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:  Audio clips are set to automatically begin; transcripts appear below.

 

Harriet Smith	Age: 91                                   Interview Place: Hempstead, TX                                  Interview Date: November 18, 1941                                    Interviewer: John Henry Faulk
About the Project  Their Voices  Project Director  Consultants  Sources  Sponsors  Smithsonian Productions  Institute of  Language & Culture   The WPA and the    Archive of Folk Song   Links	JHF: Was your husband Henry Smith, uh, much of a  HS: Jim Smith? JHF: Uh, oh, Jim Smith. HS: Hmmm. JHF: Was he a church man? HS: Yes, he was  JHF: What happened  HS: Church man, church man, an' politics man too. JHF: Oh you were, y'all voted in those days. HS: Yes.  My husban' was uh, he was known by white folks. He was well, uh, when he got kill them white folks was just crazy about him. He'd gone through ... That boy that killed my husban', I nursed him when he was a baby. JHF: How come him to kill your husband? HS: Well he just mean, just mean you know an' he, they didn' like people up to date you know. An' course there jus' thirteen months in the difference in my husban' kill and his brother. Stole  JHF:Killed your husband's brother? HS: Uh huh.  He'd been to church. I think he went to gin that night to carry a bale of cotton. An' this Walter Byers sat down on a seat an' a whole passel of them was settin down talkin. An' when the time to come to his cotton, they killed him an', an' they killed my brother -- my husban' on the way from the cedar break. I could go right to the spot now nearly where he was killed at.  JHF:Shot him or cut him  HS:Shot him, shot him on the way from the cedar. See, we have a cedar break at home, at the ol' home... Shot him on the way from the cedar break.
	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

              

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