r or five hundred miles
before they would get the chance to sell them. Sometimes a woman would
have a child in her arms. A man would buy the mother and wouldn't want
the child. And then sometimes a woman would holler out: 'Don't sell that
pickaninny.' (You know they didn't call colored children nothin' but
Pickaninnies then.) 'I want that little pickaninny.' And the mother
would go one way and the child would go the other. The mother would be
screaming and hollering, and of course, the child wouldn't be saying
nothin' because it didn't know what was goin' on.

"They had a sale block in my home (Fort Valley, Georgia), and I used to
go and see the Niggers sold often. Some few wasn't worth nothin' at
all--just about a hundred dollars. But they generally ran about five or
six hundred dollars. Some of them would bring thousands of dollars. It
depended on their looks. The trader would say, 'Look at those shoulders;
look at those muscles.'

"Someone would holler out, 'A thousand dollars.'

"Then another would holler out, 'Fifteen hundred.'

"They went like horses. A fine built woman would bring a lot of money. A
woman that birthed children cost a heap.

"Virginia was where the slaves would be brought first. The slave traders
would go there and get them and take them across the country in
droves--just like you take a drove of cattle. They would sell them as
they would come to sale blocks. The slaves would be undressed from the
shoulders to the waist."

Houses, Food, Clothes

"The slaves lived in log huts on the plantations. Some men would
weatherboard them. They didn't put any ceiling in. You could lay back in
your bed and see the moon and stars shining through.

"Some got good food and some of the owners would make the Niggers steal
their food from other folks. Old Myers Green would make his Niggers
steal and he would say, 'If you get caught, I'll kill you.' One or two
of them let themselves get caught, and he would whip them. That was to
save him from paying for it. They couldn't do anything to you but whip
you nohow. But they could make him pay for it.

"They used homemade clothes made out of homemade cotton cloth. They
would spin the cotton to a thread. When they would get so many broaches
of it, they would make it into cloth. A broach was just a lot of thread
wound around a stick. They would take it to the wheel and make the
cloth, them women used to have tasks:--spinning, weaving, dressmaking,
and so on. Some