master wouldn't let the mistress whoop him and she wouldn't let him whoop my father. My father was a black man but my mother was light. Her father was a white man and her mother part Indian and white mixed, so what am I? My mother was owned by people named Wash. Dick Wash was her young master. My parents' names was Willis and Elsie McDaniel. When it was freedom I heard them say Moster McDaniel told them they was free. He was broke. If they could do better go on, he didn't blame them, he couldn't promise them much now. They moved off on another man's place to share crop. They had to work as hard and didn't have no more than they had in slavery. That is what they told me. They could move around and visit around without asking. They said it didn't lighten the work none but it lightened the rations right smart. Moster McDaniel nor my father neither one went to war.

"From the way I always heard it, the Ku Klux was the law like night watchman. When I was a boy there was a lot of stealing and bushwhacking. Folks meet you out and kill you, rob you, whoop you. A few of the black men wouldn't work and wanted to steal. That Ku Klux was the law watching around. Folks was scared of em. I did see them. I would run hide.

"I farmed up till 1929. Then I been doing jobs. I worked on relief till they turned me off, said I was too old to work but they won't give me the pension. I been trying to figure out what I am to do. Lady, could you tell me? Work at jobs when I can get them.

"I allus been voting till late years. If they let some folks vote in the first lection, they would be putting in somebody got no business in the gover'ment. All the fault I see in white folks running the gover'ment is we colored folks ain't got work we can do all the time to live on. I thought all the white folks had jobs what wanted jobs. The conditions is hard for old men like me. I pay $3 for a house every month. It is a cold house.

"This present generation is living a fast life. What all don't they do?"

Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Waters McIntosh
     1900 Howard Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 76

"I was born July 4, 1862 at 2:08 in the morning at Lynchburg, Sumter County, South Carolina.

Parents

"My mother was named Lucy Sanders. My father was named Sumter Durant. Our owner was Dr. J.M. Sanders, the son of Mr. Bartlett Sanders. Sumter Durant was a white man. My mother was fourteen years old when I was born I was her second child. Durant was in the Confederate army and was killed during the War in the same year I was born, and before my birth.

Sold

"When I was a year old, my mother was sold for $1500 in gold, and I was sold for $500 in gold to William Carter who lived about five miles south of Cartersville. The payment was made in fine gold. I was sold because my folk realized that freedom was coming and they wanted to obtain the cash value of their slaves.

Name

"My name is spelled 'Waters' but it is pronounced 'Waiters.' When I was born, I was thought to be a very likely child and it was proposed that I should be a waiter. Therefore I was called Waters (but it was pronounced Waiters). They did not spell it w-a-i-t-e-r-s, but they pronounced it that way.

How Freedom Came

"My mother said that they had been waiting a long time to hear what had become of the War, perhaps one or two weeks. One day when they were in the field moulding corn, going round the corn hoeing it and putting a little hill around it, the conk sounded at about eleven o'clock, and they knew that the long expected time had come. They dropped their hoes and went to the big house. They went around to the back where the master always met the servants and he said to them, 'You are all free, free as I am. You can go or come as you please. I want you to stay. If you will stay, I will give you half the crop.' That was the beginning of the share cropping system.

"My mother came at once to the quarters, and when she found me she pulled the end out of a corn sack, stuck holes on the sides, put a cord through the top, pulled out the end, put it on me, put on the only dress she had, and made it back to the old home (her first master's folk).

What the Slaves Expected

"When the slaves were freed, they got what they expected. They were glad to get it and get away with it, and that was what mother and them did.

Slave Time Preaching

"One time when an old white man come along who wanted to preach, the white people gave him a chance to preach to the niggers. The substance of his sermon was this:

"'Now when you servants are working for your masters, you must be honest. When you go to the mill, don't carry along an extra sack and put some of the meal or the flour in for yourself. And when you women are cooking in the big house, don't make a big pocket under your dress and put a sack of coffee and a sack of sugar and other things you want in it."

"They took him out and hanged him for corrupting the morals of the slaves.

Conditions After the War

"Immediately after the War, there was a great scarcity of food. Neither Negroes nor white folk had anything to eat. The few white people who did have something wouldn't let it be known. My grandmother who was sixty-five years old and one of the old and respected inhabitants of that time went out to find something for us to eat. A white woman named Mrs. Burton gave her a sack of meal and told her not to tell anybody where she got it.

"My grandmother brought the meal home and cooked it in a large skillet in a big cake. When it got done, she cut it into slices in the way you would cut up a pie and divided it among us. That all we had to eat.

House

"The white people in those days built their houses back from the front. In South Carolina, there were lots of farms that had four to twelve thousand acres. From what mother told me, Master Bill's place set back from the road. Then there was a great square place they called the yard. A fence divided the house and the yard adjoining it from that part of the grounds which held the barn. The yard in front and back of the house held a grove.

The square around the house and the Negro quarters were all enclosed so that the little slaves could not get out while parents were at work. The Negroes assembled on the porch when the gong called them in the morning. The boss gave orders from the porch. There was an open space between the quarters and the court (where the little slaves played). There was a gate between the court and the big house.

"On the rear of the house, there was a porch from which the boss gave orders usually about four o'clock in the morning and at which they would disband in the evening between nine and ten—no certain time but more or less not earlier than nine and not often later than ten. Back of the house and beyond it was a fence extending clear across the yard. In one corner of this fence was a gate leading into the court. Leading out of the court was an opening surrounded by a semi-circular fence which enclosed the Negro quarters.

"The cabins were usually built on the ground—no floors. The roofs were covered with clapboards.

"When I was a boy we used to sing, 'Rather be a nigger than a poor white man.' Even in slavery they used to sing that. It was the poor white man who was freed by the War, not the Negroes.

Furniture

"There wasn't any furniture. Beds were built with one post out and the other three sides fastened to the sides of the house.

Marrying