard at first ‘cause us didn’t know how to do for ourselves. But we has to learn.” According to one of her descendents, Betty Simmons died in 1941, at the age of 108.
]]>During the Great Depression, more than 2,300 former slaves were interviewed by writers and journalists working under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The leaders of this project believed, as historian Norman R. Yetman has written, that “slavery could best be described by those who had ... experienced it personally.” Thus, the writers associated with this project reached out to former slaves, most of whom had been born in the 1850s and 1860s, and recorded their original, first-hand accounts of slavery.
At the time of her interview, Callie Shepherd was 84 years old and remembered well the days of slavery. Born in Gilmer, Texas, in 1852, she had been a slave of the Stevens family. She recalled that Miss Fannie, the wife of her owner, Dr. Stevens, “raised me, right in de house with her own chillen.” Dr. Stevens died after contracting an illness in the Civil War, and Miss Fannie remained to raise her children and manage the homestead as best she could. After the war, however, Miss Fannie returned to Georgia without her former slaves.
Although Shepherd remembered Miss Fannie and Dr. Stevens fondly, she also recalled the horrors that were inflicted on slaves who tried to escape their bondage. They were chased through the woods by dogs, captured through brute force, and then whipped in front of their children. This tortuous punishment was visited on those who attempted to escape in hopes that it would discourage others from just such efforts in the future.
Shepherd’s description of her life under slavery was brief, but complicated. She remembered having good owners and attending dances, where people commented on her wonderful performances. But, she also expressed her spiritual feeling that slavery was wrong. As she said: “I danced at de balls in de sixteen figure round sets… but I gits ‘ligion and left de old way to live in de ‘termination to live beyond dis vale of tears.”
In the end, Shepherd discovered that the slavery regime was over when soldiers came through Gilmer on their way home. As they rode through the area, the soldiers tossed metal cups to the children playing alongside the road and told them that they were free. Life was not necessarily easier for Callie Shepherd as a free person, however. Although she had her liberty, Miss Fannie and her old life were gone, and Shepherd was forced to perform backbreaking labor in the cotton fields of East Texas to make ends meet. Even so, she remained in Gilmer long after the Civil War, and moved to Dallas (where she was interviewed) only late in life to live with her son and daughter-in-law.
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