Green Willbanks
From:
Georgia
PLANTATION LIFE AS VIEWED BY AN EX-SLAVE
GREEN WILLBANKS, Age 77
347 Fairview Street
Athens, Georgia
Written by:
Mrs. Sadie B. Hornsby
Athens
Edited by:
Mrs. Sarah H. Hall
Athens
and
John N. Booth
District Supervisor
Federal Writers' Project
Residencies 6 & 7
Augusta, Georgia
Sept. 19, 1938
Fairview Street, where Green Willbanks lives is a section of shabby
cottages encircled by privet hedges.
As the visitor carefully ascended the shaky steps to his house a mulatto
man, who was sitting on the veranda, quickly arose. "Good morning," he
said, "Yes mam, this is Green Willbanks. Have a seat in the swing." The
porch furniture was comprised of a chair, a swing, and a long bench.
Green is tall, slender, and stooped; a man with white hair and grizzled
face. A white broadcloth shirt, white cotton trousers, blue socks, and
low-cut black shoes made up his far from immaculate costume.
The old man's eyes brightened when he was asked to give the story of his
life. His speech showed but little dialect, except when he was carried
away by interest and emotion, and his enunciation was remarkably free
from Negroid accent.
"I don't mind telling you what I know," he began, "but I was such a
little chap when the war ended that there's mighty little I can
recollect about slavery time, and it seems that your chief interest is
in that period. I was born on a plantation the other side of Commerce,
Georgia, in Jackson County. My Ma and Pa were Mary and Isom Willbanks;
they were raised on the same plantation where I was born. Ma was a field
hand, and this time of the year when work was short in the
field--laying-by time, we called it--and on rainy days she spun thread
and wove cloth. As the thread left the spinning wheel it went on a reel
where it was wound into hanks, and then it was carried to the loom to be
woven into cloth. Pa had a little trade; he made shoes and baskets, and
Old Boss let him sell them. Pa didn't make shoes for the slaves on our
plantation; Old Boss bought them ready-made and had them shipped here
from the West.
"Me and Jane, Sarah, Mitchell, and Willie were the five children in our
family. Oh! Miss, I was not big enough to do much work. About the most I
done was pick up chips and take my little tin bucket to the spring to
get a cool, fresh drink for Old Miss. Us children stayed 'round the
kitchen and drunk lots of buttermilk. Old Miss used to say, 'Give my
pickaninnies plenty of buttermilk.' I can see that old churn now; it
helt about seven or eight gallons.
"Our houses? Slaves lived in log cabins built the common way. There was
lots of forest pine in those days. Logs were cut the desired length and
notches put in each end so they would fit closely and have as few cracks
as possible, when they stacked them for a cabin. They sawed pine logs
into blocks and used a frow to split them into planks that were used to
cover the cracks between the logs. Don't you know what a frow is? That's
a wooden wedge that you drive into a pine block by hitting it with a
heavy wooden mallet, or maul, as they are more commonly called. They
closed the cracks in some of the cabins by daubing them with red mud.
The old stack chimneys were made of mud and sticks. To make a bed, they
first cut four posts, usually of pine, and bored holes through them with
augers; then they made two short pieces for the head and foot. Two long
pieces for the sides were stuck through the auger holes and the bedstead
was ready to lay on the slats or cross pieces to hold up the mattress.
The best beds had heavy cords, wove crossways and lengthways, instead of
slats. Very few slaves had corded beds. Mattresses were not much; they
were made of suggin sacks filled with straw. They called that straw
'Georgia feathers.' Pillows were made of the same things. Suggin cloth
was made of coarse flax wove in a loom. They separated the flax into two
grades; fine for the white folks, and coarse for the Negroes.
"The only one of my grandparents I can bring to memory now is Grandma
Rose on my Pa's side. She was some worker, a regular man-woman; she
could do any kind of work a man could do. She was a hot horse in her
time and it took an extra good man to keep up with her when it came to
work.
"Children were not allowed to do much work, because their masters
desired them to have the chance to grow big and strong, and therefore
they had few opportunities to earn money of their own. I never did own
any money during slavery days, but I saw plenty of ten cent greenbacks
(shinplasters).
"White children and slave children played around the plantation together
but they were not allowed to fight. They had to be on friendly terms
with each other.
"What about our food? The biggest thing we had was buttermilk, some
sweet milk, and plenty of cornbread, hog meat, and peas. As a rule we
had wheat bread once a week, usually on Sunday. All kinds of fruits were
plentiful in their seasons. Each slave family was permitted to have
separate garden space, in fact, Old Boss insisted that they work their
own gardens, and they raised plenty of vegetables. Grown folks had
rabbits and 'possums but I never did get much 'quainted with them. We
fished in the cricks and rills 'round the plantation and brought in lots
of hornyheads and perch. You never saw any hornyheads? Why they is just
fish a little bigger and longer than minnows and they have little horns
on their heads. We caught a good many eels too; they look like snakes,
but folks call them eels. I wasn't much 'quainted with them fish they
brought from way down South; they called them mullets.
"The kitchen was a separate log house out in the back yard. The
fireplace, where the cooking was done, took up one end of the kitchen,
and there was a rack acrost it to hang the cook-pots on for biling.
Baking and frying was done in ovens and heavy iron skillets that sat on
trivets so coals could be piled underneath, as well as over the lids.
"The long shirts slave boys wore in summer were straight like a meal
sack open at both ends, with holes in the sides for your arms to go
through. You stuck your head in one end and it came out the other; then
you were fully dressed for any whole summer day. These summer shirts
were made of thin osnaburg. Our winter clothes were made of woolen cloth
called merino. Old Boss kept enough sheep to provide plenty of wool and
some mighty good food. Slave children had no extra or special clothes
for Sunday; they wore the same kind of gowns, or long shirts, seven days
a week. Old Boss provided brass-toed brogans for winter, but we never
thought of such a thing as shoes to wear in hot weather.
"My owners were Marse Solomon and his wife, Miss Ann Willbanks. We
called them Old Boss and Old Miss. As I saw it, they were just as good
as they could be. Old Boss never allowed nobody to impose on his slave
children. When I was a little chap playing around the big house, I would
often drop off to sleep the minute I got still. Good Old Boss would pick
me up and go lay me on his own bed and keep me there 'til Ma come in
from the field.
"Old Boss and Old Miss had five children. The boys were Solomon, Isaac,
James, and Wesley. For the life of me I can't bring to memory the name
of their only daughter. I guess that's because we frolicked with the
four boys, but we were not allowed to play with Little Miss.
"It was a right decent house they lived in, a log house with a fine rock
chimney. Old Boss was building a nice house when the war come on and he
never had a chance to finish it. The log house was in a cedar grove;
that was the style then. Back of the house were his orchards where fruit
trees of every kind we knew anything about provided plenty for all to
eat in season as well as enough for good preserves, pickles, and the
like for winter. Old Boss done his own overseeing and, 'cording to my
memory, one of the young bosses done the driving.
"That plantation covered a large space of land, but to tell you how many
acres is something I can't do. There were not so many slaves. I've
forgot how they managed that business of getting slaves up, but I do
know we didn't get up before day on our place. Their rule was to work
slaves from sunup to sundown. Before they had supper they had a little
piddlin' around to do, but the time was their own to do as they pleased
after they had supper. Heaps of times they got passes and went off to
neighboring plantations to visit and dance, but sometimes they went to
hold prayer-meetings. There were certain plantations where we were not
permitted to go and certain folks were never allowed on our place. Old
Boss was particular about how folks behaved on his place; all his slaves
had to come up to a certain notch and if they didn't do that he punished
them in some way or other. There was no whipping done, for Old Boss
never did believe in whipping slaves.
"None of the slaves from our place was ever put in that county jail at
Jefferson. That was the only jail we ever heard of in those days. Old
Boss attended to all the correction necessary to keep order among his
own slaves. Once a slave trader came by the place and offered to buy Ma.
Old Boss took her to Jefferson to sell her on the block to that man. It
seemed like sales of slaves were not legal unless they took place on the
trading block in certain places, usually in the county site. The trader
wouldn't pay what Old Boss asked for her, and Old Miss and the young
bosses all objected strong to his selling her, so he brought Ma back
home. She was a fine healthy woman and would have made a nice looking
house girl.
"The biggest part of the teaching done among the slaves was by our young
bosses but, as far as schools for slaves was concerned, there were no
such things until after the end of the war, and then we were no longer
slaves. There were just a few separate churches for slaves; none in our
part of the country. Slaves went to the same church as their white folks
and sat in the back of the house or in a gallery. My Pa could read the
Bible in his own way, even in that time of slavery; no other slave on
our place could do that.
"Not one slave or white person either died on our plantation during the
part of slavery that I can bring to memory. I was too busy playing to
take in any of the singing at funerals and at church, and I never went
to a baptizing until I was a great big chap, long after slavery days
were over.
"Slaves ran off to the woods all right, but I never heard of them
running off to no North. Paterollers never came on Old Boss' place
unless he sont for them, otherwise they knowed to stay off. They sho was
devils in sheeps' clothing; that's what we thought of them paterollers.
Slaves worked all day Saddays when there was work to be done, but that
night was their free time. They went where they pleased just so Old Boss
gave them a pass to protect them from paterollers.
"After slaves went to church Sunday they were free the rest of the day
as far as they knowed. Lots of times they got 'em a stump
speaker--usually a Negro--to preach to them. There were not as many
preachers then as now.
"'Bout Christmas Day? They always had something like brandy, cider, or
whiskey to stimulate the slaves on Christmas Day. Then there was fresh
meat and ash-roasted sweet 'taters, but no cake for slaves on our place,
anyhow, I never saw no cake, and surely no Santa Claus. All we knowed
bout Christmas was eating and drinking. As a general thing there was a
big day's work expected on New Years Day because we had to start the
year off right, even if there was nothing for the slaves to do that day
but clean fence corners, cut brush and briers, and burn off new ground.
New Years Day ended up with a big old pot of hog jowl and peas. That was
for luck, but I never really knowed if it brought luck or not.
"Well, yes, once a year they had big cornshuckings in our section and
they had generals to lead off in all the singing; that was done to whoop
up the work. My Pa was one of the generals and he toted the jug of
liquor that was passed 'round to make his crowd hustle. After the corn
was shucked the crowd divided into two groups. Their object was to see
which could reach the owner of the corn first and carry him where he
wanted to go. Usually they marched with him on their shoulders to his
big house and set him down on his porch, then he would give the word for
them to all start eating the good things spread out on tables in the
yard. There was a heap of drinking done then, and dancing too--just all
kinds of dancing that could be done to fiddle and banjo music. My Pa was
one of them fiddlers in his young days. One of the dances was the
cotillion, but just anybody couldn't dance that one. There was a heap of
bowing and scraping to it, and if you were not 'quainted with it you
just couldn't use it.
"When any of the slaves were bad sick Old Boss called in his own family
doctor, Dr. Joe Bradbury. His plantation hit up against ours. The main
things they gave for medicine them days was oil and turpentine.
Sometimes folks got black snakeroot from the woods, biled it, and gave
the tea to sick folks; that was to clean off the stomach. Everybody wore
buckeyes 'round their necks to keep off diseases for we never knowed
nothing about asefetida them days; that came later.
"When the Yankees came through after the surrender Old Boss and Old Miss
hid their valuables. They told us children, 'Now, if they ask you
questions, don't you tell them where we hid a thing.' We knowed enough
to keep our mouths shut. We never had knowed nothing but to mind Old
Boss, and we were scared 'cause our white folks seemed to fear the
Yankees.
"Old Boss had done told slaves they were free as he was and could go
their own way, but we stayed on with him. He provided for Pa and give
him his share of the crops he made. All of us growed up as field hands.
"Them night-riders were something else. They sho did beat on Negroes
that didn't behave mighty careful. Slaves didn't buy much land for a
long time after the war because they didn't have no money, but schools
were set up for Negroes very soon. I got the biggest part of my
education in West Athens on Biggers Hill. When I went to the Union
Baptist School my teacher was Professor Lyons, the founder of that
institution.
"When me and Molly Tate were married 50 years ago we went to the church,
because that was the cheapest place to go to have a big gathering. Molly
had on a common, ordinary dress. Folks didn't dress up then like they
does now; it was quite indifferent. Of our 10 children, 8 are living now
and we have 14 grandchildren. Six of our children live in the North and
two have remained here in Athens. One of them is employed at Bernstein's
Funeral Home and the other works on the university campus. I thanks the
Lord that Molly is still with me. We bought this place a long time ago
and have farmed here ever since. In fact, I have never done nothing but
farm work. Now I'm too old and don't have strength to work no more.
"I thinks Abraham Lincoln was a all right man; God so intended that we
should be sot free. Jeff Davis was all right in his way, but I can't say
much for him. Yes mam, I'd rather be free. Sho! Give me freedom all the
time. Jesus said: 'If my Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed.'
"When I jined the church, I felt like I was rid of my burden. I sot
aside the things I had been doing and I ain't never been back to pick
'em up no more. I jined the Baptist church and have been teaching a
class of boys every Sunday that I'm able to go. I sho am free from sin
and I lives up to it.
"I wonder if Molly's got them sweet 'taters cooked what I dug this
morning. They warn't much 'count 'cause the sun has baked them hard and
it's been so dry. If you is through with me, I wants to go eat one of
them 'taters and then lay this old Nigger on the bed and let him go to
sleep."
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