Alberta Minor
From:
Georgia Narratives, Part 2
Minnie Green
Interviewed
Alberta Minor
Re-search Worker
Minnie is not an ex-slave, for she was "jes walkin'" when the war was
over. Her parents were given their freedom in May but stayed on with
Judge Green until fall, after the wheat cutting. The family moved to a
two story house "out Meriwether Road" but didn't get along so well.
Minnie was hungry lots and came to town to get scraps of food. When she
was a "good big girl" she came to town one day with her hair full of
cukle-burrs, dressed in her mother's basque looking for food, when she
saw a man standing in front of a store eating an orange. She wanted that
peeling. No one kept their cows and pigs up and when the man threw the
peeling on the ground a sow grabbed it. Minnie chased the pig right down
Hill Street, was hollering and making plenty of noise, when a lady,
"Mis' Mary Beeks", came out and asked her "what's the matter?" "Right
then and there I hired myself out to Miss Mary, and she raised me."
Minnie played with white children, went to the "white folks" Church, and
did not "associate with niggers" until she was grown. Every summer they
went to the Camp Grounds for two weeks. They took the children, Minnie
for nurse, a stove, a cow and everything they needed for that time.
She was nearly grown before she went to a colored church and "baptisin'"
and it frightened her to see a person immersed, and come up "shoutin'".
Minnie thought they was "fightin' the Preacher" so she didn't go back
anymore.
Minnie firmly believes if a woman comes in your house first on New Years
Day, it will bring you bad luck, and she has walked as far as 10 miles
to get a man in her house first. If she meets a cross eyed person, she
crosses her fingers and spits on them to break the bad spell. "Hooten'
owls" are sure the sign of death and she always burns her hair combins
because if you just throw them away and the birds get them to put in
their nests, you'll have a "wanderin' mind."
Minnie is 72 years old, very active physically and mentally, lives among
the Negroes now but greatly misses her "white folks."
Minnie Green
503 East Chappell Street
Griffin, Georgia
August 31, 1936.
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Wheeler Gresham
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Margaret Green
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