ol' us we
wuz free."

EX-SLAVE INTERVIEW:

MARGARET GREEN
1430 Jones Street
Augusta, Georgia.

(Richmond County)

BY: Mrs. Margaret Johnson
Editor
Federal Writers' Project,
Augusta, Georgia.

EX-SLAVE INTERVIEW

Margaret Green,
1430 Jones Street,
Augusta, Georgia
(Richmond County)

Margaret Green, 1430 Jones Street was born in 1855 on the plantation of
Mr. Cooke McKie in Edgefield County, South Carolina.

Margaret's house was spotlessly clean, her furniture of the golden oak
type was polished, and the table cover and sideboard scarfs were
beautifully laundered. Margaret is a small, trim little figure dressed
in a grey print dress with a full gathered skirt and a clean, starched
apron with strings tied in a big bow. She has twinkling eyes, a kindly
smile and a pleasant manner.

"Yes, mam, I remembers slavery times very well. I wuz a little girl but
I could go back home and show you right where I wuz when the sojers come
through our place with their grey clothes and bright brass buttons. They
looked mighty fine on their hosses ridin' round. I could show you right
where those sojers had the camp".

Margaret described "the quarters" and told of the life. "Each fam'ly had
a garden patch, and could raise cotton. Only Marse Cooke raised cotton;
what we raised we et".

"Margaret were the slaves on your master's plantation mistreated?"

"What you say? Mistreat? Oh! you mean whipped! Yes, man, sometime Marse
Cooke whip us when we need it, but he never hurt nobody. He just give
'em a lick or two make 'em mind they business. Marse Cooke was a good
man, and he never let a overseer lay a finger on one of his niggers!"

"Margaret were you ever whipped?"

Margaret laughed; with her eyes twinkling merrily she replied, "Marse
Cooke say he wuz gonna whip me 'cause I was so mischievious. He was on
his horse. I broke and run, and Marse ain't give me that whippin' till
yet!"

"Yes, mam, I hearn stories o' ghos'es and hants, but I never did b'lieve
in none of 'em. I uster love to play and to get out of all the work I
could. The old folk on the plantashun uster tell us younguns if we
didn't hurry back from the spring with the water buckets, the hants and
buggoos would catch us. I ain't never hurry till yet, and I never see a
hant. I wished I could, 'caus' I don't b'lieve I would be scart."

"Margaret, did you learn to read?"

"Oh! no mam, that wus sumpin' we wuzn't 'lowed to do