"Slavery days was hell. I was growed up when d war come, and I was a mother before it closed. Babies was snatched from deer mother's breast and sold to speculators. Chillens was separated from sisters and brothers and never saw each other again. 'Course dey cry. You think dey not cry when dey was sold like cattle? I could tell you about it all day, but even den you couldn't guess d awfulness of it. It's bad to belong to folks dat own yout soul and body, dat can tie you up to a tree, with yo' face to d tree and yo arms fastened tight around it, who take a long curlin whip and cut d blood every lick. Folks a mile away could hear dem awful whippings. Dey was a terrible part of livin'...
Massa Garlic had two boys in d War. When dey went off d massa and mistis cried, but it made us glad to see dem cry. Dey made us cry so much..."
--- Delia Garlic, interviewed in Montgomery, Alabama, by Margaret Fowler, of the Federal Writer's Project in the late 1930s and who insisted to Ms. Fowler that she was "at least" 100 years old. Born in Powhatan, Virginia in the 1830s and one of 14 children, and enslaved in Louisiana, Alabama and Virginia.
