Rev Thomas Harper
From:
South Carolina
Project 1885-1
FOLKLORE
Spartanburg Dist. 4
May 25, 1937
Edited by:
Elmer Turnage
STORIES FROM EX-SLAVES
"I was born in Fairfield County, S.C. near Broad River. I was de son of
John and Harriet Harper. I worked in slavery time and was a slave of
John Stanley who was a good man and easy to work with. He give me a good
whipping once when I was a boy. We earned no money but had our place to
sleep and something to eat and wear. We didn't have any gardens, but
master had a big plantation and lots of slaves, and worked a garden
himself. I remember he whipped mother once the last year of the
war,--just about to get freedom.
"Master belonged to patrollers, and let dem come on the place and punish
the slaves if needed. They whipped my sister once. He had a house to
lock slaves in when dey was bad. He learned us to read and write. He had
a school on de plantation for his niggers. After the days work was over,
we frolicked, and Saturday afternoons we had off to do what we wanted.
We had to go to the white folks church and set in back of de church.
Corn shuckings, cotton picking and carding and quilting, the old folks
had when dey had big times and big eats.
"Weddings and funerals of slaves were about like white folks. Some would
go walking and singing to de grave in back of hearse or body. There was
a conjurer in our neighborhood who could make you do what he wanted,
sometimes he had folks killed. The Yankees marched through our place,
stole cattle, and meat. We went behind dem and picked up lots dat dey
dropped when dey left. When de war was over, de niggers was promised
small farms but dey didn't get 'em.
"I have been preaching many years in colored Methodist churches. I have
7 children, 22 grand-children but no great-grand-children.
"I think Abraham Lincoln was a great man, and Jefferson Davis, too.
Booker Washington was a grand educator for the colored race. Bishop S.D.
Chappell, colored preacher of the A.M.E. church South, one time
president of Allen University at Columbia, S.C. was a great colored man,
too. He went to Nashville, Tenn. as secretary-treasurer of the Sunday
School Union.
"I don't believe slavery was good--much better for all of us now.
"I joined the church when I was young, because I thought it right to be
a member. I think everybody ought to join some church, and they ought to
join early in life, when quite young."
=Source:= Rev. Thomas Harper (84), Newberry, S.C., interviewed by:
G.L. Summer, Newberry, S.C. May 21, 1937.
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