steers, and was considered
the best meat cutter on the plantation. The slave women were required to
spin, and Adeline's mother was unusually good at spinning wool, "and
that kind of spinning was powerful slow," added the old woman. "My
mother was one of the best dyers anywhere around. I was too. I made
colors by mixing up all kinds of bark and leaves. I made the prettiest
sort of lilac color with maple bark and pine bark--not the outside pine
bark, but that little thin skin that grows right down next to the tree."
Adeline remembers one dress she loved: "I never will forget it as long
as I live. It was a hickory stripe dress they made for me, with brass
buttons at the wrist bands. I was so proud of that dress and felt so
dressed up in it, I just strutted!"

She remembers the plantation store and the candy the master gave the
Negro children. "Bright, pretty sticks of candy!" Tin cups hold a
special niche in her memory. But there were punishments, too. "Good or
bad, we got whippings with a long cowhide kept just for that. They
whipped us to make us grow better, I reckon!"

Asked about doctors, Adeline replied:

"I was born, growed up, married and had sixteen children and never had
no doctor till here since I got so old!"

Plantation ingenuity was shown in home concoctions and tonics. At the
first sniffle of a cold, the slaves were called in and given a drink of
fat lightwood tea, made by pouring boiling water over split kindling.
"'Cause lightwood got turpentine in it," explained Adeline. She said
that a springtime tonic was made of anvil dust, gathered at the
blacksmith's shop, mixed with syrup. This was occasionally varied with a
concoction of garlic and whiskey!

Adeline adheres to traditional Negro beliefs, and concluded her
recountal of folklore with the dark prediction: "Every gloomy day brings
death. Somebody leaving this unfriendly world to-day!"

[EUGENE]

Another version of slavery was given by Eugene, an Augusta Negro. His
mother was brought to Augusta from Pennsylvania and freed when she came
of age. She married a slave whose master kept a jewelry store. The freed
woman was required to put a guardian over her children. The jeweler paid
Eugene's father fifty cents a week and was angry when his mother refused
to allow her children to work for him. Eugene's mother supported her
children by laundry work. "Free colored folks had to pay taxes," said
Eugene, "And in Augusta you had to have a pass to go from