Stepney Underwood; from the Library of Congress Collection
Remembering Slavery: 
Those Who Survived Tell Their Stories
 
And one more thing I want you to promise me:  
that you's gonna tell all the children my story.
--Papa Dallas Stewart
Their Voices: 
microphoneAudio clips are set to automatically begin; transcripts appear below. 
 
Laura 
Smalley
(child care)
Age: about 91
                                  Interview Place: Hempstead, TX
                                 Interview Date: September 27, 1941
                            Interviewers: John Henry Faulk and Hally Faulk
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    And they had trays, I don' know whether you have seen a tray. Wooden tray, dug out you know, oh about that, that long. And all of 'em, you know, would get around that tray with spoons. And just eat. I can recollect that 'cause I ate out of the tray. With spoons you know, and eat, such as like mush or soup or somethin like that. They'd feed them you know 'fore twelve o'clock. And all them children would get around there and just eat, eat, eat, eat out of that thing. And that old woman, you know, she would tend to them. Her name Aunt Tisha Yeah I know that woman, old woman, name Aunt Tisha And she  
    JHF: Just like slopping hogs, wasn't it? 
    LS: Just like a tray,  
    no just like a tray, you know, you'd have, made just like a hog pen -- hog trough you know.  
    . . .

    HF: mm 
    LS: And they had certain times to come to them chillens. A cow out there will go to the calf , you know. You know. It have have certain time, you know, cow come to his calf in, at, at night. Well they come at ten o'clock everyday, ten o'clock to all them babies. Them what nurse you know. Them what didn' nurse, they didn' come to 'em at all. The ol' lady fed 'em. They wasn' big en- wasn' big enough to eat, you know. She'd uh, the old mother had time, you know, to come. When that horn blowed, blowed a horn for the mothers, you know, they'd just come just like cows, just a-running, you know, coming to the children.
Gaston, Alice (AL)   |   Hughes, Fountain (MD)   |   McCrea, Billy (TX)  | McDonald, Joe (AL)   |  Moseley, Isom (AL) | Smalley, Laura (TX), beating    | Smalley, Laura(TX), child care     |  Smith, Harriet (TX)  |  
Faulk, John Henry (interviewer)   |  Epilogue  
 
 The Institute of Language and Culture (link not yet in place) Smithsonian Productions The Corporation f or Public Broadcasting The National Endowment for the Humanities&n bsp;The Department of Information Technology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro Southern Humanities Media Fund  Timothy Flood's Homepage
 
 
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