ome, we got off from work and do what we want. Some of us washed for de
week. We had no schools and couldn't read and write. Sometimes we could
play in our yards after work was over or on Saturday afternoons. On
Christmas the master give us something good to eat. We didn't have
doctors much, but de ole folks had cures for sickness. Dey made
cherry-bark tea for chills and fever, and root-herb teas for fevers.
Lots of chills and fevers then. To cure a boil or wart, we would take a
hair from the tail of a horse and tie it tight around both sides of the
sore place. I think Abe Lincoln was a great man, and Jeff Davis was a
good man too. I think Booker Washington was a great man for de colored
race. I like it better now than de way it was in slavery time."

Source: Ellen Swindler (78), Newberry. S.C. Interviewed by:
G.L. Summer, Newberry, S.C., May 20, 1937.

=Project #1655=
=W.W. Dixon,=
=Winnsboro, S.C.=

=MACK TAYLOR=

=_EX-SLAVE 97 YEARS._=

Mack Taylor lives six miles southeast of Ridgeway, S.C., on his farm of
ninety-seven acres. The house, in which he resides, is a frame house
containing six rooms, all on one floor. His son, Charley, lives with
him. Charley is married and has a small family.

"Howdy do sir! I sees you a good deal goin' backwards and forwards to
Columbia. I has to set way back in de bus and you sets up to de front. I
can't ketch you to speak to you, as you is out and gone befo' I can lay
hold of you. But, as Brer Fox 'lowed to Brer Rabbit, when he ketched him
wid a tar baby at a spring, 'I is got you now.'

"I's been wantin' to ask you 'bout dis old age pension. I's been to
Winnsboro to see 'bout it. Some nice white ladies took my name and ask
me some questions, but dat seem to be de last of it. Reckon I gwine to
get anything?

"Well, I's been here mighty nigh a hundred years, and just 'cause I
pinched and saved and didn't throw my money away on liquor, or put it
into de palms of every Jezabel hussy dat slant her eye at me, ain't no
valuable reason why them dat did dat way and 'joyed deirselves can get
de pension and me can't get de pension. 'Tain't fair! No, sir. If I had
a knowed way back yonder, fifty years ago, what I knows now, I might of
gallavanted 'round a little more wid de shemales than I did. What you
think 'bout it?

"You say I's forgittin' dat religion must be thought about? Well, I can
read de Bible a little bit. Don't it say: 'What you sow you sure to
reap?'