e woods
then. He hid out staying with us at night until August. Then my mother
took him to the Yankee garrison at Fayetteville. A Yankee officer then
took him to a black smith shop and had the ball and chain cut off his
leg. The marsters would tell the slaves to go to work that they were not
free, that they still belonged to them, but one would drop out and
leave, then another. There was little work done on the farm, and
finally most of the slaves learned they were free.

Abraham Lincoln was one of the greatest men that ever lived. He was the
cause of us slaves being free. No doubt about that. I didn't think
anything of Jeff Davis. He tried to keep us in slavery. I think slavery
was an injustice, not right. Our privilege is to live right, and live
according to the teachings of the Bible, to treat our fellowman right.
To do this I feel we should belong to some religious organization and
live as near right as we know how.

The overseers and patterollers in the time of slavery were called poor
white trash by the slaves.

On the plantations not every one, but some of the slave holders would
have some certain slave women reserved for their own use. Sometimes
children almost white would be born to them. I have seen many of these
children. Sometimes the child would be said to belong to the overseer,
and sometimes it would be said to belong to the marster.

N. C. District: No. 2 [320118]
Worker: Mary A. Hicks
No. Words: 610
Subject: AUNT LAURA
Story Teller: LAURA BELL
Editor: Geo. L. Andrews

[TR: Date Stamp "AUG 6 1937"]

AUNT LAURA

An interview with Laura Bell, 73 years old, of 2 Bragg Street, Raleigh,
North Carolina.

Being informed that Laura Bell was an old slavery Negro, I went
immediately to the little two-room shack with its fallen roof and shaky
steps. As I approached the shack I noticed that the storm had done great
damage to the chaney-berry tree in her yard, fallen limbs litterin' the
ground, which was an inch deep in garbage and water.

The porch was littered with old planks and huge tubs and barrels of
stagnant water. There was only room for one chair and in that sat a tall
Negro woman clad in burlap bags and in her lap she held a small white
flea-bitten dog which growled meaningly.

When I reached the gate, which swings on one rusty hinge, she bade me
come in and the Carolina Power and Light Company men, who were at work
nearby, laughed as