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to the audio recording of this interview.
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Interviewee: Laura Smalley
Interviewer: John Henry Faulk [with Unidentified Woman]
LS: My old stepdaddy, yeah. He was a Pane. And ah, he'd do everything, you know, he, he would, they couldn't whup them. [Tha' man (?)] couldn't whup them.
JHF: Well, how would they, how would they punish him then?
LS: Give them a ear of corn. [laugh] Give them ear of corn. Just like, you take a, you know, you give me a ear of corn and ah that'll do for my dinner, over my breakfast. You come home to dinner, he say you give me ear of corn. Say, you going shed it off them???. ??? and eat it. ??? on and eat it. Night come and they give them ear of corn, and ah, tha's the way they fed them, you know. Punishing them, you know. Wouldn't give them nothing to eat. Until he look like he was moving along too slow, too fast with that, you know. Too good.
JHF: [laugh]
LS: Too good for that, you know, just giving them corn. And he's eating it and all and drinkind water go on just the same. That's so they wouldn't give him none. Give him none.
INT: [Hmm (?)]
LS: They wouldn't give him nothing, you know. But they let them drink water, you know. And ah, he lived just the same. And you, and he, he lived with mamma twenty, thirty-two years, that before he died. Before he died. And, and he never did have a scar on them, my father, that old boss put on them.
In the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) sponsored a federal project dedicated to chronicling the experience of slavery as remembered by former slaves and their descendants. Their stories were recorded and transcribed, and this site presents dozens of select sound recordings and hundreds of transcriptions from the interviews. Beyond the content of the interviews, little to no biographical information is available on the individuals whose interviews appear here.
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