Thomas Hall
From:
North Carolina
N. C. District: No. 2 [320007]
Worker: T. Pat Matthews
No. Words: 734
Subject: THOMAS HALL
Person Interviewed: Thomas Hall
Editor: G. L. Andrews
[TR: Date Stamp "SEP 10 1937"]
THOMAS HALL
Age 81 years
316 Tarboro Road, Raleigh, N. C.
My name is Thomas Hall and I was born in Orange County, N. C. on a
plantation belonging to Jim Woods whose wife, our missus, was named
Polly. I am eighty one years of age as I was born Feb. 14, 1856. My
father Daniel Hall and my mother Becke Hall and me all belonged to the
same man but it was often the case that this wus not true as one man,
perhaps a Johnson, would own a husband and a Smith own the wife, each
slave goin' by the name of the slave owners, family. In such cases the
children went by the name of the family to which the mother belonged.
Gettin married an' having a family was a joke in the days of slavery,
as the main thing in allowing any form of matrimony among the slaves was
to raise more slaves in the same sense and for the same purpose as stock
raisers raise horses and mules, that is for work. A woman who could
produce fast was in great demand and brought a good price on the auction
block in Richmond, Va., Charleston, S. C., and other places.
The food in many cases that was given the slaves was not given them for
their pleasure or by a cheerful giver, but for the simple and practical
reason that children would not grow into a large healthy slave unless
they were well fed and clothed; and given good warm places in which to
live.
Conditions and rules were bad and the punishments were severe and
barbarous. Some marsters acted like savages. In some instances slaves
were burned at the stake. Families were torn apart by selling. Mothers
were sold from their children. Children were sold from their mothers,
and the father was not considered in anyway as a family part. These
conditions were here before the Civil War and the conditions in a
changed sense have been here ever since. The whites have always held the
slaves in part slavery and are still practicing the same things on them
in a different manner. Whites lynch, burn, and persecute the Negro race
in America yet; and there is little they are doing to help them in
anyway.
Lincoln got the praise for freeing us, but did he do it? He give us
freedom without giving us any chance to live to ourselves and we still
had to depend on the southern white man for work, food and clothing, and
he held us through our necessity and want in a state of servitude but
little better than slavery. Lincoln done but little for the Negro race
and from living standpoint nothing. White folks are not going to do
nothing for Negroes except keep them down.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, the writer of Uncle Tom's Cabin, did that for
her own good. She had her own interests at heart and I don't like her,
Lincoln, or none of the crowd. The Yankees helped free us, so they say,
but they let us be put back in slavery again.
When I think of slavery it makes me mad. I do not believe in giving you
my story 'cause with all the promises that have been made the Negro is
still in a bad way in the United States, no matter in what part he
lives it's all the same. Now you may be all right; there are a few white
men who are but the pressure is such from your white friends that you
will be compelled to talk against us and give us the cold shoulder when
you are around them, even if your heart is right towards us.
You are going around to get a story of slavery conditions and the
persecusions of Negroes before the civil war and the economic conditions
concerning them since that war. You should have known before this late
day all about that. Are you going to help us? No! you are only helping
yourself. You say that my story may be put into a book, that you are
from the Federal Writer's Project. Well, the Negro will not get anything
out of it, no matter where you are from. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote
Uncle Tom's Cabin. I didn't like her book and I hate her. No matter
where you are from I don't want you to write my story cause the white
folks have been and are now and always will be against the negro.
LE
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