Willis Winn, who told photographer Russell Lee that he was 116 years old when the photograph was taken in 1939, is pictured holding a horn with which plantation owners called slaves to work. Winn said his master told him that his birthday was March 10, 1822
When interviewed by Lee, Willis was living alone in a one-room log house in the rear of the Howard Vestal home on the Powder Mill Road, north of Marshall, and was supported by an $11.00 per month old-age pension. He recalled; “Massa Bob’s house faced the quarters where he could hear us holler when he blowed the big horn for us to git up. All the houses were made of logs and we slept on shuck and grass mattresses what was allus full of chinches. I still sleep on a grass mattress, ’cause I can’t rest on cotton and feather beds.”
Willis’ interview in 1939 showed how little things had changed for many people in the United States decades on from the abolition of slavery.
“They is plenty niggers in Louisiana that is still slaves. A spell back I made a trip to where I was raised, to see my old missy ‘fore she died, and there was niggers in twelve or fourteen miles of that place that they didn’t know they is free. They is plenty niggers round here what is same as slaves, and has worked for white folks twenty and twenty-five years and ain’t drawed a five cent piece, jus’ old clothes and somethin’ to eat. That’s the way we was in slavery.
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